Premier League

Southend United’s current crisis could land them a place on football’s financial graveyard

A sign with details of Southend United's new stadium

National League club Southend United are in serious financial difficulty, with severe cashflow issues and yet another winding up petition to have to defend.

 

The irony is that their next opponents have seen all of this before. Southend United take on York City in the National League on Saturday. Exactly 20 years ago, York were in a period of administration which ended when the club’s supporters’ trust took ownership. And for those Minstermen old enough to remember this traumatic period in their history, a few painful memories may well be stirred by their trip to the Essex coast.

York fans have already been advised that the turnstiles at Roots Hall will be ‘cash only’ for this match, and when clubs make this sort of announcement it may be considered extremely bad news indeed. The implication is that any money paid by credit or debit card will be swallowed up by chipping away at an already fully-extended extensive overdraft instead of attending to more pressing matters such as, say, paying the wages of players or staff. This is not the first time this season that admission to Roots Hall has been ‘cash only’.

Not that Southend United have actually been paying their players or staff these last couple of months. All concerned were paid a day late at the end of November, but local newspaper the Southend Echo confirmed earlier this week that office staff still haven’t been paid in full for the end of December or the end of January either, which would clearly be unacceptable under any circumstances, never mind in the middle of a winter during which the entire country is gripped in a cost of living crisis. The club’s youth team is understood to have decided not to play again for the club until they’re paid, having again missed January’s wage.

And when bad news of this nature starts to build, it can snowball very quickly. This was confirmed by CEO Tom Lawrence saying that the club has fallen behind on a payment plan to St John’s Ambulance. Lawrence stated that “we have fallen behind on a payment plan, but we are communicating with them on this and hope to be able to get things back on track,” and that “St John’s will be providing cover for the next match”. But for how much longer will this be the case if the club is in this sort of financial position?

Set against this litany of mismanagement in the here and now, March 1 feels like a long way away, but it’s now less than a month until the club finds itself back in the High…

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