Why Sack The Chairman?

By: Bill Osborne
Date: 14/12/2001

THERE has been a great deal of backlash over the failure of Grimsby Town to sign Marlon Broomes after Sheffield Wednesday outbid them to gain the player's signature.

A great number of fans are calling for the heads of the chairman, the manager or both. But is that really the answer to Grimsby's problems?

The Mariners are not a wealthy club and Grimsby is not a wealthy area. There is no heavy industry to match that of the midlands region and wages in the area are among the lowest in the UK.

It is in that environment that Grimsby Town Football Club has to survive and that is not easy with the sort of money being thrown about in football today.

Yet Grimsby has something that other larger and richer towns and cities envy. A team in the first division of league football.

The Mariners have survived in the division for 7 out of the last 8 years with an annual budget that would not pay for one Manchester United player's services. Yet we have survived.

Despite that, the plans for the future have been set and for some, they seem over ambitious with a new stadium planned to be built at Great Coates with an initial capacity of 14,500 and a planned extension to 20,100 capacity. Not bad for a struggling first division club.

The failure of Grimsby Town to sign Broomes was not a step backward as many have claimed. Rather it was a step towards protecting our future. The decision was made to protect what little funds there are in the kitty without sending the club in the downward spiral to bankruptcy.

The board have not done anything that they have not previously declared. They have made it quite clear that they will not allow the club to plunge into liquidation which they claim it would have done if we had not survived in the first division by the skin of our teeth last season.

They have moved to prevent that happening again by stricter financial controls and the support of the directors, in particular Dudley Ramsden who has extended further interest free loans to the club to keep it afloat this season.

Yes, fans are right to call Peter Furneaux a meanie. But thank goodness he is with the club's money. I for one, do not want to see him paying any player, whoever he is, 30 weeks wages for 20 weeks work! That is financial lunacy.

Let us find another player. The board have given the manager Lennie Lawrence, funds to sign a player until the end of the season. The end of the season in England is May. Not July!

If Mr. Broomes had understood that, he would be a Grimsby Town player today!

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