Raj Singh's time at HUFC - A Success or Failure?

1.                  1.    A Recap

Raj Singh bought HUFC in April 2018 around 10 years after his ownership with our rivals Darlington FC ended badly and to significant criticism from Darlington FC fans to Raj Singh himself.

 

“I’ve learnt the harsh lessons from my time at Darlington” Singh said.

“I got thrown in at the deep end without really having anything around me at the club and I was new to football at the time as well so really not having the contacts to get the right people in place.”

Have the harsh lessons been learned from? Let’s explore.

2.       Investment & Financial Situation

Raj Singh’s investment in Hartlepool United FC is documented in the club’s accounts (cumulative / total figures):

Jul 2018 - £848,435

Jul 2019 - £1,525,000

Jul 2020 - £2,225,000

Jul 2021 - £2,175,000

After Jul 2021 - £1,175,000 (information available from Clarence 18 Ltd, parent company of HUFC).

 

Clearly when Raj Singh bought HUFC the club was making a significant loss, this continued up until Jul 21 – a review of Prestige Group Investments Limited demonstrates Football related revenue of

Jul 2020 - £1,346,811

Jul 2021 - £1,064,671 (the season worst impacted by Covid)

Our total wage bill (including NI & pension contributions):

Jul 2020 - £1,493,365

Jul 2021 - £1,506,318 (the season worst impacted by Covid)

*The wage bill does include 5 employees of P&R Construction, a company that is part of the groups accounts.

 

Demonstrating the lack of club’s previous sustainability through its own revenue generation.  We can’t afford to pay our staff, never mind other expenses like rent, energy bills or policing with the revenue we generated in the National League.  we have relied on Raj Singh to keep the club afloat.

 This sadly led to the reducing of the staff at the club to a bare minimum (143 staff reduced to 49) from Jul 2020 to Jul 2021 to maximise the on field playing budget.

An excellent appointment of Dave Challinor, hard work and some good fortune in the playoffs enabled HUFC promotion in the 2020/2021 season. 

This signals a clear turn in financial fortunes for the club, Raj Singh was able to reduce his investment in the club by £1,050,000 since July 2021 – taking that amount of money back out of the club.

Raj Singh was also able to invest heavily in Victoria Park, which was discussed at the fan’s forum on 13/10/2022 where I was able to ask Jonathan Rook, the Finance Director specifics.  The total investment in the ground including a full relay of the pitch (not done for the past 8 years), 1,600 new seats including rail seating installed at the Mill House stand and a new EPOS (electronic point of sale) system was hundreds of thousands of pounds.  When pressed on the cost of individual aspects of the investment, Jonathan Rook confirmed that the new pitch alone was approaching £100,000 but probably reached that value including the cost of Fertilizer – my own estimate is that the investment was between £300,000 and £400,000 (when quizzed if it was as much £500,000 Jonathan Rook did not return a response, perhaps as he didn’t expect the question).

Raj Singh himself confirmed when I questioned him on the increase of the budget from 2021/2022 season to 2022/2023 as being a 35% increase, the exact value of budget wasn’t shared – although I didn’t ask!

To do some rough calculation, given we had predominantly National League players for the majority of the 2021/2022 I would assume the playing budget for 20 players at an average of £900 per week (some higher and some lower weekly wages) gives a total playing budget of £936,000 – a 35% increase for 2022/2023 gives us a total playing budget of £1,263,600 – an increase of £327,600.

*These figures don’t include National insurance & Pension contributions which for HUFC are generally around 10% of wage/salary.

Raj Singh mentioned that the penny-pinching accusations from fans hurt him and understandably so, additional revenue generated by the club is invested back into the club, either in the council owned stadium or in the playing budget.

The vision is for the club to be totally sustainable by 2025, as we cannot rely on exceptional cup runs or compensation for quality managers – which to me is indicative of the minimum term Raj Singh needs to hold as owner and chairman of HUFC to ensure his ownership will be remembered as a success.

3.       Operational Improvements and Issues

The club has been on a huge business turnaround journey, from having to get rid of most staff at the club, to recruiting them back in now we have returned to the EFL.  This has been incredibly frustrating for the fans as we have had to endure issues with purchasing tickets, queueing to get into the ground, getting served in the ground, lack of physiotherapy, issues with recruitment of players, training camps to Portugal without a meaningful playing squad, significant delays to ground improvements meaning fans are physically without seats, issues in the town end including a broken tannoy system that remains unresolved, lack of merchandise including replica shirts but most importantly (accordingly to Dave Challinor) the lack of a club chef!

On the one hand there has been huge change at the club, a transformation off the field to cope with returning to the EFL so I don’t want to be too hard on the people responsible for the above issues, however there is a clear approach from Raj Singh to bring in the right type of people that often, do not have the right experience – let us take at some examples:

Graeme Lee – previous manager of U23s, no first team manager experience.

Paul Hartley – previous manager of Scottish clubs, no English Football League experience.

Stephen Hobin (Chief Operations Officer) – plenty of Operational & Commercial experience, but his first role as a COO.

Rose Stoker (Head of Operations) – plenty of Sales and Commercial experience but limited or no Operational experience.

Lee Rust (Senior Advisor and Consultant) – plenty of Commercial and Operational experience at Rugby clubs but limited or no experience at an English Football League club.

Approx 80% of our playing squad – players without EFL experience (either Non-league, or Scottish league)

In every instance rather than bring in someone who has relevant level of experience and is tried and tested, Raj Singh has appointed key roles at the club based on a perception that they are the right fit.  This would generally cost less to the club but must be a contributing factor to the issues the clubs faces.

Had Raj Singh been clear and open on his Strategy of recruiting people who may lack experience due to the limited financial position of the club – fans may have been more accommodating, but that communication has been lacking.

Time will tell as to whether this team can turn around and address these topics as it is something that builds frustration, leads to criticism (sometimes personal) and causes a divide between the club and its fanbase – it is critical this is resolved for the club to be successful going forward.

 

4.       Raj Singh’s motivation

Further questions asked at the fan’s forum included whether Raj Singh enjoyed being Chairman to which he responded that he is the same as any fan, when we do well, he enjoys it but not so much as when we lose.

Raj Singh attends games home and away, at our first away win at Bradford last season my brother-in-law, myself and others drove past Raj Singh, Stephen Hobin and Rose Stoker who were on the way to the game.

It is clear from his interviews & programme notes that he is a local football fan with a love for the game, ever since his involvement with Darlington FC he has wanted to be a successful Chairman and owner of a local football club.  A club in which he can connect with the fans and club he can follow and share the joys and pain with the supporters – the picture he has with the National League trophy is likely to be significant on a personal level.

5.       EFL survival

During the fans forum the topic of Paul Hartley was raised, to which Raj Singh (again) admitted that it was his mistake.  A fan asked Keith Curle if he applied for the role originally, to which he responded ‘he thought he applied’ which was meant as a tongue in cheek remark that he didn’t get the job at the start of the season. 

To cut to the chase, Raj Singh explained that he knows it will now cost more money, on top of the 35% increased budget to ensure we maintain our league status.  He announced Theo Robinson and further EFL standard players (assuming past mistakes are learnt from) are likely to follow before the close of the January transfer window (I appreciate we are restricted to limited free transfer before the windows opens, which is going to be a problem for Curle).

Raj Singh clearly cares too much about the club and his reputation to allow us to go down, even at this stage where all appears lost, I am confident Raj Singh will do what is required to ensure Keith Curle has the tools to stay up.

 

6.       The future

Raj Singh indicated at the fans forum that he planned to be at HUFC for 3 years, he is now past 4 years and based upon how things go, could remain at the club for another 10 minutes or 10 years.

I believe Raj Singh enjoys the opportunity of interacting and networking with other EFL chairman, enjoying the status of being titled Mr Chairman by his colleagues at the club whilst striving to ensure the club becomes financially sustainable. 

There is no indication that he wants to sell, and I don’t see why he should, he has had some success, but the job is not finished.

The suspicion of a quick profit from the club must surely be gone from fans minds, buying the ground from the council, and turning it into housing – he has been here 4 years and has now invested hundreds of thousands in the ground.  The redevelopment of the Mill House stand is telling; he is evidently not confident in the ‘Mill House Masterplan’ (or whatever form it may take nowadays) that is being worked on with the council will happen anytime soon.  Lee Rust stated that they hope to have a proposal for late next year.

It is not clear how much Raj Singh wants for the club, once he does achieve his own determination of success – or if by his own words, he has had enough.  Does he simply want his investment back, or does he want to be compensated for his time and effort? Will he feel that the club as a going concern is now worth more than when he first became owner? This is a key question that may depend upon the circumstance of his eventual exit.

I personally hope any potential exit is a long way away as I trust Raj Singh to back Keith Curle to sign sufficient quality to keep us up and build some momentum into next season – then a plan to hand over to fan ownership must surely be the desired outcome.

Can Raj Singh become King Raj – the owner who saved us, returned us to league football, ensured financial stability before handing the club over to a fan ownership model? In my opinion that must surely be the epitome of success?

 

Perhaps a question that can be asked at the next fans forum in Spring 2023.

Blog by a regular Pools fan - Benjy Meggs.