No club makes money, especially in the lower leagues. There are enough owners who are chasing glory to inflate the market, and the TV money down there is tiny. There are a couple of fan-owned clubs that have to break even to continue in existence, but a couple of others went back into private hands in recent years so they could receive "investment". Most of the clubs that have gone bust recently were run on the basis that the owners were prepared to prop up the losses, and then the owner changed their mind and didn't put the cash in.
There is a good case that football clubs, especially community ones in the lower leagues shouldn't be regular businesses, but should be some for of community asset. If you force everyone to run at break even then being fan owned suddenly seems like a viable plan. But there are too many fans waiting for the right owner to come along and spend billions to get them to the promised land. And there are owners like those at Stoke (the Coates family?) who resent being blocked from putting more money in.
Ron Martin has operated right on the edge of legality for ages - he's failed to pay wages, he waits for a winding up order from HMRC and then clears the bill etc. It's clear he's not interested in winning football games, he just wants to build houses on the stadium and make money on that. If he could do that and split the club from the stadium, I'd put a lot of money on Southend going into administration straight away.
