http://swissramble.blogspot.com/2011/12/tottenham-grounds-for-optimism-or.html I've read this guy's stuff before, he has a real knack of gathering together disparate figures and making them sing Can't recommend his writings highly enough One very notable point is how net transfer spending has DECLINED during the Redknapp era, completely at variance to what a load of West ham fans (amongst others) predicted, and indeed some still believe the opposite of what is the case Harry has done brilliantly without Levy spending a lot in the transfer market. Yes the wage bill has risen, but so has income. The writer predicts a loss for us this financial year, which is fair enough, but as long as it is under £20m, hopefully it won't be a cause for concern. The financial year after that should see the Training centre finished, thought then the big question of new stadium finance may be involved.
Good points Ensil, by some of the comments it seems he predicted a while back a worse future under Harry than has happened. One point I don't really understand is profit on player sales. Does mean the difference bewtween what we actually paid for a player and what we sold him for, or does 'aortised value' come into play here? For example, we sell Berbatov for £31m, having paid say £11m on him three years earlier (It's just an example BTW, facts may not be correct). So is the profit on him £20m or is it in the books as £28m profit, as £8m of his value has already been amortised? Obviously in actual cash terms it's £20m, but what is shown in the accounts re 'player profit'? If amortisation isn't included, it does seem a bit odd that we consistently show such good player profit figures, despite Levy's undoubted skill in buying and selling players.
Fair comments Ensil Probably a lot of the financial details are best left to the experts, as it would take an age for an amateur like me to even begin to properly understand them, but the bottom line seems healthy enough ATM. However, the 'financial doping' that gives City and Chelsea such an unfair advantage means no matter how well run our business is, they can skew the market with their wage bills by running at huge losses, and thus hoovering up talent. Mind you, it's helped us re Ade, still can't believe City gave him to us for a year and pay some of his wages into the bargain
Isn't he an Arsenal fan? I remember a similarly long-winded blog of his coming up with some remarkably odd conclusions quite some time ago.
What Ensil said. The first two thirds are generally quite good analysis but he suggested we were offered £17mill in stadium funding, which isn't true and and most of the last third is generally full of holes and speculation.
Fair comments all I think he's great though, because he puts together lots of salient facts and figures (I assume they're correct) and from then one can draw one's own conclusions. I certainly got some great insights from this piece, eg the very strong decline in net transfer spend under Harry and Danny. Especially after their initial 'first window splurge', which was much needed, even though we may have overpaid in some cases, it was cheap to ensure we didn't get relegated. As Levy has said we can cope without Europe financially, but relegation is something that would cause massive problems. I'm really looking forward to the half yearly figures to see what kind of course we're on, re a probable loss.
I got this far: "Arsenalâs profit has significantly reduced from £56 million to £15 million, while Manchester Cityâs loss has further widened to an astonishing £197 million." ...And resolved to read the rest tomorrow, safe in the knowledge that I will sleep well tonight. Fascinating article GH- very well put-together.
HP - it's well worth reading, the guy pulls together so many facts and figures, it's really insightful. As Ensil and others have said, draw your own conclusions, they may wel be different to his. But I thankk Swiss Rambler for his efforts, getting all that info together and putiing it in a readable form takes a lot of doing.
