Hereford United must find £275,000 before end of November, says chairman David Keyte (From Hereford Times)

Hereford United Football Club must find £275,000 before end of November, says chairman David Keyte

8:00pm Friday 19th October 2012 in Sport By Ian Morgan

HEREFORD United can’t afford to pay their players’ wages and will need a £35,000 cash injection in the next seven days.

The cash-strapped Edgar Street club will also need to find an additional £240,000 by the end of November.

Chairman David Keyte delivered the news to the club’s shareholders this week.

He has now called for support from the fans and suggested that 2,000 people could each pledge £100 to stabilise the club.

Two life-long female supporters, he said, had both written cheques to kick-start United’s fight for survival.

“I wanted to share the information with shareholders and I said that going into administration might be the end route if we can’t raise the money,” said Keyte.

“I might be the chairman but it’s not just my club - it’s the football club for the city and the county of Herefordshire.

“We are £66,000 down on gate money and, for the first time, we have a PAYE bill that we are not able to meet.

“We are flagging up the problems early. We need £200,000 to £300,000 and it will make it easier if we can get a wider base of help.”

Keyte said the club must find £35,000 in the next week, a total of £100,000 two weeks after that and then an additional £140,000 sum by the end of November.

He said United now needed a good FA Cup run and were counting the cost of relegation from the Football League.

“We got around £743,000 of funding last year from Premier League TV money and Football League money,” he said.

“The Premier League TV money came in two slabs - in September and in January - and it gives you support at vital times.

“Now that we are in the Conference, we get £16,000 a month instead of £60,000.

“That £60,000, plus our gate money, used to pay the wages.

You can make things work if you know you have home gates of 2,500.

“But if we are going to gates of 1,500 then we have a bit of reorganisation to do. The gates have dropped by 30 per cent.”

He added: “We feel we are in a stronger position than the club was in the mid to late 1990s.

“We have the Starlite Rooms trading, we own the leases to the ground and there’s the potential for capital investment.

“There’s a feeling that the money to pay off the debt to the Richardsons should come back one day three or four fold.”