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Todays HE has stated that TUFC has turned around the financial losses from the last two seasons to a profit of £116,000. This is due to sale of Benyon, FA cup run to round 4, £75,000 compo from Bristol Rovers and they DIDN'T have to pay Colin Lee £100,000 (no explanation was given for this info) This is very good news for the club. Obviously the club is currently committed to the major expenditure of Bristow's Bench, so it is very important that finances are in a good place.

Very good news, but the thing is that without those transfer fees, we'd still have turned in a healthy loss.

Understandable why the budget was cut, as that level of loss is unsustainable for a club our size.

goodluckgull wrote: they DIDN'T have to pay Colin Lee £100,000 (no explanation was given for this info)

We don't have to pay him every year. He was paid off in 2010, which was a big factor (well, roughly one sixth) of the £600k loss posted the year before. So simply not having such a big cost in 2010/11 helped us to turn a profit, along with the other sales and cup run.

Take out Benyon and we roughly broke even, which in my opinion is the sign of a well run club. Any significant player sales are then profit, which is re-invested in the club.

Congratulations to the board, and hopefully with £100k from Robertson and Zebroski already banked for this year we should break even again. O'Kane is of course a huge asset which we're hanging onto and reaping the benefits rather than taking the quick pound, which is something we haven't done in a long time, so well done for that too.

In addition to Robbo and Zebs we also sold Kee as well.

I wonder how much less we got for the cup run this year - prize money is maybe £80k less but I imagine gate receipts might be similar as there was a sizeable crowd at Sheff Utd.

Wage bill must be considerably lower this year.

We have 4 players who I think we will receive transfer fees for over the next 2 years - O Kane, Olejnik, Ellis and Oastler. The first two or even three could be quite sizeable.

Dave Thomas states in the article that United "DIDN'T have to pay out the £100,000 it cost them to part company with former chief executive Colin Lee in 2010" I am curious to know why the club didn't have to pay.

We did, but last year, so it showed up on last years accounts. This year we didn't have to pay it, so it helps to account for our improved finances between 2009/10 and 2010/11.

So you saying DT is wrong to state that United didn't make a payment to Colin Lee.

No, you're mis-understanding what he's saying. He's saying that we didn't have to pay him THIS YEAR, which is one of the factors as to why our finances improved by £750k between 2009/10 and 2010/11 (£-600k to £150k). The other factors (Benyon, cup run, Buckle) are just above.

We did pay Lee £100k, but that's in the 2009/10 accounts and not the ones just published for 2010/11.

What I don't understand is if the club had already paid off Colin Lee then why did DT find it important to bring into the equation of stating the current finances. Its unneccessary. Its like saying the club saved money for not paying out extra wages for non existent players.

It's very important to what he's saying. In the previous two years we'd made losses of £700k and £600k. This year we totally turned that around to make a profit of £150k. That's the first sentence of the piece you're talking about, and then he explains how we managed to turn our finances around.

Colin Lee's £100k is a big amount of money for a club at our level, so it helps to explain why we'd make a big loss the year before, but a profit this year (along with the other factors).

I would imagine that there has been an agreement made with Colin Lee to offset payments, or maybe he even said for us not to worry about it. Who knows!

cambgull wrote:I would imagine that there has been an agreement made with Colin Lee to offset payments, or maybe he even said for us not to worry about it. Who knows!

Not going to pretend for one miute I understand all this, if I have read it right , in 2009 under directors renumeration the club paid £100,975, in 2010 paid £96,544 plus compensation for loss of directorship £101,547.

Not sure whether I can post a link, off to work now will check with Dave S/G tomorrow, which would suggest that Colin Lee was paid in full if I understood it correctly.

Thanks "Exilegull" for explaining. This is the first time I have read confirmation that United payed £100,000 to part company with Colin Lee, although it did take me a while to understand that it was confirmation!

I was thinking the same SG....... by the way why do you think Colin Lee is a P**ck?