Wealthy owner's of non league clubs.

A growing trend it seems.

As Fleetwood were gaining yet another well earned promotion it was mentioned that their owner Andy Pilley had so far invested £10 million of his own money in the club.

When he took over there his first gate was 80,mostly made up of family and friend's of the player's,in effect the sort of gate Lye might expect next season in The Alliance.

The fact is that the population of Fleetwood is barely 27,000,that's less than half of the population of Stourbridge so it does show what can be achieved with the right ground and benevolent investment.

I remember us beating Burton Albion to the Division One North league title in 1974,once again they have done extremely well considering their population is around 35,000 according to the TV piece i listened to.

I did some checking on my hometown club Harrogate Town FC and see that their owner Irving Weaver is worth £46 million as well as being the father of the manager.

The guy who own's Forest Green is also seriously "minted",surely it's only a matter of time before they taste leave football.

We now have a raft of extremely wealthy owner's of our non league competitor's,maybe we have reached the point whereby we need to use some of the £160k banked from our recent cup exploit's to attract some quality signings.

By no means blow all the money but at least try something.

£160k doesn't go far when others are willing to pump in £10m. Far better to run a sustainable ship, and if you use any of your nest egg, put it into facilities (ones which produce an income stream rather than considerable maintenance costs) rather than wages. At least that way you outperform the vast majority of clubs who are in debt in the long run and don't end up stiffing creditors.

Remarkable progress has been made in the past decade or so without risking the future of the club (as I understand it), but we should always bear in the mind that in a pyramid system it's easier to go down than up, so gambling may well not be the best strategy. I realise you're not arguing for spending all of the cash, but once you go down the unsustainability road you have to take the difficult (Lerner style) decision to pull back at some point (assuming the gamble doesn't keep paying off). Then no one is happy whether it happens after £100k has been blown or when the club is up to its neck in debt.