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The financial challenges that face a Championship club with Premiership aspirations are illustrated by the fact that Watford has lost £21.7m over the last six years. This includes the £8m profit they made in the Premiership last year. During the period £21.6m has had to be pumped into the club to cover the losses. Responding to local criticism, chairman George Simpson has for the first time revealed the extent of his financial commitment to the Hornets. He has invested in shares to a total of £4.3m and has loaned the club a further £2m, making a paper loss to date of £2.7m. He insists that the ambition remains to make the Hornets a top ten Premiership club, but that has to be squared with the admission 'that in the five years of my tenure as Chairman we have operated for four of them on a turnover that is insufficient to sustain the Club in the upper reaches of the Championship let alone the Premiership.' Buying back the Vicarage Road ground pushed net debt to a peak of £8.5m.
When Simpson took over the club was in dire straits. The stadium had been sold and leased back in July 2002. When he stepped up from being a director to chairman in September 2002, the club had told the Stock Exchange the day before that they needed to raise at least £9.5m to avoid going into administration. The majority of players and the more highly paid members of staff accepted a 12 per cent deferral of their wages. After reaching a settlement with former manager Gianluca Vialli in July 2003, a further £5.25m had to be raised in March 2004 to keep the club solvent. A corner was turned in 2004 with the operating loss kept down to £2.5m. Promotion to the Premiership boosted turnover from £8.5m to £29.9m in one season and saw an operating profit before player trading of £3.1m. However, as Simpson admits, 'the last five years has been a bumpy ride.'
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