Incredible £5.7m Queen's Park spend as challenges laid bare

The National

26-05-2025

The Glasgow club have been fighting at the wrong end of the second tier, just missing out on relegation to League One by finishing eighth and helped by Hamilton Accies' 15 point deduction. Otherwise, the Spiders would have been contesting the relegation play-offs.
Queen's Park sacked Callum Davidson after their historic Scottish Cup win over Rangers was followed by some poor league form. Steven MacLean saw them through to the end of the season but the reins have now been handed to his assistant Sean Crighton.
Further changes will be made at the club as major funder Willie Haughey, and his company City Facilities Management Holdings Ltd, are withdrawing their financial backing from next year.
That means cuts will have to be made and club president Graeme Shields revealed the extent of that - current expenditure of £5.7m needing to drop to around £1m.
He told Queen's Park's YouTube channel: "So obviously we got notification that City are withdrawing their sponsorship from the end of June 2026.
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"Currently, the club's expenditure for thus year to be £5.7m. Once City's sponsorship ends we know we have to get that down to close to £1m, so we basically have to find £4.7m worth of savings between now and June 2026.
"It's a massive challenge and it's something we have looked at and set up a change team to look at the change and all income and expenditure at the club. And to come up with ways we can actually find £4.7m worth of savings.
"So far, we've identified about £2.3m worth of savings so we're about half way there but it's the next bit that's going to be the hardest.
"The academy has gone and that was costing the club, for the elite status, about £1.1m a season. That has gone, although we've been able to retain the under-19s and 17s so we can protect the assets we've got in there and hopefully future training compensation for the club.
"But it is an enormous task because you're dealing with people's lives which isn't a pleasant thing to go through."
Asked for more information on the club's academy shutting down, he added: "For the academy we did have a number of interested parties come forward with potential investments.
"Unfortunately none of them came to frution. Mainly for the scale of the investment because also because most of the interested parties were looking for some kind of equity in the club, which we can't do as a members club.
"We need to change the whole model and ownership of the club to accommodate that, which is something we can't do at the moment. We might have to seriously consider that in the future."