Nixon hails Halliday move as ‘fantastic business’ for Livingston

May 20 2010 by Eric MacKinnon, West Lothian Courier

GED NIXON has hailed the transfer deal which took Andy Halliday south to Middlesbrough as a “fantastic piece of business.”

The Livingston Chief Executive has admitted the deal will make a massive difference to the club coffers while he also revealed the new contracts for the other footballing fledglings at the club contain clauses which are staggered and will only progress and improve in tandem with the club's fortunes.

“The deal for Halliday, a player who had just three weeks to go on his contract, will see us receive a sum greatly in excess of the combined sum for the sale of Leigh Griffiths, Murray Davidson and Dave Mackay,” Nixon explained.

“I think that’s good business and the deal with Middlesbrough was fantastic for this club. It will go a long way to bridging the financial gap.”

Off the field the situation for Livingston is also blossoming with the conference and banqueting facilities at the club now bringing in cash during the close season.

He continued: “We are reasonably happy with progress but the big difference between us and any other club in the Second Division, including Airdrie, is our conference and banqueting facilities.

“When we came in these were mothballed and feedback was poor but we changed things around and brought in Simon Preece and his team, who have done incredibly well.

“We are starting to reap real benefits from these avenues now.

“Using this weekend as an example, we have three birthday parties over the weekend and a seminar.

“We have also brought in the Scottish Amateur FA, who have played two semi-finals, a cup final and a challenge match against Ireland here.

“The WLAYFC also hired the stadium for the day and this all combines to make a massive income for the club which we would simply not have seen in the past.

“Other clubs in the Second Division don’t have facilities like this.

“Using Clyde as an example, as they have a stadium similar to ours, they effectively pay a rent to play football on a Saturday and they don’t get any income from any of the external sources at Broadwood.

“We have one or two headaches by way of having to maintain the stadium here but business carries on as usual when football stops here for the summer.

“Almondvale is open all-year round, 24-7, and these are things which make a massive difference to us and that part of the business is growing fantastically well.

“We have a lot of hard work in front of us and we have a big black hole out there in terms of paying for a full-time football team.

“We’d never be self-sufficient at this level and we need extracurricular business to field a full-time football team.

“The football side has always been loss-making and that won’t change in the foreseeable future but what we’ve done is structure the deals we’ve given our young players, who we see as the assets of the business, deals which have caveats which dictate their earnings according to which league we are playing in.

“The players were happy to sign up to this and it is a form of performance-related pay as if the club doesn’t develop and progress then frankly their salaries don’t either, which can only be good for Livingston and is sound business.”