A lot will depend on his easily we can shift the high earners as not being able to may hold us back. It's also completely dependant on Gao and his intentions, impossible to speculate really at present.
I'll take your word regarding wages. But I think you are wrong about the debt. I don't think the club can be made responsible for the personal liabilities of the owner. West Ham came straight back quite recently. So did Newcastle. That was a gamble that did not prove suicidal for either club.
That's speculation at this point to be fair, at this stage we simply don't have all the facts to make that judgement. I agree it's a potential worry but its dependant on many different factors so until we know how things play out you can't really say that.
Well we can speculate. But I agree it's impossible to make any confident predictions about what happens next. Maybe Gao has an ace or two up his sleeve - maybe not and he has just made a terrible financial decision. We really have no idea what his plans will be, but a straight asset strip to service his debt probably won't be that easy for him.
It's not a straight asset strip to service his debt; that isn't even going to be possible, frankly. Rather, that's what would be necessary to merely keep us around break-even, which is likely going to be needed if he doesn't have tens of millions in available personal funds to plow into the club, above and beyond servicing the debt, which he almost certainly does not. The other possibility is borrowing heavily against the club in the hopes that we go straight back up, while knowing that our owner doesn't have the liquidity to cover it if things go awry. The consequences of failing there are far too great to consider that risk.
Oh come on, that was years ago and being a woman there was no way they were going to let her play Jesus. There’s no disappointment in being the back end of a donkey..... (This started out as a nativity joke. Now it feels poignant.....)
I am a bit stupid here Schad but how is it that the club has managed to incur a big debt? He bought the club for 200m mas o menor, and is levering that on the club to repay his outlay? Is this what I am reading here? And under KL there was very little debt. Wonderful, just wonderful. So the way I see it, some of the high earners will go - Tadic, Gabbi, Soares for around a total of 20m. Maybe Bertrand for a knock-down fee, and Davis might feel it is time to move on. Otherwise we have a squad that needs its confidence rebuilding. Is Hughes the guy to do it? Maybe think outside the obvious and go for Graham Potter.
I don't think that it's leveraged against the club (at least I hope it isn't), but it is leveraged against his overseas assets, because he was unable to raise cash otherwise; he cannot move money out of China. What that means is that he didn't have the ability to pump money into the club, and definitely doesn't now that whatever liquidity he has outside of China will be devoted to making large payments on his loans (and actually, still paying KL for the club; per Toby Steele's statement, it was a staged purchase, which likely explains why we still have KL holding some influence...she's still owed a tonne). Right now, Gao is underwater to the tune of probably 100m, representing the total he could sell the club for versus what he owes on the investment. I'd be shocked if he had any funds to chuck at a promotion chase. Thus, any losses will ultimately fall on the club itself, without the failsafe that we had previously of an owner that can convert that debt to equity. We cannot afford to make that gamble; that way lies financial ruin. We need to move on basically anyone we can, because their wages cannot be afforded comfortably. We had built up a bloated payroll of mediocre players, all of whom will be making grossly excessive pay packets in the Championship. That means selling the desirable ones; it also means loaning out high earners to PL clubs willing to cover their wages. Even still, we'll book a large loss that will need to be offset by player trading, but given the fact that transfer payments are staged over multiple years, on a cash balance basis we'll still likely lose money hand over fist unless we can pretty well gut the roster.
Thanks for that!! That scenario is not good. SFC will have 10,000 fewer fans coming through the turnstiles for starters, so that is a huge loss of income.
I really really detest Chelsea fans, they were so moronic today. A day that pretty well summed up our season in 90 minutes. Decent game though. MOTM to Mike Dean who, against all odds managed to get Chelsea back into the game. It was a nightmarish 8 minute spell but down to Chelsea's brilliance rather than our inept defending.
It's not a huge loss, as matchday income is a small part of the picture these days. The bigger loss will be the central payments; in 2016-17, we received £122m in TV revenue, whereas in the Championship (including the parachute payment) we'll receive less than £50m. Overall this will blow a hole of about £100m in our budget. Each year. The top Championship teams by revenue in the 2016-17 season were Norwich and Villa; as first-year parachute payment recipients, they took in £74m. The median turnover for a Championship side was less than £30m, and the parachute payments decline after the first season down. Our wage bill (including off-the-field staff) last year was £112m, and there is a good chance that rose in 2017-18. We need massive changes.
Respectfully, our defending was terrible. Especially for second two. Giroud unmarked in the box for the third. Hazard free reign on the edge of the box for the second. Plus we were incapable of playing the ball out of our half and kept recycling it out to their players on the edge of the 18 yd. If Chelsea hadn’t stepped off after scoring three they would have just kept knocking them in. We do do very good collapses.
I've no idea whether your confidence in what you say is entirely justified but this is definitely a plausible scenario and one of the big reasons why I could never have voted for the "Win the FA Cup and get relegated" option in that other poll. With our current squad relegation is an exceptionally risky business. I wonder how many of our players have relegation clauses in their contracts? We may struggle to shift some of them if not. Hard to see much interest in Forster in particular if he doesn't have one. That latest contract extension may prove to be a very big mistake indeed.
I'm sure that a great many have clauses that lower their salaries, but not enough to be affordable; in most cases, it's something like dropping £80k to £50k p/w if we were really aggressive negotiators. In the Championship, £30k a week on more than a few players is big trouble.
Given that they appear to have come in priority to signing new players, it could be suggested that they've already proven to be a very big mistake. That extra money spent on Fraser is looking like a cracking investment right now...
