Chairman Jim Parmenter appeared on BBC South East Today on Monday evening to reiterate the situation the club is in due to the COVID-19 pandemic and what is needed to keep the club solvent.

Obviously, not all what the Chairman said made it air, so here is a transcript of what he said.

“We’ve had no income since March 11th at all, we had approximately 25 employees then, that’s down to about 18 now and thank goodness for the government’s furlough scheme because that’s enabled us to keep everybody employed on that, but now the money’s just virtually run out.

“We’ve now got to start doing budgets for next season, we have to put a balanced budget to the league before we start and at the moment our expenditure is not balancing with our income, so we’ve got to find a way of trying to improve that otherwise we can’t trade.

“All avenues are still open, we’re talking to see if we can raise any funds, we’re looking at places we can cut costs but we’ve virtually cut every cost we can and of course our biggest cost is wages by some margin, something like 80 per cent of our costs.

“At the moment we’re not able to negotiate anything there apart from the management team. We’re not able to negotiate with the players a reduction and that is causing us the issue.

“We spent a lot of time explaining to the players and I was quite clear and candid with them we need a 20 per cent reduction of gross salary for a limited time in order that we can move the club forward and balance the books.

“It will still be a challenge even at that and it’s still a risk because we still don’t know when the season’s going to start and we have to start training at the beginning of September, so we will be taking a big financial risk anyway, but we think if the players accept a 20 per cent deduction we can get through.

“A promise of payment is a liability and whilst we can say when things get back to normal of course we’ll move the wages back to normal we can’t say when that will be and we can’t promise it because we just don’t know.

“It’s a great shame, it’s a great sadness because we put together a good group of players and we were really hopeful, but they are available now for free transfer because we have to cut costs and one of the ways we can do that is to move players on to other clubs and employ different players on less money.

“It’s been the culmination of 15 years of blood, sweat and tears and several millions of pounds investment on my part to put the infrastructure in place and to start building the club to football league standard.

“We were four points off the playoffs when it all finished and in a really good position, so it’s really hit us hard. But you know, facts are facts and it’s a limited company – we have to be solvent in order to be able to trade.

“For me and my family, the whole family have been involved for 15 years – I took it out of bankruptcy when we took it over in 2005 and we’ve built it up now to a football league standard club which has been our lives for 15 years and we’ve invested every penny that we can but this challenge is just too much for us financially and we need some help.

“It’s not a particularly attractive investment any football club at this current time so the best thing we can do is try and cut our costs and move forward in that way.

“Apart from the gate money there’s all the catering venues during match day, the bar, we let out rooms for weddings and birthday parties on a regular basis. The Striker Lottery has been closed down, all our income streams have gone away.

“We rely heavily on local sponsorship and they’re all struggling – some of them are out of business but none of them have got spare cash to sponsor a football club at the moment. so it really is quite a dire situation.

“We’re running at about a £1.4 million cost to keep the club going and we’re obviously going to cut that this year but we reckon we’re about a quarter of a million short of where we need to be to balance the books at the moment.

“One of the problem we face is we don’t actually know what sort of crowd we can have yet. They’re talking anything between 15 and 25 per cent of normal capacity but there’s all sorts of restrictions around that.

“The due date to start is the 3rd of October, so currently we don’t know if we will start then and we don’t know what we’ll be allowed to let into the ground.

“We’re obviously going to prioritise season ticket holders, so we’re hoping that we can sell a few (season tickets) to help us and those season ticket holders will get priority for the games but as to how many people come into the ground we just don’t know.

“Given what’s happening in the world now, the signs are that the league may start late October rather than early October.

“Will the club still be here? Well, I’m going to do everything I can do to make sure it is but I need help as I can’t do it on my own.”