Joey Barton insists it's too early to discuss his summer transfer budget as Bristol Rovers still need to secure their League One status for next season and claims the club’s record annual losses are a natural by-product of trying to compete in the modern era.
Rovers reported losses this week of £3.7m for the financial year ending 2022, relevant to their first full campaign under Barton in which they earned promotion from League Two with a last day 7-0 win over Scunthorpe United.
It’s the most the Gas have lost inside an accounting period in their history, and will essentially be covered by president Wael Al-Qadi so won't be an immediate threat to the club as such, but for Barton it serves as reminder of how expensive it is operating at this level.
Earlier this year, speaking on the What The Footie podcast, CEO Tom Gorringe stated how the club are striving to become more sustainable, a word that Barton also used in his pre-match press conference on Thursday, although taking a slightly dim view as to whether it’s truly possible.
There has been a considerable turnover of players since the 40-year-old’s arrival in north Bristol with 21 signed or loaned in the 2021/22 season and then 16 over the two transfer windows this season, while Rovers haven’t been able to receive any substantial transfer revenue, with Brandon Hanlan’s £150,000 sale the only one to speak of.
It raises a number of questions leading into the summer about whether Barton will be able to conduct such wide-reaching surgery of his squad as before and if he can spend significantly in the market without being able to sell to offset some of the losses.
“I don’t know, we’ll find that out in the summer,” Barton said, when asked if he’ll have money to spend. “There certainly aren’t many football clubs running a profit if you were to look at the accounts. I just take the agents’ salaries in the Championship that are getting paid out to run a club… that’d be nice. I picked the wrong profession, I should have been an agent rather than a footballer or football coach because that seems to be where the big bucks is.
“I think anyone who gets involved in football to run a sustainable business is mad, certainly you have to be. You just look who’s done that, maybe Tony Bloom at Brighton but there’s lots of work that goes into that, but they’re the exception to the rule.
“You look at most of the successful clubs and they don’t run sustainably. It’s even trickier when you factor in Covid and the landscape in the lower leagues and the impact of that will be felt for a long period by a lot of clubs.
“Premier League riches keep them insulated. For us, the aim is to make the club as sustainable as possible. I prefer it if my owner doesn’t have to put any money in, that would mean the club is wiping its own nose. But it takes selling players, it takes strategic recruitment structures and cultural structures embedded over a long period as Brighton and Brentford have shown.
"If you have a business plan, and you come through the leagues as they have done, and you do it sustainably, sometimes it happens to mean you sell your best players but it can be done.
“On the whole, they are the exception to the rule. We’re very fortunate to have a wealthy owner who’s committed to the football club, who has bankrolled the club through the pandemic and we’re fortunate to have a really passionate fanbase who support the club, buy tickets and shirts. We want to give the club all the success we can but we also know it takes a good period to put a solid culture and foundation in.”
Rovers host Charlton Athletic at the Mem on Good Friday still seven points short of Barton’s 52-point target he thinks will be enough for them to start to look ahead to the summer and beyond. Although the actual points haul required for safety could prove much lower given how few wins the sides in the bottom third have been able to muster between them.
Until that point is reached, Barton insists his focus will be on this season, claiming that even during a recent break to Dubai he didn’t, as he initially expected, start day-dreaming of what lies beyond these next nine games.
“Teams will be in the planning stage but until you know what division you’re going to be in, it’s naive to talk about recruitment and budgets when you’re a long period out from being able to execute any of them,” Barton added. “I think if you know you’re going to be promoted, and you know what league you’re going to be in, you can start making some plans and get ahead of the curve.
“At this moment in time, we haven’t managed to mathematically secure our place in League One and you have to prioritise that before you start budgeting and planning the next job. There will be loads of people who tell you that you can do both, crack on and let them do that.
“But at this moment we really need to focus on finishing the season as strongly as we can because that is ultimately the first step in your recruitment because people go, ‘oh, they finished strong, I wouldn’t mind playing for them’, and equally I don’t really think the market flushes out until everyone knows where they’re going to be - promotion, relegation and contract offers - and that usually unfolds the closer you get to the summer. I wouldn’t let my mind wander too far.”
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