As the EGM thread has gone off at a bit of a tangent, perhaps it would be beneficial having a clean thread to discuss the implications / liklihoods / hopes and fears for the future.
The key positive for me is that there is now a huge chunk of debt no longer overhanging us. It makes our position so much more tenable and i'm hugely grateful to those individuals who have simply wrote off what they were owed simply for the good of the club.
My fear though is that this is intended to make us a more attractive proposition, which technically it does, but still doesn't go far enough to disguise the fact we are still very much an unattractive proposition.
We appear to have been through every form of cost cutting measure possible in the last few years, and are now basically as stripped as we possibly can be to operate. Budget wise, i don't see how much lower it can get, certainly not much.
Yet still we are forecasted to lose £4m this year.
A half empty Valley and the costs to operate it are proving a bit of a milstone around our necks. It will only take another couple of seasons of no progress before the debt that has just been wiped out has been filled again with £4m a year losses.
Can we ever be a sustainable club at this level at The Valley ? What happens if we don't get promoted in the next couple of seasons ?
I'm extremely grateful for what has happened, but i will be extremely surprised if it suddenly prompts new investment. We are still a club with debts losing money on a weekly basis, its just that for now, that debt has been reduced in size.
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fairplay to the directors/fans who have torn up their money but will there be anymore lunatics about to burn money on this football club, no one in their right mind would surely
The only other area where serious cuts can be made are on the playing side.
The Academy costs £700k pa to run. About £500k of that comes in the form of grants/valley Gold but it is a money raiser ie Shelvey/McGinty and money saver ie Wagstaff/Elliot/Solly.
We could cut the playing budget again but who wants lesser players and a smaller squad than we have now?
We have undergone a "DIY Administration" with Football League approval and the good will of those shareholders and bond holders who have walked away.
The scary but not totally out of the question option, failing promotion or investment, is a "proper" administration with a ten point hit etc etc etc and that is not an easy or nice option. We would effectively be owned and run by Lombard, the Bank who hold the mortgage
The good news is that banks are unwilling to wind up football clubs as it hurts their image. HMRC have no such qualms but we have kept uptodate with all those payments so far.
The club is cheaper now, it is less of a burden to take on in terms of annual losses to cover and any negotiation should be swift and simple BUT and this for me is the big one we still need person or persons unknown to appear and put their money down.
Yes, the additional TV money and solidarity payments from the Prem are roughly £6m pa so more than enough to make us viable in that league. Add to that increased gate income and sponsorship and we would be OK but perhaps not able to compete with the relegated Prem teams or other clubs with rich owners ie QPR.
However, I agree with your realsitic intentions.
You're right. the Club looked at it and couldn't find a saving.
Murray seems to have sunk everything into this and god help him if we fail. I'm hoping that he has somewhere in the distance a white knight on his charger ready to roll in.
After all the cost cutting can we do aything to revenue generage, how strict are the restrictions on stadium use, are there any non league or non ''soccer'' ground share options? When you have cut to the bone your next lption is to start building up the muscle, are there any options for this?
Also if the concession oulets are closed thats a matchday saving surely on staff costs as well as gas & Ele, while that may only be a small amount its better than nothing and would all add up with any other savings that they line up
Murray seems to have sunk everything into this and god help him if we fail. I'm hoping that he has somewhere in the distance a white knight on his charger ready to roll in.
After all the cost cutting can we do aything to revenue generage, how strict are the restrictions on stadium use, are there any non league or non ''soccer'' ground share options? When you have cut to the bone your next lption is to start building up the muscle, are there any options for this?
So basically back where we belong, or at least where I would feel comfortable - quietly going about our business in an efficient and effective manner waiting for another 97/98 season where a few youth players and canny signings come together to make a great team (Blackpool last season as a more recent example) - then we can start this whole rollercoaster over again. I'm not entirely sure my heart could take that!
Anyway, getting back on topic my sincerest thanks to the board and share holders for this gesture and well done to the solicitors for getting past the Football League without a points deduction! This once again shows why, despite whatever mistakes have been made, we are pretty lucky to have the people in charge at our club that we do and also that they're not quite as stupid and unimaginative as some think they are.
As AKFA says this is still only a relativley short term fix, but that's better than no fix at all and we're now in the same boat as at least 70% of the clubs outside the Prem, existing on a hand to mouth, season by season basis. The sooner we get out of League One the better, but I wonder if we couldn't survive like this for another couple of seasons now, before thinghs get truly critical (lets hope we don;t have to find that out). Before RM's move we were perhaps right on the brink if this season didn't go well.
This really isn't good news sustainability wise, and if it were me I'd be tempted to get rid of all the high earners, isn't a too big a gamble? I don't buy this one season at a time (but then its not my cash at stake)
Perhaps we oughta close the west stand completely?
edit: I am still struggling to see the logic in Murray putting in £5m this year, in the hope we get promoted. Servicing the remaining debts however is presumably not required while we are in League 1 (still unclear to me) so effectively administration would not have seen us better off in cash flow terms, so on both counts he has to be applauded.
I presume they are appealing this.
Crazy Greenwich would be screwing us over like this
It's the reality of life outside the top flight and the lower you go the harder it gets - Deloitte and Touche recently released figures saying the average wages to revenue % for the Premiership was 65%. In the Football League it was 85% and when you think that's an average there may be teams running at 90, 95 maybe even 100%+. In League 2 there will be a lot of players earning little more than a decent working mans wage but that may still be too much for some clubs and there's not much more clubs can do to raise revenue.
Until money from the Premier League is redistributed to subsidise the lower leagues (which may never or possibly shouldn't happen) then season-by season is how teams are going to be surviving.
i see it as a new era a new begining
i see it as an oportunity for someone to look to support RM and the new board by handing over a bit of dosh solely for the football team either this season or next
get us out of this shitty tin pot league and back to the chumpionship where dreams can be made again
i dont buy the i dont want premier league football
i do but first of all i want a club on an even keel getting this done without going into admin was going to take exceptional behaviours
and if you have exceptional people people making exceptional decisions dreams can be made and fulfilled
lets not worry about what we cant influence lets just get back to supporting a team at the valley loudly and proudly every game and see where we can get too
it is more important now that we buy the right players in thewindow and then give them a chance to gel
i never ever slag the team off at the ground i dont boo i dont jeer
i come on here call parky everything and anything i want but come saturday or tues/weds if i am there they get my support
now is the time for us to take stock move on and get back to supporting not worrying
Everything player budget wise appears to be on top of that, and is what the shortfall loss will be.
When you consider if we stay where we are, that income will continue to decrease, we basically survive in the hope that player sales will cover as much of the deficit as possible and hope to god that RM or some other nice person is prepared to put their hand in their pocket year by year to keep us afloat, and at the same time make us less attractive to new investment.
As No1 said, out debt / ongoing losses are still at the level that would be unattractive to those that if they are interested in picking up football clubs, will do so post a 'proper' administration.
The agreement yesterday has bought time basically in the hope that something good happens in the near future.
We are more appealing to investors and whilst they are thin on the ground - we ARE an attractive proposition for anyone wanting to invest in a club. We have a good location, relatively low levels of debt, we have plenty of history and were recently a pretty large club. You could say we are a sleeping giant.
Those who have walked away and subsequently lost a lot of money deserve a lot of kudos for their actions and hopefully the club can move onwards and remember those who have kept us from going to the wall
There are three big earners left at the club. Semedo is not for sale, the other two are and we are actively looking for buyers for one of them, the other will be sold if/when he is no longer injured.
The club's break even position with Yhe Valley is a cost neutral playing staff. So every penny that is paid to a player becomes an operating loss.
This disparity will never go away until we are promoted.
The new parachute payment scheme from the Premier League included increasing TV money to the Championship to £6m a year.
This has two effects: it makes it easier to compete with relegated teams with parachute payments; it also means that within due course relegation from the Championship will be as disasterous to established Championship sides as relegation from the Premier League is. I sometimes wonder if anyone running our game has any clue what they are doing.
As for us? We have one year to be promoted or we will need more money. We have few players worth much money now, and due to the short term contracts they have we will be unlikely to raise mch money in transfer fees.
So we are where we were twelve months ago nits promotion or bust. I don't think we can expect the directors (just gone) or RM to keep stumping up c. £3 a year.
In all honesty, though, most clubs outside of The Premier League are in the same boat and, as we saw last season, there a few in the same boat (only worse due to the vast numbers involved) in the Premier League. Look at Portsmouth and Hull.
As No1 said, out debt / ongoing losses are still at the level that would be unattractive to those that if they are interested in picking up football clubs, will do so post a 'proper' administration.
i reckon if the guys who have wrote the money off wanted too that could have forced this to happen anyhow, i do not think that a club that goes into admin is a better prospect you might save a few quid in taking over but you have an asset that has proven to be poorly run and these things have a habit of biting back time and time again look at the strpiey scum.
I reckon between big mo and muzza they will dig deep find the sponds to get us up and then once chumpionship football is achieved some one will fancy their luck
The other £1mill is a loan from HSBC bank, which no doubt is structured and factored into the budget.
Not sure what or why but I'm much happier that he is still around.
Agreed, as i was of the impression he was relinquishing his ties. A big positive.