Griffin Reveals Plans
Tuesday, 22nd Jan 2002 00:00

EXCLUSIVE: Griffin Reveals His Plans For Swansea

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Now it seems that you have gained control of the Football Club, what are your immediate plans for it?

The short term answer is that we need to substantiate why the club is losing £750,000 per annum. The club is not alone in this dilemma, most second and third division clubs are losing between £600,000 and £1,500,000 per annum.

The fans choice to take over was clearly Mel Nurse and his consortium - is there room in your takeover for them?

Mel Nurse is certainly one of our priorities. We would rather have him as part of our consortium than pressing ahead now with pointless litigation.

And you see the club moving onto bigger and better things?

Cancer can not be cured in a month, but it can be cured by medicine and positive thought and time. We feel that Swansea is a cancer patient and dying slowly and all the medicine has not worked. You know the recent history better than I do.

But you are confident that you can turn the situation around to a positive?

All I can guarantee you is that our investors would never have permitted Jim Moore to start negotiations in November if they were not confident that as a group we could not turn this situation around.

So you first entered into talks with the club in November?

Jim Moore was approached then by Mike Lewis and Tony Petty. They had read of our success with Hull City in February last year and they wanted to see if our investor group could assist in keeping the club alive. I was personally asked for advice by our consortium in late November.

And your advice to them?

At the time I said that unless we could have an irrevocable deal with the Local authority that we could acquire the Vetch it would be very hard to convince our investors to throw good money after bad to support a dying patient i.e. The Swans.

How much would you say that the club needs to survive?

The club needs £1 million to keep it going. Is there any body out there willing to put up that risk capital in the next 7 days. We will meet them at short notice after concluding the consortium's deal with Tony Petty.

The club also has a few supporters groups - will you be looking to meet with them as well?

Yes. We are willing to meet with all the supporters groups as we did at Hull City.

Why Swansea City?

It is our intention to raise £100 million and become the leading force in the country in supporting ailing clubs that are sinking fast. We will keep them afloat and give them a life raft to keep them alive until they can support themselves. We will then effectively become their landlords and move onto the next patient. If the fans feel we are being unreasonable in anyway we are more than happy to retire from this situation and pass it on to any consortium who can prove they have the interest of the club at heart and the funds.

JackArmy.net comment: Yet again Mr Griffin is providing the answers that the fans want to hear regards the future of the club. It is hard to say at present whether they are more than just words but why shouldn't they be? A good indicator for me on whether they are more than words will come after Mr Griffin has met with Mel Nurse and his consortium. No-one can ever doubt that Mel Nurse has the best of the club at heart and if they decide that they want to invest with the Griffin consortium then you have to say that Mr Griffin's intentions are honourable. Only time will tell on this. Of course, on the other hand, if Mel Nurse and his people don't invest then questions have to be asked as to why.

The deal is a done deal and it is happening, what we do not know at the moment is whether it is with the best of Swansea City at heart. I would certainly like to hope so.

There are a couple of questions where we are waiting for the answers - these will be published at a later date. These include a reference to the council statement and what if no-one comes forward with the said investment.