The Debt.

Where fellow sufferers gather to share the pain, longing and unrequited transfer requests that make being a Wanderer what it is...

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StaffsTrotter
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Re: The Debt.

Post by StaffsTrotter » Thu Apr 23, 2015 10:00 am

In terms of our debt, to what extent did/ does the stadium play a part in its scale? Listening to Karen Brady talking about the reduction of ST prices on the radio, on the back of the new TV deal and the extra capacity they have to fill. No mention whatsoever of the fact that they have got a £600m stadium and are only paying £15m upfront and £2.5m annual lease - they are getting more than that for selling upton park. That club has got a fantastic deal and huge competitive leg up on the back of a huge public subsidy.
I know Stokes stadium also received a significant euro grant/ subsidy, as it was initially badged up as a 'community/ multipurpose' stadium. This seemed to be subsequently dropped, albeit discreetly to avoid clawback of the grant.

Everyone seems to comment on our dealings being murky, I sometimes wonder if we weren't murky enough

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Re: The Debt.

Post by Gravedigger » Thu Apr 23, 2015 11:17 am

I don't think the public will be enjoying the Olympic Stadium between matches. It's been taken from us, and we London Council Tax payers got stuffed over the community facilities promised. The Golds and Brady have lined their pockets and on the final whistle of the first game it'll be mayhem getting such a large crowd out of an area where the only real transport interchange is Stratford. And the shortfall of 15,000 bums on seats won't be addressed by reducing the ST prices. Let's face it, if they're 15,000 short now they'll be 15,000 short come opening day. Be like watching two dung beetles in the Sahara. 8)
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Re: The Debt.

Post by CAPSLOCK » Thu Apr 23, 2015 1:02 pm

Is it not Burnden Leisure accounts that are late?
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Re: The Debt.

Post by Prufrock » Thu Apr 23, 2015 1:30 pm

Gravedigger wrote:I don't think the public will be enjoying the Olympic Stadium between matches. It's been taken from us, and we London Council Tax payers got stuffed over the community facilities promised. The Golds and Brady have lined their pockets and on the final whistle of the first game it'll be mayhem getting such a large crowd out of an area where the only real transport interchange is Stratford. And the shortfall of 15,000 bums on seats won't be addressed by reducing the ST prices. Let's face it, if they're 15,000 short now they'll be 15,000 short come opening day. Be like watching two dung beetles in the Sahara. 8)

Whilst I disagree with your conclusion, I think you've hit the nail on the head in terms of the main issue. Is anyone under the impression that they'd be cutting prices if they thought they'd get 60,000 at the current prices, TV deal or not?!

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Re: The Debt.

Post by boltonboris » Thu Apr 23, 2015 2:40 pm

Prufrock wrote:
Gravedigger wrote:I don't think the public will be enjoying the Olympic Stadium between matches. It's been taken from us, and we London Council Tax payers got stuffed over the community facilities promised. The Golds and Brady have lined their pockets and on the final whistle of the first game it'll be mayhem getting such a large crowd out of an area where the only real transport interchange is Stratford. And the shortfall of 15,000 bums on seats won't be addressed by reducing the ST prices. Let's face it, if they're 15,000 short now they'll be 15,000 short come opening day. Be like watching two dung beetles in the Sahara. 8)

Whilst I disagree with your conclusion, I think you've hit the nail on the head in terms of the main issue. Is anyone under the impression that they'd be cutting prices if they thought they'd get 60,000 at the current prices, TV deal or not?!

We're dead good us, community club with the fans at heart. No you aren't, or you wouldn't have shareholders. You're a business with the shareholders at heart. As you're required to.
Regardless of the reasoning, we should all be pleased that finally, somebody is reducing the prices quite dramatically.

I'm not lumping you in this bracket, by any means. But I've seen so much of these so called football fans laughing about this because "West Ham av got no fanz" and all that bollocks, as though it's a bad thing
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Re: The Debt.

Post by Gravedigger » Thu Apr 23, 2015 2:55 pm

Aye, BB. Very commendable but are they doing it for fans' sake or just because they can as they've stiffed the whole of London, got a stadium really on a peppercorn and when they sell Upton Park they, the directors, won't be tipping any of it up to 'Good causes'. Still, we'll see what happens the season after. Can't see too many clubs following their fine example. 8)
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Re: The Debt.

Post by Lord Kangana » Thu Apr 23, 2015 10:39 pm

CAPSLOCK wrote:Is it not Burnden Leisure accounts that are late?

Dunno, I'll ask the question.

What does BL do with our club anymore though? I thought it was a (more or less) defunct "vehicle"?
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Re: The Debt.

Post by Beefheart » Fri Apr 24, 2015 2:12 am

Worthy4England wrote:
Bruce Rioja wrote:Am I correct in thinking that the players are valued at Zero, Worthy?
Doesn't actually work quite like that - when we were in the Prem, I think there was an obligation for Directors to give an opinion of the value of the squad, this hasn't been in the recent filings, but you can't actually account for them as a tangible asset, because you never know what you're going to get for them in the transfer market, so there isn't actually a line that equates to "player worth"...

What happens is they capitalize the cost of the players registration (what we paid for their registration (broadly transfer fees) + agents fees etc.) which are then amortized over the length of Contract they've been offered. So there isn't anything in the Accounts that could lead you to the conclusion they were valued at zero.

The value amortized @ end FY 2013 was £39m we added a couple of million, but shunted 17, so ended @ £23m - need to subtract accumulated amortization of £20m and you get to a notional net book value of around £3m. All that means in round terms is that we'd benefit from the full value of any transfer fees as were ahead on out accumulated amortization (broadly) - sure there's Accountancy types who could explain this better than I. :-)
Acquired players are capitalised on the b/s but those from the youth system aren't as they'd be classed as internally generated intangible assets (as covered by IAS 38). It is technically possible to ascribe a value to these in certain circumstances if they meet certain criteria. e.g You could look to a recent transfer of a similar player and use that as a basis or you could estimate the cost invested in developing a youth player through the academy and then capitalise that cost on offering them a professional contract, but that's obviously an inexact science so in the interest of prudence would most likely not be allowed)

Worthy's right that given that the NBV is only around £3m that there's a good chance of gains on disposal as the selling price of the player is more likely to exceed the NBV (I'm assuming each player would be listed separately), however part of the £17m amortisation may include write offs for outgoing players for whom the fee received was less than the remaining value of their contracts.

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Re: The Debt.

Post by bobo the clown » Fri Apr 24, 2015 6:15 am

^^^ I've just remembered why I didn't go into Accountancy !!
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Re: The Debt.

Post by Bruce Rioja » Fri Apr 24, 2015 9:24 am

bobo the clown wrote:^^^ I've just remembered why I didn't go into Accountancy !!
Because you'd find it too lively? ;)

So, bean-counters, how does the value of a former academy player, let's use the boy Clough as an example here, let's say that he's valued at £15m for the sake of argument, how does that factor in to FFP, or doesn't it?
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Re: The Debt.

Post by Beefheart » Fri Apr 24, 2015 9:38 am

Bruce Rioja wrote:
bobo the clown wrote:^^^ I've just remembered why I didn't go into Accountancy !!
Because you'd find it too lively? ;)

So, bean-counters, how does the value of a former academy player, let's use the boy Clough as an example here, let's say that he's valued at £15m for the sake of argument, how does that factor in to FFP, or doesn't it?
I can't claim to understand FFP in detail but I think it's more to do with how much of a loss you're allowed to make -a max of £8m a season, was it? I doubt there's any academy players values actually reflected on the balance sheet (except I guess any signing on fees or agents fees but those are unlikely to be material), but if they were it would only be any element that impacts the P&L (either the amortisation for that year, or any gain/loss on disposal) that would matter for the purposes of FFP.

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Re: The Debt.

Post by Worthy4England » Fri Apr 24, 2015 11:20 am

Beefheart wrote:
Worthy4England wrote:
Bruce Rioja wrote:Am I correct in thinking that the players are valued at Zero, Worthy?
Doesn't actually work quite like that - when we were in the Prem, I think there was an obligation for Directors to give an opinion of the value of the squad, this hasn't been in the recent filings, but you can't actually account for them as a tangible asset, because you never know what you're going to get for them in the transfer market, so there isn't actually a line that equates to "player worth"...

What happens is they capitalize the cost of the players registration (what we paid for their registration (broadly transfer fees) + agents fees etc.) which are then amortized over the length of Contract they've been offered. So there isn't anything in the Accounts that could lead you to the conclusion they were valued at zero.

The value amortized @ end FY 2013 was £39m we added a couple of million, but shunted 17, so ended @ £23m - need to subtract accumulated amortization of £20m and you get to a notional net book value of around £3m. All that means in round terms is that we'd benefit from the full value of any transfer fees as were ahead on out accumulated amortization (broadly) - sure there's Accountancy types who could explain this better than I. :-)
Acquired players are capitalised on the b/s but those from the youth system aren't as they'd be classed as internally generated intangible assets (as covered by IAS 38). It is technically possible to ascribe a value to these in certain circumstances if they meet certain criteria. e.g You could look to a recent transfer of a similar player and use that as a basis or you could estimate the cost invested in developing a youth player through the academy and then capitalise that cost on offering them a professional contract, but that's obviously an inexact science so in the interest of prudence would most likely not be allowed)

Worthy's right that given that the NBV is only around £3m that there's a good chance of gains on disposal as the selling price of the player is more likely to exceed the NBV (I'm assuming each player would be listed separately), however part of the £17m amortisation may include write offs for outgoing players for whom the fee received was less than the remaining value of their contracts.
On the last bit, they took a hit of circa £2.7m for onerous Contracts - players who we loaned out and didn't recover their salaries or who couldn't fulfill their contractual commitments (assume Stuey for the last bit and Andrew et. al. for the first bit)

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Re: The Debt.

Post by Worthy4England » Fri Apr 24, 2015 11:27 am

Beefheart wrote:
Bruce Rioja wrote:
bobo the clown wrote:^^^ I've just remembered why I didn't go into Accountancy !!
Because you'd find it too lively? ;)

So, bean-counters, how does the value of a former academy player, let's use the boy Clough as an example here, let's say that he's valued at £15m for the sake of argument, how does that factor in to FFP, or doesn't it?
I can't claim to understand FFP in detail but I think it's more to do with how much of a loss you're allowed to make -a max of £8m a season, was it? I doubt there's any academy players values actually reflected on the balance sheet (except I guess any signing on fees or agents fees but those are unlikely to be material), but if they were it would only be any element that impacts the P&L (either the amortisation for that year, or any gain/loss on disposal) that would matter for the purposes of FFP.
This is correct - depending on the payment structure, we'd lose the Intangible bit of Clough off our Intangbles. That would lower our cost and therefore our profitability would increase.

If we also got a capital sum, that would (it might be staged so you don't get all of it in one year under Rev Rec) be booked as a capital sum in Revenue.

Both of these (assuming for a mo, Eddie didn't request a lump sum payback), effectively would just increase our ability to spend the new dosh, without falling foul of FFP...

As an aside, we had no outstanding liabilities in relation to shunting Dougie and his Management Team... :-)

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Re: The Debt.

Post by Bruce Rioja » Fri Apr 24, 2015 11:37 am

Worthy4England wrote: As an aside, we had no outstanding liabilities in relation to shunting Dougie and his Management Team... :-)
That's very interesting, especially after Megson took the piss for the duration of his contract. So did we actually have a 'do one' type clause in Freedman's contract?
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Re: The Debt.

Post by Worthy4England » Fri Apr 24, 2015 12:07 pm

Bruce Rioja wrote:
Worthy4England wrote: As an aside, we had no outstanding liabilities in relation to shunting Dougie and his Management Team... :-)
That's very interesting, especially after Megson took the piss for the duration of his contract. So did we actually have a 'do one' type clause in Freedman's contract?
Possibly - it says management team flirted and no additional liabilities arose as a result of this. (Not clear whether any liabilities arose at all, or only "additional" ones covered by the statement...)

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Re: The Debt.

Post by CAPSLOCK » Fri Apr 24, 2015 1:18 pm

Freedman took a job, almost immediately

Probably similar terms to he was on with us

Megson didn't

I'd suggest thats the difference
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Re: The Debt.

Post by bobo the clown » Fri Apr 24, 2015 4:14 pm

Maybe they showed he was failing on competency. Shouldn't have been difficult.
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Re: The Debt.

Post by Lord Kangana » Fri Apr 24, 2015 5:21 pm

It is an interesting question though...

Outside the really big payers, who will have substantial sums to burn and will have to offer the earth to get the (much sought after) candidate they want, what constitutes a run-of-mill football managers contract?

Surely, in this era of much higher remuneration, they won't have the gold plated perks that may have been dished out in the past, can they?

In other words, whats a manager at ours likely to get, and what's his notice period? A month? A year? Something more complex?

Anybody know, as in actually know? Best guesses more than welcome, but please highlight them as such!
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Re: The Debt.

Post by boltonboris » Fri Apr 24, 2015 5:38 pm

Maybe his contract was target led.. Like a sales guy and if he's not hitting those targets.. Toodle-pip, here's your 3 months notice
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Re: The Debt.

Post by Armchair Wanderer » Sat Apr 25, 2015 3:09 am

Lord Kangana wrote:In other words, whats a manager at ours likely to get, and what's his notice period? A month? A year? Something more complex?

Anybody know, as in actually know? Best guesses more than welcome, but please highlight them as such!
From what I gather from TV/radio once you give a player/manager a contract you have to pay for that full contract unless you come to a deal with them, sell them on or, in the case of managers, they're sacked and they get a new club.

I have no idea what Meggo's doing now but he may not have been that bothered about working when he was getting paid for not working. When he did eventually take a job it was with a club near to where he lives. That sounds like easing yourself into retirement to me. Although, having said that he did seem a bit miffed by the whole gardening leave thing, maybe he wanted the cash upfront as opposed to on a monthly basis. Freedo may have accepted whatever the club was offering to get rid of him, so therefore he was free to get a new job.
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