LEAGUE OF IRELAND NEWS:THOUGH THE sense of disappointment in the wake of Wednesday's narrow defeat by Red Bull Salzburg was clearly evident among Bohemians officials yesterday, there was an insistence that reports of the club's impending demise remain somewhat premature.

Patrik Jezek’s 87th-minute goal at Dalymount Park is reckoned to have cost the Phibsborough outfit around €400,000 in lost revenue. Bohemians would have been guaranteed at least one round in the Europa League even if they had lost against Dinamo Zagreb in the next round of the Champions League. The estimated losses include some €220,000 in prize money plus gate receipts, sponsorship, commercial and television rights revenue.

The size of Wednesday’s crowd provided a minor consolation for the club’s board, with a slightly better than expected 5,900 turning out despite the threat of heavy downpours, but there is considerable disappointment at the club that no Irish broadcaster was prepared pay anything for the rights for the game.

Both Setanta and RTÉ offered to broadcast the game but would do no more than cover their costs, and Bohemians decided that in the circumstances it would be better to forego the coverage on the basis that it would help the gate.

The result, though, leaves the club with significant problems in terms of its budget for the year. At present it is running slightly above the permitted 65 per cent salary-to-turnover ratio, a figure it needs to be under at the end of the season if it is to avoid a range of fairly hefty penalties, including relegation, the withholding of any prize money due and exclusion from Europe next season.

The situation is complicated somewhat by the contract with Liam Carroll’s firm Danninger – which is not one of the Carroll-owned firms to enter examinership recently – for the purchase of Dalymount and the relocation of the club to a purpose-built stadium at Harristown, near the airport.

That deal is effectively on hold pending an appeal by the club against a High Court decision relating to an earlier proposal by a company, Albion, to buy a small portion of the stadium. With a date for a hearing by the Supreme Court on the matter still likely to be a couple of years away, the club’s revenue generating options are somewhat limited.

Still, the club’s honorary secretary Gerry Conway says he is confident Bohemians will not fall foul of the 65 per cent rule come the end of the year.

“The figures being talked about at the moment are a mixture of real numbers and estimates but we only actually have to be in compliance at the end of November and I am 100 per cent confident that we will be at that stage,” he insists.

The board, he says, are working on a number of initiatives aimed at bringing in money and these, he hopes, will start to yield results over the coming weeks. The announcement next Monday of a friendly against an English club will be the first such measure to become public.

Everyone involved at the club accepts that there is “an awful lot of work to do,” but sceptics suggest that, even if they win the league, they would most likely fall between €250,000 and €300,000 short of the revenue figure they require.

A cup win would help but Wednesday’s defeat leaves the league leaders needing a good deal more than a mere repeat of last year’s double success.