TAKE A HIT OR WE’LL GO BUST

Dale’s fate in hands of fans, says chief

CHAIRMAN Simon Gauge has warned shareholders of Rochdale they must accept “a big hit” on their investment or face the prospect of the club going into liquidation by the end of March.

Gauge has ploughed in £566,000 in the past few months to keep the fan-owned National League club going, but has revealed the cash-strapped club no longer has the cash revenue needed to stay sustainable.

Dale were relegated from the Football League last season after 102 years and have had to undertake serious cost-cutting measures in their first season in Non-League football, running up losses of up to £1 million.

Talks with a group of potential investors have proved fruitful but in order for a proposed £2 million takeover to go ahead, the club need to change its share structure in a bid to create nine million new shares which will enable the investors to gain a 90 per cent share of the club.

Trustworthy

As a result, Gauge, who describes Dale as “asset-rich and cash-poor”, has called an Extraordinary General Meeting at Spotland on Thursday March 7 to try to agree to proposals which he believes can protect the club’s mere existence.

“This resolution needs to be passed at the EGM for us to have any chance of securing the required investment that will ensure the long-term future of our club,” he said in a statement this week.

“If it isn’t passed, the threat of liquidation at the end of March is very real. The passing of this resolution does not guarantee saving the club, but it will certainly give it a fighting chance.

“To be clear, the existence of Rochdale AFC is at stake. The opportunity to give a long-term future is now in the shareholders’ hands.”

Gauge insists the potential suitors are as “trustworthy as any investor can be” and says the club need to act now – even if it means existing shareholders making losses on their investment.

Speaking on The Price of Football podcast this week, Gauge added: “You have to kiss a lot of frogs to find decent investors. There are so many timewasters out there.

“I think we’ve found a possible investor now that is as trustworthy as any investor can be. They’ve got a track record in the industry, they’ve got an online presence, so all we can try and do is be as transparent about that investor and hope it works out.

Lifeline

“They will move forward when we get this new share structure in place. It’s not a lost cause but it’s something we need to do.

“For the shareholders, including the directors who spent half a million pounds, getting out mortgages on their house, that money is, in effect, written off. It’s a big hit for supporters, for directors, a big hit for everybody. But at the end of the day, if we do this we’ve got a chance of having a football club at the end of it. If we don’t do this, the reality is we won’t have a football club at the end of it.

“As it stands, the club’s losses are sustainable but we have no cash and no way of raising cash. We’re not a basket case, the losses by National League standards are pretty small, we own our own ground, worth somewhere between £4-6 million, so it’s a very good investment.

“But the fact is under the fan-owned model we do not have the cash to run the club and we’ve got to find a way of solving that problem.

“Although this new share structure, is not, in an ideal world, what everybody would want, it’s a lifeline for the football club.”