It Sucks To Be Gretna

By: Inara | April 5th, 2008

What hasn’t gone wrong for Gretna Football Club this season?

They’re already relegated, they can’t pay salaries, their manager quit, their chairman grew so ill that he had to withdraw his financial support, they’re in administration, their staff and players have been laid off, and their fans have stopped showing up to games (though the fact that they still have fans is pretty impressive, if you ask me).

With so many unpaid players and staff, and with bills starting to pile up, there was the very real fear that Gretna wouldn’t make it to the end of the season. In fact, things were so bad that the club’s administrators wanted to pull out of their game against Inverness this weekend.

Not wanting Gretna to fold their six remaining matches or to deal with the embarrassment of losing a club before the end of the season, the Scottish Premier League had to come up with a last second rescue plan to ensure that the match with Inverness would go ahead.

The SPL has guaranteed Gretna £340,000, a sum which should allow them to stay afloat until the end of the season. This money is actually a cash advance, a combination of Gretna’s share from broadcasting revenue and the payments Scottish clubs receive when they are relegated from the topflight.

However, this cash is like putting a band-aid on a gunshot wound. The SPL’s intervention, as welcome though it is, won’t save Gretna. They’ve already been penalized ten points for being in administration, and the club’s memorabilia has been taken away in order to be assessed (in case they need to be sold for additional money).

And worst of all, last week Gretna were forced to make six coaches and 22 players redundant. Eight of those players were part of the senior squad, including captain Chris Innes and the injured Fabian Yantorno, whose treatment Gretna can no longer afford. These players have mortgages to pay and families to feed, and considering that the transfer window for free agents closes on March 31st, many of the players are now in a bind.

So is there any good news to be had for Gretna? Well, the only thing that comes close is that there are two prospective buyers interested. New management – and lots of cash – might go a long way into getting Gretna back on their feet.

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Category: Scottish Premier League

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Ian

It's not so much that they had financial problems, as they had very little support outside of Brooks Mileson. Their fanbase was small, and they had to spend a lot of money just to rent Fir Park from Motherwell to bend the SPL rules to get in at all, since their stadium wasn't big enough. Even though my own favorite club, Inverness, did a similar groundshare in their first season in the top flight, they represented a much bigger group of fans and a much bigger town than Gretna, and they had some income other than an owner that spent and spent. In my opinion, the groundshare rule is partially at fault. If a team can't afford an SPL-level park, they aren't ready to be in the SPL.
Ian Rose

Gretna is quickly becoming the classic textbook case of a side that wasn't ready to go up to the top flight. They were promoted three times in three seasons, and they just weren't prepared for either the competitive or financial setting in the SPL. The SPL once had much stricter guidelines about what a team needed to be in the top flight, including a stadium of their own with a decent capacity and something resembling a stable set of finances. It'll really be too bad if they dissolve completely, because they do have some great fans ... not a huge number, mind you, but passionate. Still, their case should be taught in business classes as a case of what not to do with a football club.