<div class="floatleft">(https://elliquiy.com/elluiki/images/0/0c/Stacey1.jpg)</div><strong>Character name : </strong>Stacey Gibson (https://elliquiy.com/forums/index.php?topic=212508.msg10440574)<br/><strong>Occupation : </strong>Team Owner<br/><strong>Who : </strong>Arthur Durant, CFO, Head of Marketing<br/><strong>Where : </strong>Stacey's Office<br/><strong>When : </strong>Day One, Early  Morning<br/><hr/>Stacey leaned back in her chair and let out a deep breath, there was no use deluding herself the team was in deep, deep trouble and they hadn't even started training. Her brother-in-law had delivered the bombshell early on Saturday morning, the news that Paul was divorcing Stacey's sister wasn't completely unexpected but that he was cutting off his funding to the team that was a shock. The rest of Saturday morning was spent taking calls from smaller sponsors that were thinking about pulling their support as well, but Stacey had managed to convince enough of them to stick with the team at least for a little while longer.<br/><br/>The only bright spot was that sponsors who had pulled out, including Paul, hadn't wanted to make any headlines about them withdrawing which meant as far as almost everybody knew everything was running to plan. There were two people in the organization that absolutely knew about the difficulties; the CFO and Stacey's PA Rachel. Stacey would haven been deeply worried if the CFO hadn't been on top of the problems with the backers but he was OK with keeping up the illusion for now. Then there was Rachel, Stacey wasn't entirely sure how Rachel knew about the financial earthquake, she just had this talent for knowing everything, which Stacey found helpful and disturbing in equal measure. The intercomm sparked into life and Rachel's voice came through "They're all here, shall I send them in?"<br/>the answer that Stacey wanted to give was<strong><em>"Fuck no!"</em></strong>but that wasn't going to help<strong>"Yes, lets get this rodeo started."</strong><br/><br/>The door opened and the three people wanted to see least in the world right now came in; the CFO, the Head of Marketing and finally the head coach. Stacey had rehearsed what she was going to say many times in her mind, tell them enough of the truth so that changes could be made to the operation but not so much of the truth that they all ran screaming from the building.<strong>"Guys, I don't want to sugar coat this." </strong>who was Stacey kidding this was going to be all sugar coating "<strong>But a couple of the sponsors decided over the weekend that they want to renegotiate. With training just about to start they know the team is past the no return for getting it up an running and so they're being dicks and trying to apply a bit of leverage." </strong>Stacey quickly glanced at the faces of her subordinates looking for a reaction, thankfully the CFO was a good card player and his poker face didn't slip "<strong>Now while I'm confident that we'll get it all sorted out before too long, it does mean that we have to be a little more careful with the budgets for now."</strong>Any talk of budgets should be enough to get the interest of the senior managers<strong>"First off coach, that means the transfers you had lined up are on hold for now. I hear the recruits you have lined up look like they have a lot of potential, so focus on them and we'll slot the star players in as we get them." </strong>Stacey turn to her PR guru<strong>"The two words you need to focus on are Free and Media. Right now I don't care if it's the opening of a fridge door, get us publicity. That gives me leverage with the sponsors."</strong>Well they didn't look too shocked, which was a small relief,<strong>"So any questions?"<br/></strong>