TRYING TO CONVINCE THE DOUBTERS: Malcolm Curtis

ADAM SUMMERS puts Weymouth Football Club owner Malcolm Curtis under the spotlight and asks the questions Terras' fans want answered

You vowed when you first arrived at the club that you were not an asset stripper. Yet surely signing over the administration of the land surrounding the Wessex Stadium to your company Wessex Park Limited is exactly that. Why has this action been taken? And if it is for the good of the club, why did you not release your plans to shareholders and fans before going ahead with them, especially with the knowledge of how fearful people are for the club's future?

If I was an asset stripper I could have transferred it for a pound, that is stripping the asset out. We had independent valuations of the land so it has been bought at the true valuation of that land and let me tell you I worked very hard to make that valuation as high as possible for the benefit of WFC.

The only way to raise that money is to sell the asset and transfer the asset. No bank will lend any kind of money to a football club - they just don't do it.

Also if you look at the previous regimes, if it was so easy to do it under the umbrella of the football club don't you think they would have unlocked that value and done it?

When I came in I said the only way this club was going to survive was to unlock the asset value of the land that it sits on and that we would have to prospect to get that value out.

We have done the first bit of prospecting and got out half a million quid, which means we are here for the short term.

The next bit, that will happen on from that, is the deal that is on the table will ensure that when the asset that has then been transferred is hypothetically sold in the future the value of that will first and foremost be back to deliver a brand new stadium.

That stadium will be to a value of multi-million pounds and after that there will be some profit potentially for Wessex Park Limited, and after that both will share in that profit.

As for the shareholders, I own 84 per cent of it and if we go and sell a player I don't have to consult them. I don't have to consult them on this but what I would like to say to them is that last week their shares were worth nothing. Today they are still not worth anything but if we get into that nice new stadium and we have got a sustainable football club their shares are going to be worth some money. So any talk that I am not acting in the best interests of them is baloney.

Another thing I want everybody to fully understand is that I have taken every piece of advice. I have taken legal advice, accountancy advice, FA advice and I have taken it all to one of the top lawyers in the country to make sure that I have acted legally, morally and correctly. And I am very, very confident that I have done that in the best interests of WFC.

So why hasn't any previous owner of the club taken the same action in the past?.

Because I don't think they have been in property and understand how you can do this. I don't know why? Go and ask them. I am sure there were times when the receivers were knocking at the door in the past and I bet they would have loved to have put together a deal like this.

I cannot answer for previous shareholders but for me I need to unlock value out of WFC and I have done that.

Who, apart from yourself, has a financial stake in Wessex Park Limited? Does Gary Calder, Ramin Hidari or former chairman Martyn Harrison have any involvement?

Go and look at Companies House, go and look at the accounts, I am the 99 per cent shareholder of Wessex Park Limited.

The only other company that has done any other kind of investment into Wessex Park Limited is Project 20 Limited.

Those are the facts, they are there, they are in the public domain and that is what it is.

Has any person formerly involved with WFC retained any form of agreement over the freehold of the Wessex Stadium and the surrounding land, and thereby stand to benefit in anyway from its disposal?

There are no legal agreements with me or Wessex Park Limited for any previous owners to get any monetary benefit out of any of this happening.

There is also talk of this whole Martyn Harrison and Ian Ridley thing with this document, my lawyers have given due diligence and I have never seen it. I can only assume that it doesn't exist because I am sure if it did, someone would come out and wave it very, very high. I have never seen it.

After acquiring WFC you admitted that you did not have masses of cash to invest so what was the source of the £500,000 that has now been injected into the club?

A proportion of it is a loan from a bank but a fair proportion of it is from Wessex Park Limited. Let's be clear here that Wessex Park Limited and me have invested my reputation and money into delivering this so I have got as much to lose as WFC in terms of my credibility.

I am taking a risk here, I am taking a punt and I believe it is deliverable or trust me I wouldn't be doing it.

I am not going to go in to exact detail about what the bank's stake is into it and what my stake is but let's just say that the bank stake is a lot more conservative than it probably would be normally because of it being a football club.

And again let's be very clear, the only reason the bank would lend and support that is not just because of the asset base here but they are also taking guarantees and cross-collateralising the assets here with assets of mine from Wessex Park Limited and my other companies.

Banks look at two things: firstly, can you cover the interest and secondly what is the security like. Well, the security on the land is a little bit dodgy to say the least really, particularly when you have got a football club there. So assets security is elsewhere in Wessex Park Limited and that is the only reason why we have been able to raise the levels we have and I am prepared to put that money in.

I went on record at the beginning and said I am not a piggy bank and I am not just going to chuck money in. That is not the way I am going to do it and it is not very healthy to do that. We have to find a sustainable answer to the problem of WFC and difficult decisions have to happen and they will keep happening until such times when we are clear.

Doing nothing is not an option. We can lie back and say okay let's do nothing with the land and just sit here. But if we called the administrators now what would be the first thing they would do? They would put the asset base on the open market and, my word, watch out then. Watch out for the worst developers, which people make out I am, they will be knocking on the door with their dodgy deals and there won't be a football club here then.

I know that sounds ironic but that is the truth of the matter. You either do it with me now or we will be in a situation where you will be doing it with an administrator and a receiver in six months time.

Is it true all the companies that preside on the current Wessex Stadium site, including the likes of Eco Cars and Weymouth Wildcats Speedway, will now pay their rent directly to Wessex Park Limited instead of WFC?

That is correct it will go to Wessex Park Limited because it now owns the asset.

So won't that be income that the football club is losing towards running costs?

It is negligible income compared to the cash injection. You can't have your cake and eat it.

Another thing, people have obviously heard about this intention you had when you tried to purchase the club off Martyn Harrison about leasing the ground back to the football club. Can you explain that further?

Well let us wind the clock back and I do believe people's memories in Weymouth are incredibly short. Let us all remember the club was on the verge of going into receivership.

It had masses of debt and I came up with a solution that would have injected a million pounds, which would have cleared the £700,000 worth of debt and would have put around £300,000 into the club to let it go forward.

Was it a palatable deal? Probably not. Was it a bit uncomfortable? You bet your bottom dollar it was a bit uncomfortable but was that better than receivership, well I think so.

At the end of the day Martyn Harrison, for whatever reason, found it within his heart or found it within his piggy bank to put that money in and do it, and fair play to him. But had he not done that we would have probably been staring between receivership and that deal.

Not a nice deal. Would I liked to have administrated it? Do you think I need that grief? But if it meant the difference between WFC surviving as a business or not you bet your bottom dollar I would have done it.

So any worries of that occurring now are not required?

Well it doesn't need that does it? And that is why we have tried to unlock the value in a different way. You can't guarantee anything in life but there are certainly no intentions to do that at this stage.

Again, we are in a very precarious position. This club is losing £7,000 a week, which is a lot of money, and we have to make difficult decisions and we are making them everywhere, both on the pitch and off it.

People are not going to like me and I know that and accept that. And at the end of that process other people are going to come in and reap the benefits but you need a strong person at the helm who is bloodied minded and is just going to do it and that is what I am doing.

Is it also true that you have purchased the bungalow on the outskirts of the Wessex Stadium?

Yes, in fact it completed Friday afternoon at 5pm. I don't know what hold that has on it but I am a property developer and if I am going to solve the problem of WFC I need to solve some of the issues around the ground first.

When you look at the land, it is virtually land-locked and I am trying to do something about that which is what any good developer would do. I am opening up channels for it to go out and it makes sense for me to own that bungalow. I paid over the odds for it and it will probably benefit me a bit but predominantly it will benefit WFC as well.

You have continually mentioned the development of a new stadium. Have you moved any closer to finding a site for it? And is there a buyer lined up for the land that the current ground sits on like a large supermarket chain like ASDA or Tesco?

I am working my guts off here on this and people think I am just sat here waiting for the club to fail so I can just walk away and whatever but let us be absolutely honest again here.

If I wanted to do that I would not have had to inject £500,000. I could have just sat here, taken the asset base, waited for it to fail and then said thank you very much and off I go.

We are working incredibly hard with planning consultants, the highways agency, environmental advisors, we are talking to West Dorset Council and Weymouth Borough Council, and we are talking to other landowners in the borough.

We are trying to whittle that down to a feasible plan and we have come a long way and made big leaps in that. There is a wind of change in planning and there is a wind of change in Weymouth because of the 2012 Olympics and we are trying to ride that wave and be a part of that and we are doing that.

There are potentially three sites I suppose. One of them has gone a bit cold but two of them are still very active in where we go and how that works, and we are negotiating with landowners and planners to make sure of what is the best site for WFC.

But I want to be completely transparent about this. Before any development happens on the Wessex site, we will have to have in progress a new stadium for WFC that is up to Football League standard and is capable of providing a decent income stream over and above the normal matchday facilities.

In round terms, we are of the opinion that would deliver somewhere between £150,000 and £250,000 a year of additional income over and above what it is at the moment.

Also on the contract, let's just say hypothetically, if a contract said there was another £150,000 a year additional income over and above football, you are up to somewhere between £250,000 and £350,000 additional income. At that level WFC would be sustainable at its current level or above forever and a day going forward and that is all we are trying to do.

That is the Holy Grail. Staying here in this facility there is only one outcome and it is not a good one.

Everyone talks about this land being worth X amount and so on and so forth but that is like me sitting in my house and saying it is worth £50 million because underneath somewhere there is oil.

But unless you get that out somehow it is worth squat. It is just worth what its asset base is and at the moment this place is worth squat, it is a liability, absolutely nothing.

Yes, there is lots and lots of interest from all sorts of end users. But I am fed up with talking to them and I have stopped talking to them because until we get to the point where we can deliver a plan that makes WFC sustainable then we cannot open up.

Both things go hand in hand. We have to come out and go: here we go, brand new stadium and in return we are developing the land like this, to deliver this.' It's a marriage, they go together legally and contractually, and they will go together in planning.

Any thoughts that I can just knock this over and build hundreds of flats is just ridiculous because it is not going to happen. It can't happen legally because of the contract that I have got with WFC and the planners are not going to let it happen because they are going to want to see that WFC has got a new home to go into. That will be a condition of any plan.

You recently stated that if WFC suffers relegation this season there would no longer be a viable business at the club. Since you made that statement the club has slipped into the relegation zone with 15 games left to play, so please could you elaborate further on that concern and explain the full implications?

Let's be really clear we are struggling to maintain a business here. In fact we have not had a business here, it has been a hobby and an interest but we are now trying to run it as a business by putting a model and a structure in place and everything else.

If we are not in this league then let's be honest it is going to be very difficult to get all those roles in place because the income that drops out in a big loss-making business is not going to sustain that anyway.

Of course there will be a business in the case that Joe Public sees it as a business but what I am saying is it won't have a proper business model that you would see because it won't be turning over enough to do that.

It would be more like a community business or a business run by volunteers. It certainly won't have the levels of management structure we have got in place and what we will bring in if we stay up so there will be a business but not at the level we are trying to do in this league.

You sacked Jason Tindall after he had claimed two wins and a draw in his last seven games. You then replaced him with the current management team of John Hollins and Alan Lewer who have claimed just one win and a draw in their first seven games. How concerned are you with the club's current form and don't you think the financial implications of such a switch was a big gamble that at this moment is not paying off?

Football in itself is a gamble and all you can do is make sure the odds are stacked in your favour.

The whole Jason situation was incredibly disappointing. I wanted him to succeed, everyone wanted him to succeed and it would have made everyone's life easier had he succeeded with the squad he had but we had to make a very, very difficult decision.

We did that over a lot of sleepless nights and a lot of discussions at board level. And once we had made that decision to replace him we had to bring in the best people available to us in the marketplace and I am absolutely convinced that in John and Alan we have that.

The difficulties are that they are dealing with a squad they have not put in place and they are dealing with a regime and a level of doing things that has been put in place before they got here.

I think things are improving. There have been a lot of improvements made off the pitch but no one gives a damn about that they just want to see results on a Saturday and I can understand that. But I think anyone who is close to the club will see there are a lot of improvements around the squad and the way it conducts itself.

And I think we are beginning to see the signs that we are starting to turn the corner and I am sure we will get there. All we have got to hope is that they get there before the season runs out.

It is in our destiny and that is the main thing in our favour. Only we can lose it.

Please can you clarify who is on the club's board of directors at present? And what is your response to people who have said that you have surrounded yourself with yes men'?

I have come in here and as a board we have only been together for five minutes. We did not have a board and we had no structure so we bring certain people in as invited guests and we then go away and have a chat and come to a decision whether it is in the best interests of both parties for that person to get involved.

So it is difficult for me to come out and say this person is a director because we have only just got started on that really.

Anyone can go to Companies House and see whose on the board at the moment. There is me, my accountant Ian Winsor, Nigel Beckett from the supporters' club and Mark Golsby from the supporters' trust.

We also have Richard Bartlett, who used to be on the trust, helping us with financial matters on the board but he has not yet signed the papers to be a director. And another one is Karen Smith from Goadsby, who came to the last meeting but we are still talking with her to see if it is right for both parties.

We are a young organisation together and we are learning and feeling our way through, and maybe we could have communicated some things better but this is such an introvert club. I mean if we change the colour of the wallpaper in the toilets people want to know about it and be consulted before we have done it.

We have been totally open, honest and transparent. I have brought the supporters' club in and the trust in and I particularly feel very, very sorry for Mark Golsby because your damned if you do and damned if you don't.

I want it to be clear that Mark comes in and fights tooth and nail for the supporters in every way and if he thinks something is wrong, he says it is wrong in no uncertain terms.

We have a friendly banter but he is always sticking up for the fans. He did not want to change the club crest, he stood there and said this is madness and we don't want to do it and he has always voted to keep the existing one but then people say he is not doing that.

To be honest I don't know how much more open the board can be. I mean we have a board of five and one is from the supporters' club, one is from the trust and one is an ex-trust financial person. And they all have remits to go back and report really.

I think people should look at how they engage with those two organisations. Do they go to their meetings and get involved in them? Do they ask them for the information because it is all there to see?

Apart from inviting all the supporters to board meetings I don't know how more transparent and open we can be and we certainly aren't going to do that.

What do you think of the unofficial forum?

Everything we do goes on the club website but it then gets linked back to the forum because everyone seems to look at that quicker.

We do go on there and announce things when fixtures have been changed or matches have been cancelled but it is a very difficult thing because it just beats up me and everyone at Weymouth Football Club and we do not have a right to defend ourselves really.

I mean how many sponsors are looking at that now thinking forget that we are not getting involved next year? And how many fans are looking at it and thinking we can't be bothered to come along and listen to all that rubbish?

Myself, and other individuals here find it very difficult to defend ourselves really, and I find that sad, very, very sad. But is the forum an enemy you embrace or do you treat it as an enemy and let it do its own thing? I don't know the answer but you are damned if you engage it and damned if you don't.

Main sponsor Dave Higson has said his company is likely to withdraw its support at the end of the season and there are rumours that other local companies could follow. How true is this and how concerning is it?

I spoke to Dave a little bit and we will be speaking again, I mean Dave has got to do what he has got to do really.

My understanding is that he is not removing the shirt sponsorship because of events that are going on at the moment. Instead the whole sponsorship is up for review because potentially his company could be soon sold and other reasons above and beyond what is happening here.

He has got concerns and I have tried to discuss them but really it is very hard for me to speak about one company and perhaps you should talk more with him to see what his view is.

I will say on record that I was disappointed to read that story in the Echo because we did take a bit of a blow on that. It is always upsetting when a partner is upset with something you are doing that you feel is in the best interests of WFC but hands up maybe we should have engaged Dave and our main sponsors more.

However, we are working extremely hard here, we are putting in 15 hours a day, seven days a week and things are changing so quickly that we are going to make mistakes and we are making mistakes but there has been a lot of changes.

You said earlier the club is losing £7,000 a week. How much longer can this go on for?

Not long, not long. It is a very difficult situation here and you cannot just divide the cash injection by £7,000 a week. There is the tax debt, which I have shown you, and long-term liabilities that need to be solved.

But it is difficult to cut those losses much more this season because there are already things that the club committed itself to before my time and you must see them out.

Going into next season we can then look at reducing those losses by bringing new things in but I would say, is that all the bickering, the back-stabbing and the rubbish that goes on off the pitch is killing us. It kills WFC, it stops families coming, it stops new sponsors coming and it stops extra people coming through the gate.

Without all that then we are going to struggle next season. I mean we have great plans for next year but unless people get on board and start going forward together with the new motto then we are dead in the water and that would be a real shame.

But we have got to stay focused and keep working hard to get those losses down. However, I don't think we will ever get to a point where we will break even inside the Wessex Stadium as it is today, not while maintaining Blue Square Premier football anyway. The differential between the income and the cost of being here is just too much.

Supposedly around £100,000 is raised through the youth section. Is that money being pumped straight back into the youth section or is it going to the parent club?

If you look at the management accounts the youth section is yet to break even. There is some debate around that and I have engaged the youth section and we have had quite a good meeting as to whether it is or whether it isn't profitable.

I think the realities are, and this is a personal opinion as chairman because the youth section has to speak for itself really, that all the time it is under the umbrella of WFC there is always going to be some ambiguity as to where those funds go.

All I can say at this moment, hand on heart, that at best it is going to break even or maybe provide a very small return but you have only got to look at the costs of the kit, the trainers and the pitches and everything else it is difficult.

What we are investigating is a business model where the youth section goes across into its own separate legal identity. What that will be I don't know and then all of its income, with money going in and money coming out, will be very transparent with it having its own committee and agenda under the umbrella of WFC and I think that is the way forward really.

I think then can attract its own main sponsor and do its own thing really. I dare say it but Yeovil Town has a great model, which they are just doing now where they have got Westland on board to sponsor them for three years and it is a separate legal entity, and that is something we are looking to copy in some way.

But again it has to be led by the youth section so I do not want to steal any of their thunder and they might not have mentioned this to any of their members so I might be in trouble now but there we are.

Do you think sometimes the club maybe too open?

That is a very good question. I came in with an agenda to be totally open and honest, and people said to me you are a fool just keep your head down and do what you have got to do. And you look at other chairmen at other clubs and that is exactly what they do and my word do I understand why they do that now.

Let me tell you, in the last week I certainly know how it feels now to be prejudiced against. Just because I am a property developer it appears I can do no right.

I have to look myself in the mirror and ask myself whether I am doing the right thing and I am very confident that I am. But sometimes wouldn't it be easier to say let's not engage anyone and just go ahead and be bloody-minded but that is just not my style.

I came here with a remit to be open and honest, and if you put your head above the parapet you are always going to take blows to the face and that is what I have done I suppose.

Finally Malcolm is there anything you want to add going forward?

Well I would like to say I am not an asset stripper and as I said when I first came here the only way to solve the problem with WFC is within its asset spate of its land.

We have started to do that, we have got some value out of that for WFC and we will go forward. And let us just be absolutely clear of the events that will go forward in the future. There will be a legal agreement that will be signed by Wessex Park Limited that will say you have to supply this stadium to this level at this cost. After that Wessex Park Limited gets some profit and after that both share in that profit.

That will be there legally in black and white and that will stay there for a long time to come and nothing else will be able to happen around disposing of it, selling it or building on it without that happening.

The last thing I would like to say is that in the long term we have got to work out as a football club how we go forward together. As it has become very, very clear to me that whoever is at the helm on their own is going to be prejudiced against, whether it is Martyn Harrison, Ian Ridley or Malcolm Curtis.

There is always going to be those who support them and those who are suspicious and don't support them so we have got to work out a way where we have a legal entity and organisation where everyone is represented and feels they are in it together.

I have woken up to that over the past couple of weeks and I will now be working out a way we can do that and encompass everybody. Because if we carry on the way we are going with all the bickering then we might as well close down tomorrow as we are not going to go anywhere and that really saddens me when everyone is working hard here in the best interests of WFC.

We have a great club, a great community and we should be sustainable in the Football League, and the only people who have got themselves to blame for why it has not happened is the doom and gloomers and the glass half empty brigade.

Get on board, come on in and help us, pick up your phone if you have got a concern and get behind us. Support the supporters' club, support the trust and support the club because if everyone does that we will succeed. But just keep knocking us then you will get what you wish for and that won't be very nice and will be incredibly disappointing.

9:06am Tuesday 4th March 2008

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