Livingston Chief Executive Ged Nixon sees bright financial future for club

May 20 2010 by Eric MacKinnon, West Lothian Courier

GED NIXON has admitted a season in the Third Division has hit Livingston FC in the pocket but he has assured supporters the club is on solid financial ground.

The Lions’ chief executive has also revealed that the figures for income and expenditure at the club are edging closer after a year of cost-cutting and prudence at Almondvale.

And Nixon has moved to rubbish suggestions the club were racking up substantial debt again after almost going to the wall under the previous regime last summer.

He said: “There will be a focus on this club for the foreseeable because of the history of previous regimes and we can’t change that.

“All we can do is conduct ourselves properly and I think we have done that.

“All the staff and players have been paid, the Inland Revenue have been paid, we have paid West Lothian Council our agreed sum of rent for the first year, suppliers have been paid as have Lothian and Borders Police and the security company.

“We have guys here who are rolling their sleeves up and getting on with things.

“Our chairman, who is over 60-years-old, has been 80ft up in a cherrypicker changing bulbs while I’ve been out on the park in horizontal rain on a Tuesday night lining the pitch.

“That should tell everyone what we are trying to do here.

“Because of the history of the club people are always going to have a focus on that and I can understand that.

“I would like to think that the present incumbents have earned the right at this point to merit a modicum of trust.

“The two figures of income and expenditure at the club are considerably closer together now than they were at the start of last season.

“And if we get to the First Division on the cost base we have at his moment then we are more than comfortable of getting to that nirvana of bringing in what we put out.”

Last summer the West Lothian club were on the brink of liquidation when Nixon, Gordon McDougall and Neil Rankine joined forces to save the club which at that stage was in the First Division.

But within days of completing their takeover Livi were demoted to the Third Division in a move which Nixon concedes had massive financial implications for the club.

He continued: “Things are very optimistic around the club and we’ve come through a really tough spell where we had the rug pulled from under us before we even kicked a ball.

“The team took a little time to adjust but the players and the manager adjusted superbly after that.

“The flip-side though for us was also the drastic drop of income from where we had pitched ourselves to be.

“We had been looking at First Division football only to be demoted to the Third.

“So we had to dust ourselves down and got on with it. Since then we’ve stripped a lot of costs out of the club.

“We had an inherent wage bill with players on full-time, First Division-rate contracts which we felt obliged to honour.

“People have asked us why we didn’t follow the route of Motherwell and Clyde FC in terms of player contracts.

“To be honest I don’t know how they did it but the way things happened with us was when Neil Rankine, Gordon McDougall and myself went along with the administrator to Hampden for our hearing before the SFL.

“Before anything else was even discussed we were made aware that expulsion from the league was a tool available to the SFL.

“And they put the question to us if we would honour all footballing contracts.

“We, obviously, said yes as it was something we wanted to do and we had by that point already paid the players and staff the wages they were due.

“Had we said no at that point I don’t think it would have stood us in very good stead.

“We came away from that meeting having made a commitment to honour all of these contracts and just a few days later we were demoted.

“After that we stripped the costs out as much as we can although there is still a little bit of work to be done there.

“The club still have inherent contracts running for another season on more than we’d like but there’s nothing we can do about that.

“But we hope that those players will make the difference in the season coming forward and those players will also be mindful they are entering the last year of contract and will be keen to secure employment for the following year, be it at Livingston or somewhere else.

“But it is fair to say the ones working with us next season are very much lads we’d like to retain but what we can offer them will depend on what we can generate income wise.”

Continued on page 67.