Ok so 2 disclaimers -

1 - I have limited business/financial background. Basics of running a small business I get but I used consultants for the hard bits!

2 - I’m doomed right up at the moment which may be affecting my thought process

I keep reading our accounts and there is one thing niggling at me constantly. This reduction in debt to £1.8 million.

Historically, when we are talking about football club debt we are talking about bank debt, footballing debts (buying players etc) or any other “official” debt.

What our club have continually done over the past few years is offer club assets as security against “sympathetic” or “soft” loans to “Utd minded” creditors. That has resulted in an asset striping of the club with Tannadice and various pieces of land being owned by these people.

This recently culminated with the sale of Gussie park in order to service one of these “soft loans” and inject a bit of cash into the club, however all I can see we’ve done is replace one loan with another and regardless of the hardness or softness of a loan, debt, to me, is debt.

For example the recent sale of Gussie looks on the balance sheet like a sale of an asset which provided income, however we know that MM sees it as a loan until the club is in a position to buy it back. That means we basically unofficially owe MM circa £1million for the GA which is not shown on the balance sheet. Whilst that is a slightly different arrangement to the other deals with security against Tannadice etc I am interested to know how they appear on the balance sheet.

My query is this - does the £1.8 million debt figure bandied about (after years of claiming we were debt free incidentally) include all of the soft loans which exist with DUFC assets listed against them as security?

If yes then the situation is as grim as it sounded after the press release - if no just how much debt are the club actually in. It only takes a shift in one of these creditors personal attitudes/financial circumstances for them to call the debt in and we then owe a shed load of cash or lose an asset in the process of satisfying that debt.

Would appreciate any reassurance anyone can give here to be honest as the combination of this, the on field shambles and the ongoing circus at boardroom/management level is dragging me down.