Charliechurch

Depends entirely on whether Haughey continues to throw money at the QP project or decides to scale things back completely. If QP had to survive as a professional club with their miniscule fan base they'd be heading for return to places like Coatbridge and Berwick. Arbroath are an established semi professional club with a decent sized support who are in no danger of dropping like a stone if one man decided to walk away.

Beuker was part of the football staff, so his wages can't be separated from the wider football budget. The total player and associated staff costs are running at Gretna levels considering QP have a fan base of about 400 supporters. If QP were operating within their means, their total football budget would be at Stenhousemuir levels. I wouldn't be surprised if Haughey is now funding a wage bill in excess of the likes of Motherwell and Livingston.

The player wage budget can be reasonably worked out by looking at the latest audited QP accounts on the Companies House website. Total staff wages were circa £1.4m up until December 2021 when the club were in League 1. QP haven't filed their audited accounts for over 2 years now, but I wouldn't be surprised if the wage bill has increased to over £2m a year with annual losses ballooning to a roughly similar figure. Of course, some of the club's employees will be non football staff but the bulk of those staff costs will be players and coaches.

I remember back in August when Veldman 'won' the dubious 'SPFL Manager of the Month' award and posed for a photo with a backroom staff of at least 10 people. I presume all of them are on the payroll and it didn't include Dempster or the pre match commercial fella who used to be at Falkirk. For a wee club with 400 supporters and revenue streams that would ordinarily struggle to fund a competitive League 2 side, that's quite an ensemble Haughey is funding.

This was all very predictable the moment the Dutch shyster was brought in and 'The Philosophy' met the agricultural realities of the Scottish Championship. The reality is QP are a wee club with about 400 supporters run by a golf club commitee who should be playing out of Lesser. Haughey would be well advised to cut the club's bloated first team budget back and focus most of his generous funding on the club's youth development system. If the original concern of the QP blazers was relegation to the LL, there's no way that's going to happen with 'Lord Wullie' stumping up a decent part time budget.

I'd be amazed if you play any league games there at all as long as Haughey is bankrolling things.

Whoever takes the QP poisoned chalice will have to work with that pseudo science spouting Dutch 'guru' Haughey has installed as technical director. Coyle jumped at the first chance rather than work on with Beuker and the word will have got around pretty quickly about him. QP is obviously a vanity project for his Lordship, but Scottish Football is pretty basic in these sense that, if you want to focus on youth development and get into the top flight, you need to do what McDonald did with Hamilton Accies. That means sticking with a manager, not chopping and changing evertime the technical 'guru' in the back office gets the hump. Putting Beuker in charge so that he can crash and burn as a manager may the best outcome. If he's got anything about him, as opposed to 'motivational speeches' and 'expert presentations', he'll want to become a manager. The technical director model has never worked well in Scottish football.

They're getting it for free. Haughey is bankrolling it. Gretna mark II.

Arguably the biggest budget? Haughey is paying 50% of Connell's reported £5k a week wages alone. QP's wage bill must be similar to Motherwell's or St Mirren's.

Haughey will have brought in Connell. He's apparently on £5K a week at Celtic and QP are paying 25% of that. I don't think your benefactor will be putting up with Ellis for much longer given the huge outlay he's made on the full time playing squad, loanees, training ground and full backroom staff.

Depleted squad? You have two regular starters from last season out with long term injuries. Haughey has brought in three loanees from clubs that will be compensated to the tune £1000+ a week for these players. You have no excuses against part time opposition.

Yeah right. Haughey must be dropping at least £4000 a week on these additions. Ellis has no excuses and I suspect Haughey will give him the benefit of the doubt until January. If he has to rifle through his spare change again, he'll be signing up an experienced manager.

He's pumping in huge sums and that gives him plenty of control. I doubt QP could afford Leanne Dempster's annual wage on their paltry turnover, let alone a full time squad earning the equivalent of lower premiership wages and six full time backroom staff. If he pulls his money for whatever reason, QP will be in big trouble.

Gretna revisited.

Haughey isn't paying a rumoured £800 to £1000 per week to various journeymen and shelling out for a full time backroom staff to finish fourth in this division.