Finance

[WestYorksRoyal]

Who is leaving us this summer? Gunter, Mannone, McCleary, Blackett, Popa are out of contract. Would expect Barrow to follow too, and Aluko and McNulty if we find takers.

These are all Gourlay signings, presumably on big wages and would be a phenomenal amount off the books. Possibly £80k - £100k p/w, with players we could replace relatively cheap.

I guess the question today's report raises is whether we may be tempted with offers for players like Swift or Moore, as these 2 are on good wages too.

I'm not actually overly alarmed by this. We already knew the Gourlay era was a disaster. 5 or 6 bad signings on £15k - £20k p/w really add up for a club like us. Flush them out and stability will return..

There are 2 big questions though. Firstly, will we get burned by FFP? I doubt we can use the current situation as an excuse; these are last year's accounts. Secondly, will the owners stick around to ride out this storm? We can stabilise with their support; we could be screwed without.

[WestYorksRoyal]

Also, £3m loan fee for Aluko from a related party.

Not in the same league as Derby's £80m stadium, but still pretty much impossible to justify.

[Millsy]

"Majedski Stadium".

Come back to me when someone who can actually spell properly says something meaningful.

Exactly this.

You can just Google the word majestic or check it in a dictionary it's not exactly a difficult word.

[Notts Royal]

Really grim reading that is. So we’re only allowed a £39m loss over 3 seasons, and we’ve managed to surpass that in just 1?!

Also, is the wages issue due to abnormally high wages, or due to too big a squad on average wages adding up?

We all know the recruitment has been absolutely shocking for years. And the size of the squad is a joke too - I remember Clement saying he wanted to reduce the size but was unable to do so. I remember it being an issue around the Clarke era too. Now Bowen is facing the same issue. And the funny thing is that some players purchased under these managers don’t strike me as their signings - Hurtado, Araruna, Wieser.
What happened to the old fashioned idea of letting the manager fashion his own team?

It’s quite possible several of these managers could’ve achieved more given a smaller closer-knit group to work with. Weve seen clearly that some of our own academy players are more up to it than these poor signings. Why don’t we learn from it?

The owners clearly don’t give a toss about the financial side which I think is pretty worrying - what happens when they’ve had enough?

[Snowflake Royal]

Moore being given a bumper contract for being refused permission to go to Brighton is looking absolutely insane now.

How much must he be on? £30k a week? More? We could have got £8m for him, instead we've paid out how many to him?

Mannone was reportedly on big money. Aluko will have been on a huge wedge as a record signing with lots of experience coming from Fulham.

I thought everyone was overly confident about our financial state, but even I didn't think we'd practically double the loss we were all looking forward to coming off the books.

Puscas, Joao and Ejaria look like absolutely insane signings now.

[3points]

Moore being given a bumper contract for being refused permission to go to Brighton is looking absolutely insane now.

How much must he be on? £30k a week? More? We could have got £8m for him, instead we've paid out how many to him?

Mannone was reportedly on big money. Aluko will have been on a huge wedge as a record signing with lots of experience coming from Fulham.

I thought everyone was overly confident about our financial state, but even I didn't think we'd practically double the loss we were all looking forward to coming off the books.

Puscas, Joao and Ejaria look like absolutely insane signings now.

I think Mr Dai was convinced to "roll the dice" in supporting a spending spree to support Gomes and now it looks like a poor return generally on that investment. Looks like Kia likes to play football manager but with mr Dai's money

[Elm Park Kid]

These sort of figures aren't that surprising in the Championship. Almost all of the league is losing money, and the bigger clubs pushing for promotion are losing fortunes. There's a podcast called 'Price of Football' where they've discussed this a few times.

Our recent low attendances and pretty poor commercial revenues do mean that we tend to have a lower income than clubs such as Forest though.

Fans can't have it both ways; you can't keep calling for signings and a new manager every six months and even come close to balancing the books in this league. Sure, we've spent money poorly here and there, but there is just a natural low success rate with transfers in football. It's why a lot of clubs have multiple seasons spending tens of millions before they are able to put together a promotion winning side. Take Villa for example: They came very close to going under before a new 'money-bags' owner came in to maintain the high spending - and they still only just scraped promotion.

[WestYorksRoyal]

Moore being given a bumper contract for being refused permission to go to Brighton is looking absolutely insane now.

How much must he be on? £30k a week? More? We could have got £8m for him, instead we've paid out how many to him?

Mannone was reportedly on big money. Aluko will have been on a huge wedge as a record signing with lots of experience coming from Fulham.

I thought everyone was overly confident about our financial state, but even I didn't think we'd practically double the loss we were all looking forward to coming off the books.

Puscas, Joao and Ejaria look like absolutely insane signings now.

I think Mr Dai was convinced to "roll the dice" in supporting a spending spree to support Gomes and now it looks like a poor return generally on that investment. Looks like Kia likes to play football manager but with mr Dai's money

To be fair, there's every chance we'd be in a relegation battle without the summer signings, and how much does relegation cost? There's definitely an argument we could have used scouting and been more savvy up with strikers, but our deal for Ejaria was an absolute steal

Wages are ultimately a bigger killer than transfer fees, and this plight is the result of poor management under Zingarevich which was taken to a different stratosphere under Gourlay. Only way to fix is getting big earners off the books, which is ongoing.

Edwards, Ilori, Bacuna, Meyler sorted. Temporary fixes in place over Barrow, McNulty, Popa and Mannone. McCleary, Gunter, Blackett, Mannone and Popa all leaving for good this summer. Hopefully somebody somewhere can take Aluko.

When you see them all listed out like that, the root of our problems is obvious.

[Elm Park Kid]

Moore being given a bumper contract for being refused permission to go to Brighton is looking absolutely insane now.

How much must he be on? £30k a week? More? We could have got £8m for him, instead we've paid out how many to him?

Mannone was reportedly on big money. Aluko will have been on a huge wedge as a record signing with lots of experience coming from Fulham.

I thought everyone was overly confident about our financial state, but even I didn't think we'd practically double the loss we were all looking forward to coming off the books.

Puscas, Joao and Ejaria look like absolutely insane signings now.

I think Mr Dai was convinced to "roll the dice" in supporting a spending spree to support Gomes and now it looks like a poor return generally on that investment. Looks like Kia likes to play football manager but with mr Dai's money

To be fair, there's every chance we'd be in a relegation battle without the summer signings, and how much does relegation cost? There's definitely an argument we could have used scouting and been more savvy up with strikers, but our deal for Ejaria was an absolute steal

Wages are ultimately a bigger killer than transfer fees, and this plight is the result of poor management under Zingarevich which was taken to a different stratosphere under Gourlay. Only way to fix is getting big earners off the books, which is ongoing.

Edwards, Ilori, Bacuna, Meyler sorted. Temporary fixes in place over Barrow, McNulty, Popa and Mannone. McCleary, Gunter, Blackett, Mannone and Popa all leaving for good this summer. Hopefully somebody somewhere can take Aluko.

When you see them all listed out like that, the root of our problems is obvious.

Well, we only had 18m of revenue in the Championship . . . . . .

[Snowflake Royal]

Moore being given a bumper contract for being refused permission to go to Brighton is looking absolutely insane now.

How much must he be on? £30k a week? More? We could have got £8m for him, instead we've paid out how many to him?

Mannone was reportedly on big money. Aluko will have been on a huge wedge as a record signing with lots of experience coming from Fulham.

I thought everyone was overly confident about our financial state, but even I didn't think we'd practically double the loss we were all looking forward to coming off the books.

Puscas, Joao and Ejaria look like absolutely insane signings now.

I think Mr Dai was convinced to "roll the dice" in supporting a spending spree to support Gomes and now it looks like a poor return generally on that investment. Looks like Kia likes to play football manager but with mr Dai's money

To be fair, there's every chance we'd be in a relegation battle without the summer signings, and how much does relegation cost? There's definitely an argument we could have used scouting and been more savvy up with strikers, but our deal for Ejaria was an absolute steal

Wages are ultimately a bigger killer than transfer fees, and this plight is the result of poor management under Zingarevich which was taken to a different stratosphere under Gourlay. Only way to fix is getting big earners off the books, which is ongoing.

Edwards, Ilori, Bacuna, Meyler sorted. Temporary fixes in place over Barrow, McNulty, Popa and Mannone. McCleary, Gunter, Blackett, Mannone and Popa all leaving for good this summer. Hopefully somebody somewhere can take Aluko.

When you see them all listed out like that, the root of our problems is obvious.

Hmmm far from convinced on that.

Olise could deputise for Ejaria well and we'd have seen more strength in midfield with more from Rino / Adam.

Goals would be a bit of an issue, but Meite basically would have played almost every game and his record is pretty good. We would have kept Nova. Maybe Loader would have done better if he wasn't sidelined by signing two multi-million pound strikers after refusing to let him leave. Baldock could maybe have stepped up a bit more.

Don't really see us being a huge amount worse off to be honest.

[WestYorksRoyal]

It's all its, buts and maybes, but ultimately investing in a team that only narrowly avoided relegation for 2 seasons is a risk worth taking. The revenue lost from relegation would cripple this club.

[URZZZZ]

It's all its, buts and maybes, but ultimately investing in a team that only narrowly avoided relegation for 2 seasons is a risk worth taking. The revenue lost from relegation would cripple this club.

Personally I think they invested all that money on the basis we were going to get top 6 this season, however unrealistic the reality of that is

They realised pretty sharpish that Gomes wasn’t up to the job, sacked him and told Bowen to steady the ship but still with an eye on trying to reach the top 6, hence Bowen saying something along those lines when he joined

In other words, I think we tried to gamble and it hasn’t worked out too well

[Snowflake Royal]

It's all its, buts and maybes, but ultimately investing in a team that only narrowly avoided relegation for 2 seasons is a risk worth taking. The revenue lost from relegation would cripple this club.

Frequent £10m - £45m losses in a single season won't?

It's precisely this total lack of responsibility with money, long expensive contracts on unproven mediocre players, that is screwing us year on year on year.

[Snowflake Royal]

Also, relegation will only cripple us because of our absolutely basketcase insane spending.

[Royals and Racers]

No London Irish income from next season won`t help- unless there is a deal that they will pay something as compensation for breaking the contract.

[Zip]

I cannot see how we will escape a points deduction. For the three seasons from 2016/17 through to and including 2018/19 we are clearly in breach and will presumably be duly punished.

[Hound]

I cannot see how we will escape a points deduction. For the three seasons from 2016/17 through to and including 2018/19 we are clearly in breach and will presumably be duly punished.

You'd think so. I'm not sure how they wriggle out of this one tbh

There was the odd rumour earlier in the season that they knew they couldn't escape the 9pt penalty so spent a bit more anyway to try to avoid being relegated on top. Maybe a bit mental if so, but it actually may have worked

One plus side is we do have some sellable assets now. Swift, olise, Meite, Moore, Ejaria and Richards could all bring in a few quid. Added to offloading the Gunter, GMac, Obita, Mannone etc contracts, there is a way out of this, but it might not be too pretty

[WestYorksRoyal]

It's all its, buts and maybes, but ultimately investing in a team that only narrowly avoided relegation for 2 seasons is a risk worth taking. The revenue lost from relegation would cripple this club.

Frequent £10m - £45m losses in a single season won't?

It's precisely this total lack of responsibility with money, long expensive contracts on unproven mediocre players, that is screwing us year on year on year.

It's not the same sort of spending that got us into this mess though. These are young, hungry players with every opportunity to improve and make a profit for us in the future. You can debate the extent to which they're fulfilling it, but all 3 have shown glimpses of what they can offer this team.

What's got us into this mess is signing too many mediocre journeymen on over inflated wages who have no resale value and who we struggle to even shift off our books for free.

I'd also advise anyone comparing the circumstances to consider our academy. You could almost put out a good Championship XI from players we let go from 2013 - 2018 to make way for overpriced overpaid dross. Now we see a clear path for players like Olise and McIntyre.

Are we currently reliant upon our owners to stay afloat? Definitely yes. Could we see a points deduction? Sounds likely. But are we turning a corner and putting this messy era behind us? So long as we can ride out the consequences, undoubtedly yes.

[Nameless]

No London Irish income from next season won`t help- unless there is a deal that they will pay something as compensation for breaking the contract.

I heard Brentford’s ground won’t be ready and so Irish have nowhere to play next season.....

[Stranded]

Need to remember a 40m loss is not necessarily a 40m FFP loss. That should be considerably less.