Need £120k in two weeks to survive.

https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding ... utm_id=107

Clearly paying Graeme Lee too much!

How does a club that size, run up those debts?

Don't fancy their chances - just shy of 119k to go in 13 days.
They need a charity game against the borer, to help raise a few quid, as they all follow them, round those parts

They can easily if unintentionally run up debts with the day to day costs of maintaing the club structure, energy costs especially like the cost of electricity for floodlights for example must be affecting the viability of most smaller clubs.
Ambition also can cost and taking chances with limited funds on players and management decision, the corny old spend to generate money can be a fatal move at this level as this must be the worst time ever for most small clubs financially.

plus they are not going to get 100,s more through the turnstiles to help em no matter how good they are. some fans would never dream to watch football under a certain level. like everywhere else in the game money is needed from the rich men.

Some of these teams need to be realistic about how far they can get up the ladder with the resources they have, at the last census the population of Marske was less than 3k, that's considerably less than villages such as my own Blackhall for example, especially as there are two teams at a similar level just along the road in Redcar.

Marske are 2 and 3 levels ahead of the 2 Redcar teams, quite a bit at that level. The Redcar teams are progressing though as the Northern League was forced to open up to lower level teams. The problem for Marske was the investment was not sustainable if your backer pulls the plug. The same happens at many clubs as they shoot up the system quickly through excess spending.

Marske are in the level above Athletic who are in the league above Town.

Like you say, if the potential for support isn’t there, it’s pointless kidding yourself it will turn up.
That Field of Dreams tosh, build it and they will come, was disproved by Darlo’s unfortunate experience..the hybrid offspring of George’s ambition and the crowd potential of Darlington.

there are not many exceptions to the rule that clubs gates are more or less the same percentage of the towns population and the population of the area within a few miles from grounds. the reason why the big city clubs have done better than the small town ones since the early 20th century.

up to £13k now

Smallish towns surrounded by even smaller towns/villages in an area remote from other larger urban centres have a chance, but that’s the exception….generally they are severely constrained, but some have this idea they can succeed, but you need to have deep pockets to subsidise it.

when you think of pools in an average season and everyone coming who live in the town and nowhere else it works out less than 5 per cent of the population who are bothered to attend with a similar number extra if we were flying through the leagues. what chance has a large villiage got without a suger daddy playing a computer game with human beings.

I hear what you're saying, but the entire the population of Blackhall would fit into our ground no bother.