Annual accounts published (2 Viewers)

Precisely so when I hear some fans say " pay him want he wants " I think do you want us to end up like Shef Wed, Lesta and co

CCFCSteve said:

Shows we’re just a far better run club than we were but even so, it’s totally unsustainable without player sales/trading or promotion. Hopefully all those fans who seem to want us spunking cash on any available player, higher wages etc can now see how dangerous that would be as however well run we are, we’re still losing £10m pa. It also goes to show why you can’t turn down offers like £6.5m for sheaf, who for all his ability doesn’t appear to be able to play a full season and was probably on £1m+ pa (£2m at Wrexham I bet)

Some of those other wage bills FP posted are horrendous and just a pure gambles on the futures of those clubs. I’d love to know what Wrexham, Blues and SU wage bills now

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D

Sky_Blue_Dreamer said:

Not necessarily. Find a way to add loans in with compound high interest rates, or get preference shares with a high yield, and even though the clubs finances look toilet you can make more money than you put in.

Overall though, yes it's a money pit.

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Not necessarily. Only works if the club is liquid enough to pay the interest and then return the principal, otherwise you’ve still lost your money.

CrawleySkyBlue said:

Not necessarily. Only works if the club is liquid enough to pay the interest and then return the principal, otherwise you’ve still lost your money.

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I did say can, not would. I was just pointing out that it is indeed possible to make money out of owning a football club.

Sky_Blue_Dreamer said:

I did say can, not would. I was just pointing out that it is indeed possible to make money out of owning a football club.

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If the club is liquid enough, it means it’s probably been run well and therefore probably wouldn’t need any loans (unless you put in a loan to try to supercharge the progress, risky).

The only feasible way I can see a club being profitable/liquid is through buying players on the cheap (with cheap wages), over performing in the league to keep the premier league money coming in, and then selling players and reinvesting some of the profits and repeating. You then may have an option to strip out any surplus cash (via dividends?).

This way you have a profitable club and also a club with a high resale value. Owner can extract cash via dividends and/or via a sale.

Sounds simple, but how many clubs actually do this year on year? A difficult, high risk way to make money in my opinion, unless you can repeatedly find bargains, overperform on the pitch and sell the bargains high. Hence being a football owner is seen as being a money pit and more of a hobby!

I’d say this approach would be more profitable than earning a margin on any loan put into the club. (Noting that extracting surplus cash via dividends or interest would actually reduce the value of the club).

(In reality it’s not as simple as that as you’d still need to ensure the club is operating within its working capital (which would be significantly impacted by the timing of transfer payments in and out, noting that not all transfers are paid in one instalment)).

It’s a decent set of accounts in the context of the football world. Wages are well controlled. But it’s essentially a quiet set of accounts. Good that the loan isn’t interest bearing.