Financial Fair Play

[maffff]

Never said it was, just didn't appreciate the insinuation thanks.

[Hound]

Never said it was, just didn't appreciate the insinuation thanks.

Likewise, no need to be so touchy

[Green]

[CountryRoyal]

Every one describing their work makes them all sound so self important. Ok then rockstars.

[Hound]

Every one describing their work makes them all sound so self important. Ok then rockstars.

Yeah indeed. I sounded like a right pcunt there. Trying to fit in with the crowd

[Hound]

and I made some of it up anyway

[CountryRoyal]

and I made some of it up anyway

[Snowflake Royal]

and I made some of it up anyway

My last two jobs as genuinely described by customers:

Current: Ruin childrens' lives
Previous: Sit on my fat arse all day commiting the sin of Onan / about as much use as a chocolate fireguard.

Personally I'd have described them a little differently, and have done so on my CV.

[muirinho]

Helpful breakdown of the clubs accounts by Swiss Ramble here including comparisons to other clubs. Well worth a read

https://twitter.com/SwissRamble/status/ ... 3109514241

[CountryRoyal]

Helpful breakdown of the clubs accounts by Swiss Ramble here including comparisons to other clubs. Well worth a read

https://twitter.com/SwissRamble/status/ ... 3109514241

Some interesting things in there. A near 300% increase in wages-turnover ratio from ~70% to ~197% it inexcusable. And why exactly do our big wigs get paid so much? What a great job they were doing honestly it’s not funny but it’s all the signs symptomatic of a poor mismanaged business.

Also didn’t realise the shirt sponsorship expires this season. Has anyone heard anything on this front? I suspect now the Thais have left and Carabao has grown as a brand - at least in terms of exposure, I can’t see them hurrying to renew with us.

[Wallsy]

Gourlay really did do a job on us. Vastly inflated wage bill and a big drop in player sales.

[Brain Traysers]

Looks like we bet the farm after losing the play off final, and er... lost. Hindsight makes it appear pure madness to spend so much money on wages/transfer fees the same year as the parachute payments ran out.

Teams like Swansea have taken a much more conservative approach, by aggressively shrinking their wage bill while still under parachute payments. This was essentially our approach after our first relegation from the PL in 07/08 - we made net player sales of £32m over the following 4 seasons, a mixture of peak and young talent (Kitson, Doyle, Hunt, Shorey, Sonko in the 2 seasons after relegation, then Long and Gylfi in the following 2 seasons). Typically in that period we had to sell at least one major player a summer to balance the books while under SJM's stewardship.

03/04 - 11/12 (net spend = +ve)


After our second relegation in 2012/13 we didn't have a similar period of large sales instead we made a small net spend of £4m - compared with the of net sales £32m figure above. This will in part be due to having a less attractive squad than after the first relegation (lots of those players had finished 8th in the PL only 2 seasons earlier). In the 2 seasons immediately after the 2012/13 relegation, our first team sales were Kebe, Mariappa, ALF, McCarthy, Morrison and Carrico (no huge fees like Doyle/Kitson were at the time), compared with signings of Williams and Norwood (not to mention the wage burdens from expensive free signings like Bridge, Drenthe, Baird, Ferdinand). We were however able to follow it up with selling prospects like in seasons 3 and 4 after relegation 1 - 2015/16 saw Hector leave and 2016/17 Tish. But this is all occurring at the time when championship wages start to go mad, and sure enough we pile in with the net insane transfer spend in 2017/18 and burden ourselves with a seemingly unsustainable wage bill.

08/09 - 17/18 (new spend = blue line >0)


Under SJM we plugged the the post-relegation annual black hole through player sales, under the three following owners, we have grown the hole and not really attempted to plug it at all, all while letting the wage budget balloon. I really wonder what is in it for the current owners.

[muirinho]

Gourlay really did do a job on us. Vastly inflated wage bill and a big drop in player sales.

And a fat fee for the privilege.

[Brain Traysers]

And following that up - its obvious how bad we have been at buying players, but we have been equally bad if not worse at selling.

We sold 3 first team players season year, and here are their individual transfer fee P&Ls according to Transfermarkt (since all figures are in €s, values where one transfer was made before June 2016 will be impacted by Brexit, and cba to do the FX transfers and adjust)
- Evans (seemingly unknown, but certainly not a significant profit and likely a loss)
- Ilori (€2m loss)
- Bacuna (€2m profit)
So a net of €0 for three players signed for decent fees at good ages who should have improved here, especially with inflation in football.

In addition we released / loaned out (still paying some wages) JvdB, Aluko, Popa, Mannone and Edwards. All of those were signed for a fee, and all will make losses unless we receive a dodgy fee from a permanent transfer for Aluko.

The season before wasn't much better. Letting young players go for nominal fees who are now worth £ms (Cooper and Stacey) and crystalising losses for Beerens, Hurtado and Williams. Bizarrely, a 35yo Ali Al-Habsi seems to be the only player sold for (a small) profit.

In terms of players still with us, beyond the academy players I cant see many who would generate a transfer profit. Possibly just Moore, Swift Barrow and Yiadom, while JDB would probably break even. Are any of those 5 better players than when we signed them, or are they just worth more because of inflation?

That compares with current players Baldock, Gunter, Aluko, Mannone who will all likely be sold for a loss plus the high wages for free transfers McCleary and Meyler.

TL:DR - we are terrible at both buying and selling players. Oh and making players worth more than when we bought them.

[Nameless]

I really wonder what is in it for the current owners.

I guess when you are so ridiculously wealthy that it doesn't matter then you can do stuff that doesn't make financial sense. Perhaps Dai Yongge is one of these compulsive business men who just likes taking on a challenge much like some of us might do a Sudoku. He has the kudos of owning an English football club, the possibility of owning a Premiership football club and not much of a downside.
Whether there is anything shady the ownership (in terms of extracting money from China) seems unlikely as I understand the Chinese have clamped down on it, but who knows whether there is an 'angle'. With the Russians it didn't take much to find dodgy connections, the Thai's seemed to be looking for an entry into wider UK business but the Chinese seem to be what they seem to be so far....

[Hound]

Tbf we’d likely make a very big profit on Moore, Swift, Meite, Barrow and Yiadom if we did sell

If we’d sold Moore for 10m last year when we could it’d blown your argument away a little

The players we got rid of it we didn’t make a profit on because they were rubbish generally. We jut haven’t sold the ones who turned out well

And it’s certainly not just inflation. Moore worth 10* what we paid. Meite, Yiadom and Swift were free

[Brain Traysers]

I really wonder what is in it for the current owners.

I guess when you are so ridiculously wealthy that it doesn't matter then you can do stuff that doesn't make financial sense. Perhaps Dai Yongge is one of these compulsive business men who just likes taking on a challenge much like some of us might do a Sudoku. He has the kudos of owning an English football club, the possibility of owning a Premiership football club and not much of a downside.
Whether there is anything shady the ownership (in terms of extracting money from China) seems unlikely as I understand the Chinese have clamped down on it, but who knows whether there is an 'angle'. With the Russians it didn't take much to find dodgy connections, the Thai's seemed to be looking for an entry into wider UK business but the Chinese seem to be what they seem to be so far....

There was a political angle a few years ago, President Xi is a known soccer fan and really wants to grow the sport in China. Wave one of that was Chinese ownership of foreign clubs, and big spending to bring top talents to the Chinese league but as you referred to that contradicted the stricter controls on capital outflows. Indeed that wave of ownership and spending seems to be drying up.

With a cynical hat on, if it was an investment purely to curry political favour, and President Xi's appetite for such deals has shrunk, whats in it for the Dai's now beyond annual losses of £20m+?

[Brain Traysers]

Tbf we’d likely make a very big profit on Moore, Swift, Meite, Barrow and Yiadom if we did sell

If we’d sold Moore for 10m last year when we could it’d blown your argument away a little

The players we got rid of it we didn’t make a profit on because they were rubbish generally. We jut haven’t sold the ones who turned out well

And it’s certainly not just inflation. Moore worth 10* what we paid. Meite, Yiadom and Swift were free

Quite possibly - although I imagine we haven't sold those players because nobody has tried to buy them apart from Moore. Had we sold the lot of them we might well have generated enough to plug the loss from least season, but it would have resulted in relegation and a whole new level of accounting issues. There is also a very big difference between any fees we would extract from clubs desperate to buy (as Brighton were), and any fee we would get when desperate to sell (which by all accounts, we should be). I cant see any clubs being desperate to buy any of our players, apart from Rinomhota and Loader purely for potential (with a home grown quota benefit).

I had forgotten about Meite - yes he would be a profitable sale. I thought I recalled we had to pay compensation (c £2m?) for Swift?

[Linden Jones' Tash]

And to think the grief Nicky Hammond got during his tenure here....

[Royal_jimmy]

The highest paid director earned £639,000 for masterminding this achievement (up from £374k the previous year).

Who in their right mind would agree to pay Gourlay £639K. That's a mental amount of money to pay that moron.