HEREFORD United are still unable to pay their March wage-bill in full even after two home games in the last week.

And, with no further matchday income, Hereford’s board of directors will be facing some tough decisions about how they are going to make it through the summer.

“We are probably £4-5,000 short of clearing the wages,” said chairman David Keyte.

“The April payday is not far away, we have the PAYE to settle on Monday and the VAT bill on May 7.

“It all has to be found.”

The Bulls chairman said that he was ‘reasonably confident’ that the club would get through what promises to be a difficult summer.

Keyte is still hopeful, however, that there is some light at the end of a very dark tunnel with the prospect of some outside investment still a reality. “We have been talking to a couple of parties but there is nothing concrete to report yet,” he said. “These things don’t happen overnight.

“We are very close with the one that I mentioned a couple of weeks ago and we have had some more interest recently.

“The development at the two ends of the ground is attracting some of the interested parties but it’s more about the running costs and our trading position that we need to sort out. We need cash investment for that.”

While the short term is still a big problem, the medium term is looking rosier with a meeting having taken place with a potential Blackfriars St developer last Friday, a meeting with Herefordshire Council planned for April 29 to finalise extended leases and a project meeting taking place at Edgar Street yesterday (Wednesday).

And Keyte will be working hard to ensure that manager Martin Foyle has a reasonable budget to work with for the 2013-4 season. “We don’t want next season’s budget to be substantially reduced, we are trying to compete,” he said.

“Martin has done an exceptional job on the remains of a budget that he walked into. He has proved that he can find young players; that is what we need and that is the sort of level we are going to be at.

“But you still have to square the books. I got a lot of criticism this year for expecting crowds of more than 2,000, we won’t be doing that again - it will be a lesser player budget, we just have to minimise that reduction.”