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The latest set of Dundee United accounts for the year to June 2007 showed that turnover was down for the second year running, but so was the club's operating loss which was £509,000 compared to £761,000 in 2006 and £2.67m in 2003. The net loss was up from £785,000 to £989,000 but the wages bill for playing staff over the year dropped by £379,000. It represented just 40 per cent of turnover compared to a figure near 80 per cent four years earlier. The total wage bill of just under £2.6m accounted for 64 per cent of turnover. In 2003 expenditure in the same area amounted to £3.3m. The club hopes to break even for the year ending June 2008. If it does it will be the first time it has done this since the mid 1990s, illustrating the challenges facing Scottish football clubs outside the 'old firm' duopoly. The club owes £6m on a long term loan and an overdraft facility of a further £1m is available until the end of September.
The club has been 90 per cent owned by Eddie Thompson for over five years, but for most of that period he has been battling against cancer. With his health deteriorating, he is involving other family members in the running of the club. Daughter Justine has been brought on the board and looks likely to become the first female chair of a Scottish club with son Stephen becoming chief executive. Not only is Dundee a (relatively small) two club city, but the grounds of the two clubs overlap on opposite sides of the same road. In visits to stadiums around the world, I have never seen anything comparable. The existence of two clubs in the city was in part due to religious rivalries, but these have long since disappeared.
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