Oxford United's Chairman Sumrith 'Tiger' Thanakarnjanasuth wrote the following notes for the Easter Monday programme for the visit of Accrington Stanley:
Good afternoon everybody. I can’t believe we reached Easter already, but I hope you have had a good weekend and we can finish it on a high for you with a win today.
I think the season has flown past because the team played so many games; between New Year and today there has only been one blank midweek and even then the week ended with a game on Friday and then today. For the players to keep playing through that period and to still be in the chase for the play-offs is a wonderful effort and I thought they showed remarkable energy against Lincoln.
That was a big game for us. The TV cameras meant that a lot of fans in our division would have been watching the game on a Friday night and I think they will sit up and take notice because we played so well. When you have tired legs, the last thing you need to is to concede an early goal but after that the team got new energy and belief from somewhere and I thought deserved to win the game. I enjoyed watching it and I hope we played as well at Sunderland on Friday.
We now have just eight games to go and we are still in a good place. I like the idea of being the ones doing the chasing instead of the ones looking over their shoulders. It is going to be so exciting, and I have complete faith in Karl, the staff and the players that they can get the job done.
Off the field, we were pleased to announce the accounts for the last financial year, and I am delighted that we could announce a profit. In one year we went from a loss of over £4 million to a profit of £1.5 million. That figure would have been even better, but the Covid pandemic probably cost us £500,000 last season and will continue to dominate the figures for the current year.
The figure was helped by the sale of three players and some excellent cup runs but even so, during that period we paid off a lot of historic debt and we invested a lot of money in the new training ground so the club now has an asset of its own. Money was put back into an increased playing budget and I want to thank everyone behind the scenes who has worked so hard to reduce administration costs and make sure that we are running efficiently and cost-effectively.
We still have things we need to do and we still have improvements we can make, but it is an exciting time for this football club. We have always said that we want to make this club sustainable and those numbers from last year show that we are on the right path.
Tiger
You can read the full programme online at www.matchdayfix.com/oufc