As Eric Whalley decides to sell his shares in Stanley, he exclusively tells us about how tough it was to keep the club going as the credit crunch continues to bite.

Q: Last year’s accounts show that Accrington Stanley’s turnover was £1.5m with a loss of £65,000. How do you reflect on those figures?

That’s not a bad loss. But this year’s accounts will show a much greater loss because gates have dropped and sponsorship deals have gone by the wayside.

When we entered the Football League three years ago, attendances at the time averaged around 2,200. It was a lot easier to manage the budget. But gates are now averaging around 1,100 - attendances have halved in those three years.

Q: It’s often said that John Coleman works to the smallest budget in the Football League. Was that true, and how difficult was that for the manager?

John keeps telling me that he’s working off the lowest playing budget but I don’t know how he knows!

The budget is £900,000 - which is 60 per cent of the club’s turnover. It’s a low figure, but I’m told there’s clubs on less than us.

You have got to be realistic. Stanley are the worst supported club in the Football League, and with the worst stadium and facilities.

John knows that the club must balance the books. He has been unable to sign some players he has targeted because the club can’t afford them.

Ideally, it would have been good to press on and spend more money, but without the financial backing, that wasn’t possible.

But Stanley are no different from any other club. I was constantly looking to find kids that we could develop into a Premier League player.

You hope one or two youngsters develop like Jimmy Ryan has. He’s only 20 and has been a great signing. He’s come on a tonne this year and we bought him on a free from Shrewsbury Town.

We sold players in the past when we’ve been offered good money. Everybody has their price. If somebody offered X amount of pounds and you it thought it was right and would benefit the club, then we had to let them go.

Q: How did the global economic downturn affect Accrington Stanley and can you see things getting any better over the next couple of years?

It affected Accrington Stanley more than it has Blackburn Rovers and Burnley. The major thing was the loss of two big sponsors, Fraser Eagle and Hollands Pies, who are big local businesses in Hyndburn.

Before the start of the season, Fraser Eagle gave us just four week’s notice that they weren’t going to renew their sponorship for the shirts. Luckily, Combined Stabilisation came in and agreed a good deal for us.

But with Fraser Eagle, they owed us money which we could not budget for this year. That is for ground-naming rights and coach sponsorship, while we also lost the academy sponsorship.

We were the first club that Fraser Eagle looked at in terms of coaching teams to and from games and, at the end, I think they had about 16 clubs.

It was a good sponsorship deal we had with them, but now it has lost us £60,000. For a small club like us, £60,000 is massive, and the stadium-rights is worth an additional £15,000 a year. It has to budgeted, so it must come from someone esle.

It’s impossible to know if any other businesses come in and sponsor us. Are there any business people in Hyndburn?

We couldn’t get anybody locally to sponsor us. They all look towards Blackburn Rovers or Burnley, which after 40 years of us being out of the Football League, I suppose you cannot blame them.

What annoys me is the revenue from Coca Cola and television money from Sky that is trickled down the Football League.

The breakdown is ludicrous - 80 per cent goes towards the Championship, 12 per cent for League One and eight per cent for League Two.

How can that be right for teams like Stanley at the bottom? Okay, we are in different divisions, but we all play together in the Football League. It’s totally immoral.

In my opinion, it was done to keep the Championship clubs happy - to stop them breaking away and creating a second Premier League.

Championship clubs may say ‘We pay bigger wages and get bigger gates’. But they also get bigger sponsorship deals internally from local businesses.

The credit crunch is obviously getting worse, but the club is trying its best to survive.

The commercial manager is doing his best to find new sponsorship, but it’s a tough job. We’ve recently seen three commercial people leave because they’ve found it difficult attracting local businesses.

If you can't bring the money in, you must do one of two things. First, you must cut your cloth, or head to the last route and pack up.

Q: You’ve always said in the past that you would step aside if investors with good intentions were interested in buying out the club. Does that feel right now?

Absolutely. I want this club to run for years and years and years, well beyond the time that I’ve gone.

But I ask myself - why can’t we attract local businesses? Is it my doing because some people think they cannot get on with me?

I only wish the people of Accrington would give us some more support. I’m sure there are some businesses out there with a few quid that want to help their local football team.

Q: The club has been required to comply with Football League regulations by installing 800 new seats - taking the seating capacity to 2,000 - by May 1. How hard did that hit Accrington Stanley?

When we returned to the Football League three years ago, I totally agreed with the criteria of having 2,000 seats.

But unfortunately, since the credit crunch came in, there’s been no sympathy for clubs like us.

The Football League are adamant that we have to put 800 seats in.

It is costing us £100,000 to put these 800 seats in - but there’s no bums to sit on them.

If we were working in business, we’d be out, we’d be bankrupt. We’d be looking for new jobs. It is absolutely crazy.

We’ve come into the Football League on the back of our football ability - not on somebody bankrolling us for millions, like some Premier League and Championship clubs.

Unfortunately, the criteria that we agreed to has been taken away from us because of the credit crunch.

No bank will lend a football club money any more. They will lend me money, but not Accrington Stanley.

I sent the Football League a letter asking for dispensation for 12 months which they declined because they felt one or two other clubs that could get relegated from League Two are hoping that our facilities are not in place.

Q: Do you have any sympathy for Football League clubs - particularly in League Two - they have been punished with a points deduction for falling into adminstration?

I’m a great believer that a club should not lose points in a boardroom - they should only lose points on the football pitch.

The points-deduction penalty was originally designed to stop clubs from overspending, but it clearly hasn’t worked because certain clubs have gone into administration three times.

Having read Deloitte’s findings into football finances, I think 57 clubs have gone into adminstration since 1993 and most of them are still playing in the Football League.

In some cases, clubs have cleared their debts and started again and yet, a few years later, they have gone into administration again. That’s totally immoral.

There must be a better way of punishing these clubs. A bigger cap on their wage bill would be a start.

There is a salary cap in League Two, where clubs cannot spend more than 60 per cent of their turnover on wages, and that should perhaps be lowered for those who have entered admininstration.

In business, there’s no point paying £1,000 a week if there’s only £800 coming in. How can that work? But that’s what some of these clubs are doing.

I do feel some sympathy for clubs that are genuinely feeling the pinch and I don’t think they should be docked points. But I feel there will be many more clubs going into administration over the next few years.

Q: Is it heartbreaking to see attendances continue to tumble at Accrington Stanley after taking the club back into the Football League?

A: I’ve got to be a realist. I’ve been chairman for 14 years and it’s been an easy road to some degree because we’ve been a good footballing side and enjoyed a lot of success with promotions and silverware. Since John and Jimmy came here, we’ve gone from strength and strength.

Unfortunately, at the moment, we have hit a brick wall, certainly with the people of Accrington that we struggle to attract to the club.

Whether it’s because of the 43 years we spent in the wilderness, or it’s because they feel the football in League Two is rubbish, I don’t know.

People have said to me that Accrington may be better off relegated, because a winning team in the Blue Square Premier may attract bigger crowds.

But the point is that we are here in League Two and we want to move on. We’re still ambitious.

Nobody likes getting beat but, in my opinion, staying up in League Two is the equivalent of winning the Conference. It’s a fight for us, considering the budget we work on.

Q: What efforts are being made to further improve Accrington Stanley’s stadium and is the club any closer to having its own training ground?

We are working on the improving the stadium. We need a hospitality suite that overlooks the ground.

This will only come from funding. Obviously, nobody is going to come in and fund it 100 percent, but we’ve looked at part-funding. We would have to find 50 percent at this moment in time.

In terms of training, we are still nomads at the moment - which must be hard work for John, Jimmy and the players.

But, working with Hyndburn Council, we are looking at getting a training facility in Accrington. It is ongoing and, in about 18 months time, we will hopefully have our own training ground and facilities for youth team and junior games.

It’s no secret that I’ve been annoyed with the council in the past, but they’ve really bent their backs to help us this year, letting us use their facilties at King George’s Playing Fields.

The management team may say we have the worst training facilities in the Football League - but at least we’ve got somewhere.

The only bone of contention I have is that the football fields are not always looked after, but that is up to the council.