Managing director Simon Corney has warned that the club's owners will be unable to maintain their current level of financial support for the club during the current credit squeeze. Athletic are in a fine financial state although it is understood that Athletic's owners may have to bail them out by as much as £700,000 for the remainer of the season. Income has been hit with the loss of a lucrative cup run and the lack of sales in the transfer window.Mr Corney warned, "We are in a bit of a quandary at the moment as we won't be able to support the club from our own pockets anything like we have done this year. It is a fact of life and we are already looking at cost-cutting measures as these are hard times. There is no way we can maintain the kind of levels of spending that we have been sustaining for the last couple of years. We will have to make changes. We could put up season-ticket prices - we have frozen them for the last three years which no other club has done - or cut the playing budget. We haven't got that far yet."
"We are a well-run club and we are lucky. There could not be a club further from going into administration than we are. We are able to run it in a sensible manner and, yes, we have one or two assets which, if we needed to sell, could ensure the club survives for another year or two. We don't want to do that. We want to keep balancing the books, but there are other clubs which are in really big trouble and I cannot believe there won't be others which won't go into administration. We are competitive and on a reasonable budget. It is not the fourth or fifth lowest, as has been mentioned. It started off at a lower level, but since then we have paid off certain players and brought in others which has increased it substantially. It is a healthy budget and one which is in the top ten in our division."
"We feel we have a better chance of getting into the play-offs with Lee Hughes in our team. The £400,000 would have been nice, but what we were offered [from Doncaster] was unacceptable. We were not keen to sell Chris Taylor as he is a top lad. We all love him here and we didn't want him to go."