Nick on what is happening at the Mem
I would like to thank you all for your patience as we continue to work towards restructuring the club, and getting everything ready for next season. I hope you can appreciate that it is not a straightforward process, and we all strive to do the best we can for this football club.
We are working closely with Darrell Clarke and we have drawn up a recruitment budget for next year, which should be very competitive for the Conference.
Darrell knows exactly the sort of players he wants to bring in to the club, and we hope to announce the first new signing before the end of the week.
We are also hopeful that we will be able to add another name to that before the end of next week as Darrell begins to shape his squad for next season.
We have now established the costs of dropping in to the Conference, and we are producing a budget to move forward next season.
Unfortunately this involves changes and redundancies at the club, but some of these were inevitable anyway following the departure of the rugby club from the Memorial Stadium.
Our aim is to bounce straight back into the league next season, and we believe we are going to have a budget in place to do that. The money received from the sale of Rickie Lambert to Liverpool has obviously come as a timely boost and will help us to move forward.
I know you are all desperate to hear news on the stadium redevelopment project, and I hope to be able to give you a more detailed report in the next couple of weeks.
However, for now I can tell you that we are in the process of submitting the pre-commencement planning conditions to South Gloucestershire Council to clear the way for work to begin on the site. We are also working on the outstanding items with UWE.
We are currently looking to finalise a couple of dates for the diary, including the Fans Forum and the annual Open Day. These will both be held in July and we will announce firm dates shortly.