New Signings ?

[Royal Rother]

Nice to see you've come up with exactly the same figures as I've posted elsewhere, tackling it from a different angle!

[Arch]

Yes we lost money last season alone, but on the back of a gravy train beyond the clubs dreams from 2005-2008.

2005/06 the most successful season in the club's history with virtual full houses from Xmas onwards we lost nearly £7m with a wage bill of £14.2m.

The accounts show a profit of roughly the same amount for the following 2 Premiership seasons with a wage bill of around 31m for 60/07 and 35m for 07/08. So over those 3 seasons we made a profit of around £6m which is hardly a gravy train given some of the figures people bandy about.

No published accounts for last season yet but if we crudely take the 40% wage cut as across the board then that would put us at 21m on wages alone. Losing 3 or 4 of the big earners (Shorey,Sonko,Kitson,Little) would at best take that figure down to around 18/19m i would reckon.

So in purely crude terms if in 05/06 we lost 7m with a 14m wage bill then with a likely wage bill of 18m then we would be staring at 11m loss under similiar circumstances. Hello Parachute payments!

And hello the need to raise 11m when the parachute payments run out.

[clauski]

Yes we lost money last season alone, but on the back of a gravy train beyond the clubs dreams from 2005-2008.

2005/06 the most successful season in the club's history with virtual full houses from Xmas onwards we lost nearly £7m with a wage bill of £14.2m.

The accounts show a profit of roughly the same amount for the following 2 Premiership seasons with a wage bill of around 31m for 60/07 and 35m for 07/08. So over those 3 seasons we made a profit of around £6m which is hardly a gravy train given some of the figures people bandy about.

Suggests to me a great deal of naivety on the part of SJM to try and do the Premier League on the cheap then. Despite season ticket hikes declaring investment in players we really didn't and were relegated as the 3rd lowest wage payers in the Premier League (along with Birmingham and Derby, surprise surprise). If that moves us from a £6m a year profit (or more) to a £7m a year loss then surely a successful business man should have realised it would have been worth investing a few million more to maintain the profitable position of the Premier League?

As for the figures, the 2009 Deloitte review shows a £12.5m operating profit for 07/08 before transfers - more than the £6m stated above. When you add in the fact that we've made about £17m net income on transfers in the past 18 months (£20m if we include Bikey), we really shouldn't be badly off. If we really do cut our coat according to our cloth we should therefore be able to splash out on some sort of wool blend rather than polyester please.

[Royalwaster]

Yes but you could have spent several million and still got relegated and then we'd have needed to cut our cloth even more like Watford are having to do now ....

[joe999]

Ive not read all of this but im going to take a completely different view from the posters above.

I dont care whether you agree or not, chances are i wont read this again, but Im going to get it out there.

As grateful as I am to sir John for saving the club all those years ago, and taking us forward, giving us a brand spanking new stadium etc. etc. I think it's time for a change.
The money in football now is CLEARLY ridiculous, and even players in lower championship teams are tremendously overpaid, and credit to sir John for TRYING to do things the "morally correct" way.

However, it's got to the point where to compete with premier league clubs, and even most championship clubs, you need to be splashing about a few million a year on transfers. You can't seriously be saying that with all the businesses Sir John runs, he doesn't have hundreds of millions of pounds to himself. It's quite clear he's very well off to say the least. Sure, spending this much money is a risk, there is always a small chance it won't pay off and will eventually be wasted money, but at the moment it's showing NO ambition from the club whatsoever.

Take Saturday for example, if we'd gone up to Newcastle in a premier league match, with Steve Coppell as manager, and played his "cup team" we would have been stuffed, and the fans wouldn't have been happy. I personally don't see how this is any different. Most of our established players have gone, and without the will to spend some money on experienced players as replacements, we're playing 8 or 9 youngsters who are getting outthought and outplayed. Sure, Newcastle may be the team to beat in the Championship this year, but when you're failing to score against the likes of Forest, and never looking like scoring up at St. James' , it's worrying signs.

Next is all those times Sir John has said he would be happy to sell the club if someone with "deep enough pockets" as he puts it, would step in and make an offer. Now think of all the clubs being taken over at the moment. You can't tell me that if Portsmouth, and Notts County of all people can't find one of these businessmen to take over and fork out a bit of cash on the club, then we cant. We have the premiership experience now, we have the infrastructure, we have a decent stadium etc. etc. and I think if Sir John is serious about selling up, he'd be looking for a few more contacts right about now. But if he's not going to make the effort, and keep his little baby but not spend any money on it, then that's not good enough in my opinion. Spending hundreds of pounds to get up to newcastle, price of tickets, petrol, food, and all the other little bits and bobs, to see us get that outplayed just feels like I'm being conned out of good earned cash. I'm all for giving the youngsters a try, but that much inexperience in a team with no goals to our name yet just isn't right.

And the most annoying thing, transfer window closes in 2 weeks, and we're stuck til January.

Thanks for everything John, but do us a favor, and sell up!

[clauski]

Yes but you could have spent several million and still got relegated and then we'd have needed to cut our cloth even more like Watford are having to do now ....

Not forgetting the change in Premier League TV income meant that we would have received about £15m a year more than Watford that we failed to spend, of course

[Jimmy the Tree]

Well thank god for that! we can finally put this tedious ''where has all the money gone thread' to bed.

Joe999 has a rich backer who wants the club and will gladly lose millions backing new players a la Man city!

Now I can relax knowing we will be signing Rinaldo from Real. How he has persauded SJM to sell when we all know he has been holding on for dear life to the club that is his personal piggy bank, not wanting anybody else to get their hands on the golden goose.

I also have a few business opportunities that I can put his way, coal to newcastle, snow to eskimos etc. He will jump at the chance now he has the big money rolling in from Reading FC!

[prostak]

Ive not read all of this

That's as much as I needed to read to know where you're going with this one. I'm not going to rise to it (much), it just makes me sad now.
Here, we're not the only team surrounded by idiots demanding to know where the millions have gone, check this joker out - http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/blog ... r-finances

[winchester_royal]

Joe999 may well get his wish.

God knows how accurate my source is on this point, but apparently we are in advanced negotiations with an arab group over a take-over to be completed in the next couple of weeks.

Don't shoot the messenger, it's just what I've been told.

This is not a WUM I promise you that.

[Arch]

Joe999 may well get his wish.

God knows how accurate my source is on this point, but apparently we are in advanced negotiations with an arab group over a take-over to be completed in the next couple of weeks.

Don't shoot the messenger, it's just what I've been told.

This is not a WUM I promise you that.

I sincerely hope this is not true.

[winchester_royal]

Joe999 may well get his wish.

God knows how accurate my source is on this point, but apparently we are in advanced negotiations with an arab group over a take-over to be completed in the next couple of weeks.

Don't shoot the messenger, it's just what I've been told.

This is not a WUM I promise you that.

I sincerely hope this is not true.

Join the club.

[FiNeRaIn]

Don't think you are on the windup- I do however think there is about as much chance of that as burnley have of getting a champions league spot this season.

[SHORT AND CURLY]

Did Pompey a fat load of good

[Vision]

Yes we lost money last season alone, but on the back of a gravy train beyond the clubs dreams from 2005-2008.

2005/06 the most successful season in the club's history with virtual full houses from Xmas onwards we lost nearly £7m with a wage bill of £14.2m.

The accounts show a profit of roughly the same amount for the following 2 Premiership seasons with a wage bill of around 31m for 60/07 and 35m for 07/08. So over those 3 seasons we made a profit of around £6m which is hardly a gravy train given some of the figures people bandy about.

No published accounts for last season yet but if we crudely take the 40% wage cut as across the board then that would put us at 21m on wages alone. Losing 3 or 4 of the big earners (Shorey,Sonko,Kitson,Little) would at best take that figure down to around 18/19m i would reckon.

So in purely crude terms if in 05/06 we lost 7m with a 14m wage bill then with a likely wage bill of 18m then we would be staring at 11m loss under similiar circumstances. Hello Parachute payments!

And hello the need to raise 11m when the parachute payments run out.

A lot of which will be negated by the fact that the wage bill come the start of next season if in this division won't be anywhere near the estimated 18/19m it was at the end of last season.

To be fair the figures for the promotion season may well also be slightly skewed by the fact that if memory serves there was a big premium in promotion bonuses for the players upon acheiving promotion rather than flat salaries. I suspect the wage bill would have been lower than £14.2m had promotion not been acheived.

[Scarface]

£6.5m sold in the last week, surely now we can expect to see 2 or 3 players come in!!!

[Vision]

Yes we lost money last season alone, but on the back of a gravy train beyond the clubs dreams from 2005-2008.

2005/06 the most successful season in the club's history with virtual full houses from Xmas onwards we lost nearly £7m with a wage bill of £14.2m.

The accounts show a profit of roughly the same amount for the following 2 Premiership seasons with a wage bill of around 31m for 60/07 and 35m for 07/08. So over those 3 seasons we made a profit of around £6m which is hardly a gravy train given some of the figures people bandy about.

Suggests to me a great deal of naivety on the part of SJM to try and do the Premier League on the cheap then. Despite season ticket hikes declaring investment in players we really didn't and were relegated as the 3rd lowest wage payers in the Premier League (along with Birmingham and Derby, surprise surprise). If that moves us from a £6m a year profit (or more) to a £7m a year loss then surely a successful business man should have realised it would have been worth investing a few million more to maintain the profitable position of the Premier League?

As for the figures, the 2009 Deloitte review shows a £12.5m operating profit for 07/08 before transfers - more than the £6m stated above. When you add in the fact that we've made about £17m net income on transfers in the past 18 months (£20m if we include Bikey), we really shouldn't be badly off. If we really do cut our coat according to our cloth we should therefore be able to splash out on some sort of wool blend rather than polyester please.

http://www.footballeconomy.com/stats2/eng_reading.htm is where I've gleaned the pre-tax profit/loss figures from which are for Reading Football Club Holdings Ltd.

[Royal Rother]

Suggests to me a great deal of naivety on the part of SJM to try and do the Premier League on the cheap then. Despite season ticket hikes declaring investment in players we really didn't and were relegated as the 3rd lowest wage payers in the Premier League (along with Birmingham and Derby, surprise surprise). If that moves us from a £6m a year profit (or more) to a £7m a year loss then surely a successful business man should have realised it would have been worth investing a few million more to maintain the profitable position of the Premier League?
.

Once again. The money was available - Coppell chose not to use it.

[Hoop Blah]

To be fair the figures for the promotion season may well also be slightly skewed by the fact that if memory serves there was a big premium in promotion bonuses for the players upon acheiving promotion rather than flat salaries. I suspect the wage bill would have been lower than £14.2m had promotion not been acheived.

I don't think the bonus payments were that significant actually Vision. The squad kicked off a bit about it at the time and I heard via a contact I had that they only received something like an extra £15k or £50k (can't rememer which) per man for going up.

They signed the contracts that stipulated the bonus' and then didn't like it when that was all they got. Hahnemann definately wasn't happy about it and even came out in the press about it from what I recall.

[Vision]

To be fair the figures for the promotion season may well also be slightly skewed by the fact that if memory serves there was a big premium in promotion bonuses for the players upon acheiving promotion rather than flat salaries. I suspect the wage bill would have been lower than £14.2m had promotion not been acheived.

I don't think the bonus payments were that significant actually Vision. The squad kicked off a bit about it at the time and I heard via a contact I had that they only received something like an extra £15k or £50k (can't rememer which) per man for going up.

They signed the contracts that stipulated the bonus' and then didn't like it when that was all they got. Hahnemann definately wasn't happy about it and even came out in the press about it from what I recall.

I do vaguely remember the fuss at the time , i assumed it would be a fair bit. I think the fact that we had a 14m wage bill as a championship club that season which surprised me.

[winchester_royal]

Don't think you are on the windup- I do however think there is about as much chance of that as burnley have of getting a champions league spot this season.

I don't believe it myself, but it does come from someone who would know if it was true.

Maybe he's the one on a wind-up.....