Jump to content

17/18 Financial Results


Kinder

Recommended Posts

4 minutes ago, Ghost of Clough said:

A stricter wage budget would force pretty much any manager in to having a small first team squad and relying on youths as squad fillers

It would be fantastic if the academy produced 3-4 top players. A real feather in Mel’s cap. A real moment of retribution. But while we are so desperate for promotion, I find it highly unlikely.

How strict will we be? In January, Frank was still able to add Cole, Ambrose, and King to the wage bill. Huddlestone received an automatic extension and could stay.

So how much will the need for immediate success override the needs of the academy and its players?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Replies 522
  • Created
  • Last Reply
41 minutes ago, David said:

The age old, I didn't ask him too buy the club or spend this money so I'll sit here and wag my finger at him when it goes wrong. That's what my missus does when I buy something for the house, we're on our 3rd sofa now in 3 years which I have had to take full responsibility for even though she was the one getting all giddy taking off the wrapping.

Did you ask GSE to buy the club, what about the 3 Amigos, how many owners have you actually asked to buy the club and which signings can we hold you accountable for because you personally asked for?

Its a great defence to have, I didn't ask for it, but guess what, not one of us asked for any of this, that doesn't mean we wasn't grateful at the time and that's the point I was making that yes it's ok to be critical, just remember how you felt at the time. Let's not forget...

Screenshot 2019-03-23 at 21.28.05.png

As you wasn't on the forum at the time, we can only rely on your honesty when I ask were you happy with the signings, if not which and why?

I can tell you from being here at the time, many on this forum were happy, many were embracing the memes of Sam Rush always getting his man and laughing off other clubs as being bitter as we spent pound after pound. 

Not everyone, I do remember some which have remained concerned throughout, you may have been one had you been on the forum, as I say, I will take your word on that. 

You can call me worse..... ?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 minutes ago, AdamRam said:

I’m only quoting part as it’s a long post ?

My point around not asking him to buy it, and you seem to have ignored the rest but I’ll come into that, is that I don’t care who owns the club, I don’t give a monkeys if he holds fans forums, he is the custodian of the club and should be held accountable for his tenure, there is a difference between you and your sofa and increasing the clubs debt to over 20m in a season and having to sell the ground. Just because he is a fan doesn’t mean I have to be grateful.

The other part of my post, and this will refer to your second part, is that if you ask the fans at the time we’re they happy with spending all that money if they knew either a) we would fall of FFP or b) we would have to sell our ground as a result, they would have been quite as vocal around thinking this is a good idea.

How many time has MM said we are within FFP guidelines, and how many times has he said we are within them but only if we sell the ground as a result, the only information we have had to go on is the former, therefore of course fans arent going to be happy. I don’t see why, now they have a better picture they are not going to be critical, tell me, why don’t you think he announced this at the fans forum ?

Was I begging for money to be spent at the time, no, was I pleased with money being spent, of course. 

Question for you, I won’t ask my previous one as you don’t seem to want to answer that, would you have been happy with spending all that money at the time if you knew we would be up against FFP and have to sell our ground as a result ?

Your questions for the fans are using that magical hindsight again which is all well and good, but you admit yourself you was pleased at the time, and THIS is the point I'm getting at.

Once again, it's fine to be critical, absolutely no issues with that at all, but I just feel at times people forget how they felt at the time when they lay into Mel for the signings now that's all. A bit of fairness. 

To answer your question. No I wouldn't, simply because I know it didn't work.

But if I wasn't to know how it turned out and was offered the chance to spend £30m one summer, at the end we could go up, or scrape FFP and sell the ground (to the same owner). The gambler in me would have said f it, let's go balls in and go up because the Premier League is the place to be and could set this club up for years to come.

Let's not forget the ground is being sold to the same owner, not a third party which has no interest in the club itself.

Yes I understand fans can see the possible "risks" in that with us not seeing the terms of the lease, but having listened to and spoken with Mel numerous times I believe he only has the best interests of the club at heart, I fully believe it's not been done to hold the club to ransom recouping any money lost or other evil intentions in mind.

Feel free to quote me in 5 years time if Mel's taking us to court because we can't afford to pay our billion pound a season lease and playing games in Northampton. 

As for why it wasn't announced prior to the fan forum I honestly don't know. There is a Supporters Charter Meeting at the end of the month, there is a pinned topic for us to collect questions to take to the club, feel free to ask this or any other concerns you have in the topic. The most supported questions are then put forward.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

54 minutes ago, Ghost of Clough said:

Outs (full season): Baird, Bent, Jerome, Shackell, Weimann, Vydra, Blackman, Martin, Hanson, Mitchell, Lowe, Thomas

Outs (part season): Ledley, Butterfield, Thorne, Pearce, McAllister

A lot of those players will have been on big wages. the first 6 players mentioned would have been on at least a combined £150k pw in my opinion. Even part contributions for the rest of the loaned out players should surpass the £200k mark.

It's difficult to guess, but: Baird (10-15k), Bent (25-35k), Jerome (20-30k), Shackell (20-30k), Weimann(20-30k), Vydra(25-35k), Blackman(15-25k), Martin(30-40k), Hanson, Mtichell, Lowe, Thomas(10k-20k), Ledley(15-25k), Butterfield(15-25k), Thorne(20-30k), Pearce(15-25k) - albeit some of those will be part paid for, i.e. Thorne, Ledley, Martin, Blackman & Butterfield. 

The total reduction off the wage bill: £240-340k p/w. If you account for what we're still paying players that aren't here, i.e. more than likely half+ of Thorne's & Butterfield's wages, etc. We're probably looking around £200-300k pw. Although, that being said we've probably added more than £100k pw - Jozefzoon (10-20k), Marriott (10-20k), Waghorn (15-25k), Evans (5-10k), Malone (15-25k), Holmes (5-10k), Cole (10-15k), Ambrose (5-10k), Mount (20-30k), Wilson (10-20k), Tomori (5-10k) & King (25-35k) - even at the lower end, i'd guess we've added £130k+ 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

7 minutes ago, Ambitious said:

It's difficult to guess, but: Baird (10-15k), Bent (25-35k), Jerome (20-30k), Shackell (20-30k), Weimann(20-30k), Vydra(25-35k), Blackman(15-25k), Martin(30-40k), Hanson, Mtichell, Lowe, Thomas(10k-20k), Ledley(15-25k), Butterfield(15-25k), Thorne(20-30k), Pearce(15-25k) - albeit some of those will be part paid for, i.e. Thorne, Ledley, Martin, Blackman & Butterfield. 

The total reduction off the wage bill: £240-340k p/w. If you account for what we're still paying players that aren't here, i.e. more than likely half+ of Thorne's & Butterfield's wages, etc. We're probably looking around £200-300k pw. Although, that being said we've probably added more than £100k pw - Jozefzoon (10-20k), Marriott (10-20k), Waghorn (15-25k), Evans (5-10k), Malone (15-25k), Holmes (5-10k), Cole (10-15k), Ambrose (5-10k), Mount (20-30k), Wilson (10-20k), Tomori (5-10k) & King (25-35k) - even at the lower end, i'd guess we've added £130k+ 

whilst appreciating that I am layering uninformed speculation on top of estimation, i'd say some of your ins look a bit light (evans, tomori) and some of the outs look a bit optimistic - and you haven't attempted to guess how much was retained for the loanees.....id imagine we're picking up most if not all of thornes money for example.

 

All goes to show how difficult it is to make significant inroads although i remain more optimistic about next season. However, given his progress i'd expect us to have to up Bogles money for example.....

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, G STAR RAM said:

Interested to see your workings for this guess.

You think we've lowered our wage bill by £100k per week?

We've added Tomori, Malone, Cole, Mount, Wilson, Josefzoon, Holmes, Marriott and Waghorn, as well as the manager/coaching staff to the wage bill this season. 

So my guess is that in real terms, the people we have moved off the wage bill would have had to be earning closer to £200k per week to achieve a £5m reduction.

Shoot

Although I go with some of the above.

I would argue in defence that we got rid of a manager and back room staff who were on a good packet and replaced them with a team on much less.

Ergo there is a reduction in the bill

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@David I’ll not quote as it’s a long post.

The hindsight was never there though, only staff of Derby County had sight of the full picture. I was unaware we were sailing that close to FFP, had I been aware the ground would be sold to finance these players, then maybe I would also have said yes go for it, I doubt it because as you say it was a gamble, however the point I’m making is we didn’t know this at the time.

Just to be clear, I’m not being critical of his decisions on financing the signings, I don’t know enough about the ground deal to do that, some of his calls on managers yes but debate done to death, do I wish him success, of course, not really for him personally but the fans including me (I’m including him in that bucket) that would mean we are in the PL.

Anyway we will never agree on this, and I’m disappointed in myself for getting involved as I hoped after the fans forum it would be the on field matters that were grabbing the headlines as we head towards the twin towers of Wembley.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Can someone knowledgeable help me with the maths here.

£80m stadium purchase means £80m in.

£41m stadium on balance sheet.

Net profit £39m on that deal.

Profit reported as £14.6m. 

Does that mean that....had the stadium not sold that we would have made a loss for the financial year of £24.4m???

Trying to get my head around it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

16 minutes ago, gccrowdpleaser said:

Can someone knowledgeable help me with the maths here.

£80m stadium purchase means £80m in.

£41m stadium on balance sheet.

Net profit £39m on that deal.

Profit reported as £14.6m. 

Does that mean that....had the stadium not sold that we would have made a loss for the financial year of £24.4m???

Trying to get my head around it.

Correct.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

16 hours ago, G STAR RAM said:

But there's more questions than answers doing what has been done.

Potential cons:-

Club no longer owns the ground. Of course this won't be a problem if it is a long term lease.

Rent will be an FFP hit. Of course this won't be a problem if it's a pepeppercorn rent.

Potential revenues from the ground will now be diverted to another company. May not be a problem if MM intends to funnel this money back into the club. But if he intends to do this not sure why he would take the ground out of the club in the first place.

Cannot see how the club will now be attractive to potential investors. Although obviously this will now deter potential asset strippers.

I'm pretty sure MM has the clubs intentions at heart although this potentially looks a way of him recouping some of his losses.

To sit there for an hour and a half talking about FFP but not even mentioning this just seems a bit disingenuous to me.

Can you really see Mel saddling the club with a few millions worth of rent a year???  He owns the ground so he can set it as low as he wants, I can imagine it'll be a token amount at most.  Therefore more money to put towards (shrewd) player recruitment, and the academy

I can imagine one of the reasons he's done it is so the cost any of the improvements he wants to implement on the stadium (East stand concourse, removeable roof) don't impact the clubs books.  Therefore more money to put towards (shrewd) player recruitment, and the academy

Of course he'll want to recoup some of his investment once we're promoted and milked the Sky gravy train for a few years.  By which time an investor could by back the ground at roughly the same price, as the rent the club would pay to itself/Mel could cover any interest.  Either that or he takes a percentage of any none football related income from the turnstiles via concerts or events.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

20 hours ago, Cam the Ram said:

To me it is. A club is struggling to stay within FFP guidelines, so the owner of that club purchases the stadium via one of his other businesses, with the likely intention to sell it back down the line. I'm sure we can all agree if roles were reversed and we were reading about Villa doing this we'd all be questioning how it can be allowed. I'm grateful that it's helped us to avoid any punishment (if EFL don't find issue with it), but I'm just concerned it's got to a stage that this needed to be done. We've sold top players over recent years, there were reports on here a while back of Derby County laying off a lot of staff and now the stadium has been sold. All of this to avoid FFP punishment .... what next if we find ourselves still in the Championship years down the line and are close to breaching FFP again? Is the training ground sold next? 

I suggest you need to think through your own rationale there. 

If you’re suggesting that a club that’s invested in its own stadium and owns the asset either wholly or with substantial equity should be treated exactly the same in regards to FFP viz clubs that don’t have equity in any tangible assets, you’re actually suggesting they be disadvantaged for sound forward planning.

FFP is premised on preventing clubs from gaining an unfair advantage, not permanently impoverishing them.

If, however, you’re questioning the bona fides of the transaction, that’s even less likely. Independent valuations are just that; if the transaction is ‘dodgy’ (ie the valuation is artificially high - or artificially low which it would have to be for any sell back to the club to make any sense), the valuer’s liability to any parties who might rely upon it in the future would kick in.

These sorts of related transactions are scrutinised incredibly closely.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 minute ago, gccrowdpleaser said:

Wow!

So how did the loss go from 7.9m the previous year to potentially 24.4m in 17/18.  That doesn't make sense.

got to be careful comparing previous year.  Mel personally pays for anything over the then FFP limit so 7.9 is artificial.  The ground sale allows us to bury a lot of carried costs for this year and should regularize our PS figures going forward

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, Jourdan said:

Frank has obviously put a lot of faith in Jayden Bogle and Mason Bennett. So you are right in suggesting that if he continues in the same vein, other players will get opportunities.

I am not for one second doubting that we’ll have academy players in and around the squad, to plug gaps and make up the 18.

What I am doubting is that they will be the driving force behind our success or stimulate financial growth, which is what we are really looking for to justify the level of investment we have made.

I may be paraphrasing slightly, but whenever Mel has spoken about investment, and therefore improvements, in the academy he's said that even though not every player who comes through will make the first team, those that don't are considered good enough to command modest fees when sold.  A couple of 100k here and there can go a long way, especially if it goes towards the development of the next Hughes/Hendrick

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Bear with me as this is pure conjecture, but if the loss was circa 8million last year, and the wages (vast majority of operating costs)have gone up by about 5 million then the actual loss can’t be much more than 13 million, not even taking into account any sale profits/add ons.

Apply a 14million profit to this... that means a balance of circa 27 million must have been injected.  Coincidence that this figure conveniently is a division of 3 of the reported PP sale figure?

Would make further sense and provide 3 years cash injections to stabilise/build the team, and effect positively the following 2 years ffp. 

It could also explain why the board have not been too worried about ffp as a 13million loss would have taken us close but not over, from what I have read. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...