Wfc Finances

I suppose my main puzzlement over this allegedly deliberate lying to the fans, even if by omission, is what you believe the club expects to gain from it. If it is a deliberate act, there is presumably some purpose to it.

 

Not a problem with podcasts, though.

 

Kieran Maguire basically says no clubs get rich getting promoted to the Premier Leagure. All the money (basically0 gets spent on players wages and agents.

 

I’m not sure that’s news for too many people. The trick, and this where we’ve failed so spectacularly, is to spend that money wisely on assets who increase in value and give you the best chance to solidify you status at that level for a sustained period of time.

 

He's 100% correct. Other than the top 6 or so, staying in the prem means annual losses, but maintaining a higher investment value (if you want to buy a prem club, you can only buy one of 20 entities).

 

£9-10mil for Cucho
£2mil for Zinckernagel
£2-4mil for Bachmann

Gray left £70k p/w = £3.640mil
Foster left £40k p/w = £2mil
N’Koulou left £20k p/w £1mil
Kucka left £30k p/w =£1.560mil
King left £50k p/w = £2.6mil

£10,800,000 in wages gone (approx)

Then add

Cucho £20k p/w = £1mil
Zinckernagel £20k p/w = £1mil
Bachmann £20k p/w = £1mil

£3,000,000 (approx)

So based off that, we’ve “made” approximately £26,800,000 so far on outs. If Bachmann goes for £4mil and Cucho left for £10mil then it would be £29,800,000.

I know this is a simpleton view but making up the deficit of the £45mil from the fall out of the Prem is going well.

Knowing we have to shift at least another 6-8 more players because of the homegrown squad rule, we should be able to bring in some decent players for Edwards.

 

Not if Mogi has anything to do with it.

 

Our PL parachute payments for 23/24 and any future TV revenue received between 2023 and 2025 had been pledged as security to Macquarie. Signed by Duxbury and doesn’t include 22/23 parachute payments (which may have been previously pledged).

https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/00104194/filing-history

https://s3.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/...0f7882db49aeda390b96c2109ec604ddbe25d5e6ea839

 

Giarettas divorce bill

 

Haven’t bothered to check but what are the repayment terms of the M loan ?

 

It doesn’t say. It’s just a pledge of security for a credit facility. I imagine that will be governed/set out in a different document.

 

Didn’t mean the pledge. Must say in the accounts when the loan payments are due.

 

I don’t think so a) because the loan was probably taken out after the period covered by the accounts and b) even if not one cannot assume the terms are exactly the same.

 

You’re right, was post year end, so we will have to wait for next years accounts.

 

Is there any asset or revenue stream Duxbury doesn’t instantly borrow against? Still according to him the finances are tip top so we can back Edwards with a Bayat double dip!

 

Isn’t the 23/24 parachute payment £45mil? If so, and we’ve borrowed against that, you’ve got to assume it’s because we’re about to buy some Mogi players for our promotion push.

 

When we get new management we can finally replace Z cars with this

 

Is Tony Blair trying to buy the club?

 

I think we are currently at the Gordon Brown stage

 

At least we have not hit the David Cameron point of total denial of European competition.

On the other hand, it does look like this summer has been a Boris style “oven ready transfer window”

 

£35m and the final payment.

 

Not really sure what the arrangement is. Presumably that income has been used to guarantee/secure the loan repayment rather than actually borrowed it. If we effectively brought forward our income by a season each year you can see what the issue will be when our income drops off a cliff in a couple of seasons if we have no valuable assets to sell or significant income with which to pay back the loan.

 

Yuck

 

Yes, the 22/23 parachute payments were already pledged to Macquarie Bank as part of the previous loan agreement. Borrowing against future guaranteed payments is ok in principle, although we will be paying a premium price in interest in doing this. For me this is worrying. It's going to increase our loan to Macquarie Bank, and SD clearly stated he wanted to have the £50m current loan paid off in two years. Ok, in theory whatever we are going to receive next year in parachute and TV rights is going to the bank, so it will be paid off, but how will we be able to operate if we pay the bank with our future income? There seems to be an ever increasing financial hole and I don't see why that should really be the case. By my rough calculations we've clawed back over £70m in net profit on transfer trading over the past 3 seasons. We were not even able to make payments to Rennes for the Sarr instalments which led to a court case. These are all alarm bells ringing for me.

We shouldn't be in so much debt. What is it now, £70m to the owner, £50m to Macquarie Bank......and now I presume another £50m to Macquarie Bank! We're not spending too much money in the transfer market, and haven't done so for the past 3 years, so why are the running costs so high? Why did we spend £12m......yes TWELVE MILLION on agent fees last season? We were the 7th highest in the Premier League for agent fee expenditure behind only the top 6. That's insane, considering the crap we signed. No....something is not right and questions over the financials have to be asked.

 

“We're not spending too much money in the transfer market, and haven't done so for the past 3 years, so why are the running costs so high?“

The hiring and firing of multiple managers per season for 7 years straight must play a part.

 

Why would you presume another £50m to Macquarie? This is a loan facility which will facilitate the incurrence of additional debt but I doubt anything has been take out yet and certainly not that much. This may facilitate that over the next few years but I doubt such an additional debt has been incurred yet.

Owner financing is fairly irrelevant in this context and the £70m we owe Gino is fairly small fry to many other clubs’ affiliate debt (Bournemouth, Stoke and Chelsea under Abrahamovic for instance).

The leveraging of our revenue streams to external lenders is pretty worrying and the agent fees are unforgivable.

 

How much are the TV rights and next season's parachute revenue worth? I understand nothing has been taken as yet, and the facility is there as and when we need to dip into it, but there must be a ceiling to the loan. It cannot be open ended. I would assume around £50m would be that figure.

But, the overriding thing is the nature of borrowing against next year's revenue. How are we going to pay for things next year if we don't gain promotion? We seem to be heading down a very dangerous path, with warning flags all over the place. Crazy unjustified agents fees, missing payments on transfer deals we've made etc.

 

Year 2 parachute payments are £35m I believe.

But as with all incurrence of debt, it depends what it’s for. If it’s to exclusively cover operating losses then yes it’s a ticking time bomb. If it’s a) to release cash the club expected to come in for Sarr/Dennis to enable them to stay or b) to fund serious improvements to the squad or facilities then it’s not a major issue. I suspect it is somewhere between those explanations.

I can see Andrew French has reached out to Duxbury regarding this. Will be interesting (though not necessarily revealing) to see what the club’s messaging on this is.

 

Yes, it would be interesting to have SD's take on it, although I'm sure he'll make it sound BAU and normal practise. With regards to money for transfer funding, I see very little evidence to support that, so I don't think the loan would be put significantly towards that. We have this bizarre arrangement where we pay OTT for Bayat clients (in the most part) but every other signing is a freebie. We also need to know why any transfer we make, which includes a fee, is through Bayat, and why they are higher fees than they should be (Louza, Bayo, Kalu, Sissoko, Okoye....around £25m for what?). Fees for Dennis was very good of course, and Kamara was probably about right at £4m, but a lot of the deals we're making are very dubious to say the least.

 

I don’t think the Sissoko fee was very high. I know one source quoted it as being large but given the context it seems more likely that we paid a nominal amount as Spurs wanted rid. Okoye also is not a Bayat client as far as I know and as I noted yesterday is not that expensive for a top young GK (Burnley are paying a similar amount for a young Anderlecht player with 1 senior appearance last season). Louza and Bayo were slightly overpriced perhaps but not obscenely so in my opinion.

But yes I take your point that at the moment we’re basically only paying fees for Bayat clients and it’s absolutely baffling.

 

Whatboutery doesn’t magically improve our financial situation. Abramovich and Demin are both Billionaires, Gino isn’t. Those comparisons actually make our situation look worse because those owners can afford to write of huge amounts of debt off because they’re comparatively richer, and in fact one just has. Could Gino afford to do the same?

 

Re Sissoko, I consider £3m for 12 months service then sold for £1m, with us lucky to get that, as poor business.

 

Everyone calm down, just a couple of weeks ago Scott Duxbury said we are fine. Scott is like a lighthouse shining truth out across a vicious sea of misinformation.

 

Plus if he was actually on £100k p/w that’s an additional £5m.