Latest club accounts

[Hoop Blah]

It is the interpretation. I'm not saying we do better than everyone else, since that would be patently ludicrous when you have teams like Blackpool where everything comes together in one season once in a blue moon.

But we certainly consistently aim to get the maximum efficiency for our money, and we consistently perform better than teams paying a lot more money and don't get out-performed by teams paying less, except on the odd-such occasion mentioned above.

When I have time I'll put some stats together and publish this

Bit in bold, I'd be very worried if that wasn't the case!

Not sure I agree on the rest of that sentence (at least in terms of wages) but certainly open to being proven wrong.

[Harpers So Solid Crew]

Now we have so many years to compare could anyone do a basic excel thingy showing income, expenditure(total), and wages over the last say 7 seasons?

[Ian Royal]

My main problem with this is Dirk's assertions we get the "maximum" value/efficiency for our money. Which:
a) implies we do better than, or as well as, absolutely everyone else, and
b) we couldn't possibly do better than we do.

is it him saying those things or you interpreting them?


i thought he was just saying we do very well, thankyou very much

It is the interpretation. I'm not saying we do better than everyone else, since that would be patently ludicrous when you have teams like Blackpool where everything comes together in one season once in a blue moon.

But we certainly consistently aim to get the maximum efficiency for our money, and we consistently perform better than teams paying a lot more money and don't get out-performed by teams paying less, except on the odd-such occasion mentioned above.

When I have time I'll put some stats together and publish this

Wearing my "Dramaturg's" hat, it's the writer's fault if there is sufficient ambiguity for that sort of "slippage" in interpretation of his post and as a reader, my impression is entirely vaLOLid.

Personally I think your choice of words was poor and definitely implies we are the best. Hence why I said it (and I was careful with my choice of words to make sure it was "implies" I said).

What you actually mean is what I thought you probably meant. In which case there isn't much issue with it. We're consistently one of the better performers in value for money is, IMO, a fair comment.

[Hoop Blah]

What you actually mean is what I thought you probably meant. In which case there isn't much issue with it. We're consistently one of the better performers in value for money is, IMO, a fair comment.

Are we though?

In recent times, ie since promotion, we've been one of the clubs with the highest turnovers and wage bills in the division but we've not turned that into promotion (I'm not saying we should've done because it's a lot more complicated than that).

Apart from perhaps Derby, Ipswich, 'Boro and probably Pompey (although difficult to know with Pompey), who all seem to underachieve at turning revenue/wages into success on the pitch, I don't think we're doing any better than anyone else really.

I totally agree that the clubs are trying to spend their money as efficiently as possible, but I'm just not seeing too much evidence to suggest that we're out-performing the competition by any significant margin (and it is fine margins that dictate success at this level).

[Extended-Phenotype]

Not into paying you to come up with that sh|t satire, that's for sure.

[Ian Royal]

What you actually mean is what I thought you probably meant. In which case there isn't much issue with it. We're consistently one of the better performers in value for money is, IMO, a fair comment.

Are we though?

In recent times, ie since promotion, we've been one of the clubs with the highest turnovers and wage bills in the division but we've not turned that into promotion (I'm not saying we should've done because it's a lot more complicated than that).

Apart from perhaps Derby, Ipswich, 'Boro and probably Pompey (although difficult to know with Pompey), who all seem to underachieve at turning revenue/wages into success on the pitch, I don't think we're doing any better than anyone else really.

I totally agree that the clubs are trying to spend their money as efficiently as possible, but I'm just not seeing too much evidence to suggest that we're out-performing the competition by any significant margin (and it is fine margins that dictate success at this level).

Only three teams get promoted and one of them is via a bit of a lottery. I'd say 4th / 9th / 5th / 5th* shows it tbh.

[Red]

Is the playoff really more of a lottery than the other positions?

Given there's likely to be less than 3 points in it between 2nd and 3rd, then one game can determine whether you get automatic promotion or not, compared to 3 in the playoffs.

[Hoop Blah]

What you actually mean is what I thought you probably meant. In which case there isn't much issue with it. We're consistently one of the better performers in value for money is, IMO, a fair comment.

Are we though?

In recent times, ie since promotion, we've been one of the clubs with the highest turnovers and wage bills in the division but we've not turned that into promotion (I'm not saying we should've done because it's a lot more complicated than that).

Apart from perhaps Derby, Ipswich, 'Boro and probably Pompey (although difficult to know with Pompey), who all seem to underachieve at turning revenue/wages into success on the pitch, I don't think we're doing any better than anyone else really.

I totally agree that the clubs are trying to spend their money as efficiently as possible, but I'm just not seeing too much evidence to suggest that we're out-performing the competition by any significant margin (and it is fine margins that dictate success at this level).

Only three teams get promoted and one of them is via a bit of a lottery. I'd say 4th / 9th / 5th / 5th* shows it tbh.

Even though for the most part we've been top 3'ish in terms of revenue? We're just about punching our weight not over performing like some make out and like many other clubs in the division are doing.

[Red]

Name names Hoop Blah.

[royalsteve]

As the accounts are to 30th June I assume they would not include the income from the sale of Matt Mills and Shane Long

correct and i assume kish was also on decent wages so that may have had a neg impact too - then again we bought Gorkss, mills and the irish striker so thats added >£1m

[Hoop Blah]

Name names Hoop Blah.

Do you mean who's making out our success is greater than it is? Or who outperformed us at making the most of their funds?

[Red]

Name names Hoop Blah.

Do you mean who's making out our success is greater than it is? Or who outperformed us at making the most of their funds?

The former, apologies for the ambiguity.

Although give us the latter too if you like.

[Hoop Blah]

In terms of those who've put the idea forward, I guess it's primarily Dirk that I've been having the conversation with, and obviously the other 'club apologists' or 'RTGs' such as brendy, wimb and a few others here and on the team board. Dirks initial comments were I believe founded (pretty fairly from their point of view I suppose) in their aim or statement that they spend the money more efficiently than the rest of football (from Dirks more recent comments to Ian that might not be quite how he was meaning it to sound.

In terms of who appeared to get more for their spend, in 2010 I'd say that Forest (lower wages but higher finish), Swansea (spent massively less but finished 7th), Sheff Utd (spent less but finished higher) and Leicester (spent less but finished higher) could all claim to have spent their money more effeciently than us. We had more revenue than 98% of the sides in the division since we were relegated and so still being here probably means we're not out performing as much as we'd hope.

I'm specifically talking wages and revenue here by the way. Some of those may have spent a lot more than us on transfer fee's but that's a lot more to be accurate about.

[Svlad Cjelli]

I'm certainly not getting involved in this debate again, but I'll just post a factual piece on information on this.

Swansea City announced a loss of £8.2million in the financial year ending on May 31, 2011.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-2090954/Swansea-announce-8-2m-loss.html

[Hoop Blah]

Interesting.

Not sure where the Mail get their info from though, the £600k profit they mention from the year before is shown as £1.1m in Swansea's annual report, not that it makes much difference of course. Either way they certainly lost £8.2m for the season, in much the same way as we lost something like £6-7m ourselves the year we got promoted (despite not paying out massive promotion bonuses if you believe the moans from Hahnemann and Murty at the time).

To put into the context of my comparisons earlier in the thread, Swansea's turnover for 2011 was £11.6m and their wage bill (including bonuses and all other costs) was £17.2m. They obviously finished 3rd and won the resulting play-off.

Our turnover was £17m and wages £18.3m and finished 5th (unfortunately our promotion bonuses were probably a bit less than theirs!).

[Vision]

I'm assuming those revenue figures dont include player sales.

I think as well its very difficult to make a fair comparison between clubs that are still financially distorted after relegation and those that aren't

I've always said (and its just my criteria of course) to look at us in comparison to clubs that were relegated from the Premiership yet failed to bounce straight back. One or two larger ones have managed to get back there but most haven't, many have sunk even further down the league and plenty have suffered serious financial meltdown. Whilst I'd agree that you can't really say with conviction that we use our money better than almost anyone, the fact that we've challenged at the top end consistently suggests that in comparison to clubs with similiar circumstances we do very well indeed.

[Harpers So Solid Crew]

I think that JM would have loved an £8mill loss last season if it had meant promotion. Swansea seem to be playing the sensible game as well, if you want to earn 30k a week then play for the teams with huge gates, that does not include clubs like Swansea and Reading, if the big boys do not want to pay you that then smaller clubs cannot afford it, so deal with it.

Someone remind me how well all the ex Reading players have done, any really done much more than they did at RFC? Or earned more than we could have paid, i would guess only Sidwell, but he was a free to Chelsea, and cost them sod all for his time there.

[Hoop Blah]

I'm assuming those revenue figures dont include player sales.

It's all declared revenue for the financial year so includes transfer fees paid and received. I think at the start of the thread there was mention of further ins and outs in June which were mentioned, but I can't remember how they effected things.

I think as well its very difficult to make a fair comparison between clubs that are still financially distorted after relegation and those that aren't

I get where you're coming from, but at the end of the day we've still got the extra revenue that relegation brings which we have the potential to turn into effective team building and hopefully points in the league. Relegated teams also have the 'benefit' of having some Premier League players, but obviously that doesn't always turn out to be a positive.

I've always said (and its just my criteria of course) to look at us in comparison to clubs that were relegated from the Premiership yet failed to bounce straight back. One or two larger ones have managed to get back there but most haven't, many have sunk even further down the league and plenty have suffered serious financial meltdown. Whilst I'd agree that you can't really say with conviction that we use our money better than almost anyone, the fact that we've challenged at the top end consistently suggests that in comparison to clubs with similiar circumstances we do very well indeed.

There's been a fair few that have gone up after relegation too though. I agree that we obviously do better with our resources than quite a few others like Derby, Sheff Utd, 'Boro or Burnley but I wouldn't argue against that at all.