BWFC financial investigation

[Lofthouse Lower]

By Sir David Conn

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In brief:

Turnover £62m (up from £59m)

Match day income £9m
TV £38m
Hotel £8m
Corporate £2m
Merch £1m
Sponsorship £3m

Wages £46m (up from £41m)
Wages as Turnover 74%
Loss before tax £35m (£13m in 2009 )

Net Debt £93m
Interest payable £5m

Highest paid director - Gartside £0.5m

Ownership - 95% owned by Eddie

Money from owner £85m at 5%

Summary

Chairman and FA board member Phil Gartside spent two years advocating a Premier League second division, to cushion the financial blow for relegated clubs. The increased parachute payments, £48m over four seasons, were introduced partly to mollify that worry. Gartside has cause to be terrified of relegation: a 14th-place finish, after 10 consecutive seasons in the Premier League, achieved at a loss of £35m, with debts up to £93m and £85m loans. Controversial recruitment of Owen Coyle from Burnley has proven successful. Challenge is to stay up without huge losses and owner’s subsidy

[Dave Sutton's barnet]

Figures are creeping up - the wrong ones, that is. Most worrying in a way is the 74% wage-to-turnover ratio - shouldn't be higher than 50% in a viable business (football clubs often flout it but economics rules still apply) and IIRC it wasn't in the Allardyce era.

[BWFC_Insane]

Figures are creeping up - the wrong ones, that is. Most worrying in a way is the 74% wage-to-turnover ratio - shouldn't be higher than 50% in a viable business (football clubs often flout it but economics rules still apply) and IIRC it wasn't in the Allardyce era.

Player wages have been driven up in recent times by the likes of Man Citeh holding such large squads on silly money.

So to maintain the same level and quality of squad you have to pay more. Its been going up for most clubs.

I believe Blackburns was at nearly 90% a few years back.

They've scaled it back and their league position reflects it!

[TKIZ!]

So we could really do with the high finish then?

[scotty]

absolutely frightening figures. We lost £100,000 every single day in the last financial year. Thats clearly unsustainable for a football club (or any other business for that matter) even if the debts are being underwritten by Eddie Davies.

[TKIZ!]

absolutely frightening figures. We lost £100,000 every single day in the last financial year. Thats clearly unsustainable for a football club (or any other business for that matter) even if the debts are being underwritten by Eddie Davies.

The problem is more how do you rectify this and still maintain a Premier League status?

Bar being bought out by someone incredibly wealth what other options besides consistently selling our best players and never finishing higher than mid-table?

[BWFC_Insane]

absolutely frightening figures. We lost £100,000 every single day in the last financial year. Thats clearly unsustainable for a football club (or any other business for that matter) even if the debts are being underwritten by Eddie Davies.

The problem is more how do you rectify this and still maintain a Premier League status?

Bar being bought out by someone incredibly wealth what other options besides consistently selling our best players and never finishing higher than mid-table?

That will break us even. Staying in the premiership and reducing our debt significantly without some oil rich buyer coming in is going to be virtually impossible.

[Dave Sutton's barnet]

Figures are creeping up - the wrong ones, that is. Most worrying in a way is the 74% wage-to-turnover ratio - shouldn't be higher than 50% in a viable business (football clubs often flout it but economics rules still apply) and IIRC it wasn't in the Allardyce era.

Player wages have been driven up in recent times by the likes of Man Citeh holding such large squads on silly money. So to maintain the same level and quality of squad you have to pay more. Its been going up for most clubs. I believe Blackburns was at nearly 90% a few years back. They've scaled it back and their league position reflects it!

Conn in the Guardian: "The Premier League's total wage bill in 2009-10 was £1.4bn, an average £70m per club, accounting for an average 68% of the clubs' income." So we're above average.

[Lofthouse Lower]

We're near the top

[BWFC_Insane]

Figures are creeping up - the wrong ones, that is. Most worrying in a way is the 74% wage-to-turnover ratio - shouldn't be higher than 50% in a viable business (football clubs often flout it but economics rules still apply) and IIRC it wasn't in the Allardyce era.

Player wages have been driven up in recent times by the likes of Man Citeh holding such large squads on silly money. So to maintain the same level and quality of squad you have to pay more. Its been going up for most clubs. I believe Blackburns was at nearly 90% a few years back. They've scaled it back and their league position reflects it!

Conn in the Guardian: "The Premier League's total wage bill in 2009-10 was £1.4bn, an average £70m per club, accounting for an average 68% of the clubs' income." So we're above average.

Aye and considering our wage bill is well below average shows how small we are as a club in comparison to the average.

So we're going to have to carry on with the high wages to turnover percentage if we expect to survive.

[Hoboh]

Pity we don't do performance related pay!!! the last weeks of this season would see us break even.

It's the legacy of ginger nuts all this is, basically its a good job football is predominatly a winter sport because if it was summer with other things to do the figures would be far worse.

I'd welcome the devil as owner if he was actually financially competent with a lust for success.

[BWFC_Insane]

Pity we don't do performance related pay!!! the last weeks of this season would see us break even.

It's the legacy of ginger nuts all this is, basically its a good job football is predominatly a winter sport because if it was summer with other things to do the figures would be far worse.

I'd welcome the devil as owner if he was actually financially competent with a lust for success.

See hoboh I blame Sammy Lee and to a lesser extent Allardyce more than I would Megson.

Megson had to buy a lot of players in a short space of time to keep us competitive in a league at the same time as getting rid of an absolute load of shite, Lee (and Allardyce) had bought. He probably ended up overpaying in some cases, something we won't do now, but at the time it was almost emergency measures.

At the very least Megson's signings kept us up and for some of them we'll make a tidy profit. When Lee left us with the likes of Braaten, Wilhelmsson, Alonso, Cid, Michalik, Dzemaili, Samuel in the squad we were sinking fast. The decent players we had at the time were the likes of Campo, Speed, Stelios who were ageing and Anelka who was going to leave sooner or later. From that point we had a choice, sell the jewels, accept relegation but balance the books a bit and hope we rebuild. Or sell Anelka and spend in January (and the summer after if we stay up) and gamble everything on staying up.

Whether you like it or not or accept it or not that was the call they had to make. Thankfully we spent and stayed up, the downside being we spent all the Anelka money in January and still didn't replace him, then had to do that the summer after and then of course the ageing players left along with Diouf, and we had to spend once again to replace them.

We're currently two decent close seasons away from being far more stable squad and player wise, but for me we can't afford half measures. If we sell Cahill we need to reinvest what we can and also use the budget from releasing the out of contracts to bring in further replacements.

[a1]

allardyce signed cid.. and jayloyd.

[Prufrock]

Yeah Allardyce is why we are fcuked.

[Tombwfc]

Lee didn't storm the boardroom with a shotgun and force them to give Wilhelmsson/Braaten/whoever whatever they wanted. Nor Megson with Shittu, or Big Sam with Jardel.

Harry Redknapp was on TV the other week saying that he knew very little of what his players were getting paid. He may be full of shit (and happy to believe anything that'll allow him to sleep at night) but generally I don't think managers do have much of a say in what we pay players. If our wage bill is too high, the buck stops with those upstairs.

Certainly it does appear as though we might not see as much of that Cahill fee as people were expecting. Might be time to give the agents of Gardner and Tamir a call.

[a1]

erm, i read it wrong.

:/

but,

it'll be reet.