Goodwillie deal hailed as United cut debt

The club started the financial year owing around £6 million to the bank but have been able to make a significant payment after selling the Scotland international to Blackburn Rovers.

Thompson has long wanted to pay down the club’s debts and believes his tough attitude towards selling Goodwillie – when Rangers opened the bidding at under £1 million – paid off and will go a long way to securing United’s long-term future.

United held out amid pressure from the bank to eventually secure a transfer fee of £2.8 million, the second largest in the club’s history behind the £4 million deal which took Duncan Ferguson to Rangers in 1993.

Thompson said: “We did well from the Goodwillie deal point of view. It has made a big difference to the financial stability of the club.

“We had a bit of a ding-dong with the bank at that time about how much they were going to take. But I have got to say that we reached a common sense agreement in the end although the vast majority of it went towards debt reduction.

“The bank is not on my back so much. So I’m a lot more upbeat about the finances of the club now than I was say two years ago.

“We have gone from about £6m to about £3.8m in debt reduction. And we have still kept a competitive team on the park.

“When you lose your best player it’s hard. I think that was reflected in the start of the season with some of the results but we have come good since then.”

Thompson’s club still lost £523,000 in the year up until June 2011 – which was before the sale of Goodwillie – but when that is factored in they are still now on a far better financial footing than they have been in years.

The Tannadice chairman will further cut costs to reduce future losses and reckons he has learned plenty from the experience of selling his star asset last year. He said: “Of course I would have preferred to make a £500,000 profit rather than a loss but I would emphasise that these accounts are historical with regard to the financial situation at the club, being up to June of last year.

“The Goodwillie deal was done after that period and there is no doubt that it was one of the best deals done for a long time. Other people in the SPL tell me that so we did well. I learned a lot through the whole thing.

“The bank wanted me to take £1.2m for him but I said no to that. I wanted more and that’s what we got in the end.

“It was the biggest deal for the club since Duncan Ferguson was sold to Rangers for £4m. And that was nearly 20 years ago.

“I had to stand up against the bank which was hard at that point, particularly when you are under pressure to sell a player for the finances.”

United’s coffers were further boosted by the sale of Scott Allan to West Brom for £400,000 on Tuesday. The Scotland Under-21 player refused to sign a new deal at Tannadice, so United cashed in on the Baggies’ interest.

Thompson wishes Allan had stayed at the club for a while longer but is happy with the deal they struck. He said: “We would have liked to have kept him for at least another year on a three-year contract but it wasn’t to be.

“But there is a lot of good young talent in the team like Stuart Armstrong and Gary Mackay-Steven.

“It’s just a case of trying to hold on to them for a couple of years and then sell them on for a fee.”