QPR accounts show wage bill doubled even before January's spending

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2013/mar/07/qpr-accounts-wage-bill-spending-spree

• Latest set of accounts show club's financial challenge
• Wages-to-revenue ratio over 90% at end of May 2012

Owen Gibson
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 7 March 2013 10.42 GMT

The scale of the challenge facing QPR if Harry Redknapp fails to keep them in the Premier League is laid bare in newly published financial results for last season, which show their wage bill doubled even before the latest spending spree.
The accounts, for the year ending 31 May 2012, show that the club's wage bill almost doubled from £27.6m to £58.5m in their first year back in the Premier League under Neil Warnock and Mark Hughes.
Thanks to increased TV income, revenue rose sharply from £16.2m to £64m. But the initial splurge on players including Shaun Wright-Phillips and José Bosingwa – followed by Bobby Zamora and Djibril Cissé in January 2012 – meant that QPR's wages-to-revenue ratio stood at over 90% even before spending in the last two transfer windows is taken into account. Of last season's Premier League clubs, only relegated Bolton and Blackburn had higher wages to revenue ratios.
In January, the record signings Loïc Rémy and Chris Samba were added to the squad in an attempt to keep the west London club in the Premier League under Redknapp, who had said he would only spend the money of owner Tony Fernandes if he felt the team could stay up.
Fernandes admitted in his directors' report that the board is "conscious of the need for expenditure to be closely monitored and controlled" but also the need to invest in the playing squad.
"A critical driver of any club's value is its presence in the Premier League and the club achieved its key objective for the 2011-12 season, by successfully securing its Premier League status for the coming season," he said. "The financial results reflect the club's focus on on-pitch success. There are a number of potential risks and uncertainties that could have a material impact on the group's long-term performance. These risks and uncertainties are monitored by the board on a regular basis."
The club, hampered by the size of Loftus Road, made an overall pre-tax loss of £22.6m according to the accounts, filed at Companies House this week.
The financial blogger SwissRamble has calculated that QPR have required cash injections of over £104m over the last four years, split between loans and capital injections to cover aggregate losses of £80m over that period. Its owners poured in £39m during 2011-12 alone. The club's net debt, all owed to its owners, stands at £88.9m.
Fernandes confirmed that he would continue to look for a bigger ground and said that his ambition remains to establish QPR as a Premier League club. "Under the guidance of our new manager, Harry Redknapp, we are hopeful that the club will secure their Premier League status going forward," he wrote in his statement.
"We are confident that the 2012-13 season will also see the club continue to make progress towards achieving their short-, medium- and long-term off-pitch targets."
Despite a victory at Southampton last weekend sparking some hope, the club remain bottom of the Premier League and four points from safety

 

We are in the poop if we go down. Sky are about to increase TV revenue for next season and it will be sods law for us to miss out. Stay up or go down there has to be a major clear out, between Hughes and Harry we've spend a fortune on transfers and wages which can't be sustained much longer.

The much reported (although probably inacurate) £100,000 a week wages the likes of Samba are meant to be on can't be justified if we go down and if we don't want to go the same way as Pompey our cloth has to be cut accordingly. Fair play to TF and the board thinking we can buy ourselves out of relegation and stumping up the cash but the club has to be able to run as a business and overheads are way over our income.

A big stadium would help, as would a few more seasons in the Prem but I'm concerned one won't come without the other.

 

when did we actually sign Bosingwa?

 

I think (but don't quote me on this) that the parachute payments for relegation this season have increased quite a lot.

 

reminds me of pompey except twice as worse....relegation must not happen or qpr will go to the wall...