Partick Thistle: Rangers Scottish Cup tie and fan investment needed to pay wages

Partick players at Ross CountySNS

With 20 minutes left of the Premiership play-off final second leg at Ross County, Partick were 3-0 up on aggregate but eventually lost on penalties

Partick Thistle have revealed they would not have been able to pay wages on two occasions this year were it not for drawing Rangers in the Scottish Cup and a cash injection from a fan.

The game at Ibrox enabled the Scottish Championship club to meet February's demands, while May's payments were only delivered after a supporter donation.

Despite the £300,000 earned from the cup tie, Thistle's loss is expected to be about £280,000 after a season in which they lost to Ross County in the Premiership play-off final.

Former Glasgow Rocks owner Duncan Smillie took over as chairman midway through last season after chair Jacqui Low and six directors resigned following fan protests in the wake of Partick Thistle FC Trust becoming a majority shareholder.

Low, lan Caldwell, Alan Rough, Andrew Byron, Douglas Noble, John Penman and Michael Robertson all departed, with Smillie the only director not to resign.

The new board detailed the club's volatile financial position in a statement on their website and identified three reasons for the issues last season.

The expected loss of £280,000 is the result of anticipated investment into the club not materialising, the previous board committing to a large player budget in order to try to secure promotion and the original budget having errors that result in higher costs than expected.

Fan ownership group The Jags Foundation was given access by Partick to the club's accounts and released its own statement, suggesting Thistle face similar problems in the new campaign.

Their statement said: "We did not have any margin of safety coming into this season due to the profligacy and losses of the recent past - so we had to get lucky with unbudgeted, unforeseen income or find investment, or both. This systemic budget deficit now gives us problems for the coming season too.

"Whilst we were right in warning about the erosion of working capital and the threat of that margin of safety being removed, even we were shocked when we learned the true extent of how bad the financial position inherited by the interim board turned out to be."

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