The wage bill is often flagged as th reason for us not spending.. but ultimately it’s that waster Charnley who signs off on wages so for me he needs to pull his finger out and get it under control. Looking st this season though: Colback gone Gamez gone Haidara gone Merino gone Campbell going Mbemba going Mitro going I’ve probably missed some but the point is... we’ve got quite a few off the wage bill now...only really added one... yet still we are miraculously skint? I get we made a loss last year but when the accounts are released next time we will have the PL money to factor in so things shouldn’t be that desperate. I reckon fat **** is still taking his free advertising at a notional £3m when it’s true worth is £10m so effectively he is getting a bargain from himself and fiddling the numbers to his own advantage. There is something very murky going on financially at our club...
Our wages to turnover is not particualrly high by PL standards, in fact in 2015/16 it was just below the average for the division and below those of teams we are competing with (the Crystal Palace, Southampton, Leicester etc. It would have been during the Championship season as the turnover was down significantly but should be much more healthy now with the increased TV revenue.
But the club consistently cite high wage bills as being part of the issue for them. Although they lie to all.
I think once the sales go through we should have room for some new blood. I think the owner would probably have a more relaxed approach if the manager would just sign one if the three contracts that have been allegedly offered. You can’t put the cart before the horse. I can understand him being reticent to allow him to spend money (fees and wages) on players who may not be needed if he leaves. Hopefully Rafa can get his head out the sand now. As it happens I think we will shift a few this week and sign Maia, Bryan, Fernandez, Schurrle and Rondon. Maybe a right back too. If Rafa signs. All will be well and the fans will happy. But Rafa might **** us as he is very petulant.
All football clubs have high wage bills if you compare them to the average business. Ours are not particularly high. Something very strange happened with ours in the last accounts however. 2015: 65m (51% of revenue). Ave for PL was 102m (61% of ave revenue) 2016: 74.7m (59.4% of turnover). Average for PL was 114m (63% of revenue) 2017: 112.2m (130.9% of turnover). Ave for PL was 124m (55% of revenue). This was year we were in Championship though. There is absolutely no way our true wage bill increased by 37.5m after the changes in personnel as we were relegated. Some wages have been significantly written down in those last figures to make them look worse.
I agree with you there. Could the fat man be taking money out of the club via the likes of Bishop or Barnes? He could easily pay them, say £100-200k pw as ‘consultants’. There has been no change with the board of 1.
Don't think he would be that stupid - I suspect the club has written off the wages of some of the players for the remainder of their contracts (e.g Colback, maybe Mitro) but I am not sure why.
To make the loss look bigger to justify not spending so that he can asset strip in advance of selling.
Something like that would surely attract the scrutiny of the auditors? Either way, moving on a fiscal their wages won’t be on the books so if he doesn’t sell... he will have to declare a large profit...
But making the club loss bigger makes it less attractive to a buyer and asset stripping would have the same effect. If he wanted to make the club a more saleable asset while justifying not spending the best way to do it would be to use any cash to pay himself back for the loans (or part of them). I suspect he has done that with the 15m 'cash injection from 2016-17, but he still has another 129m to play with.
So you actually think that we spent nearly 40m more on wages the year we were in the Championship than we did the previous year in the Premier League?
You can generally sweet talk auditors into accepting these charges - if you said Colback is never going to play for the club again but we won't be able to sell him and we would like to take that as a hit now they would probably accept it.
It’s called accountancy. Using accountancy practices the accounts can show an amazing change if you (Ashley) move your accounting practices goalposts. Wonder if we did? Course we did with one off provisions. Now why would that be? Because you need the accounts to look worse than they really are? Who knows?
Because we aren’t a business for him... we are an advertising hoarding.... no such thing as bad publicity.
There would have been some massive bonuses for promotion I would imagine. Wiping out the players contracts in one accounting year wouldn’t be allowed for tax purposes. If a player is contracted the wages would be w/o over the course of that contract. Any withdrawals to Ashley or associates would be audited and noted on the related parties notes so there’s nothing in that! I suspect it’s just bonus payments to players for promotion and also Rafa would have got a big bonus also.
It would have been part of it but I still think there must have been something else making up most of the increase. I still wonder if there has been a provision for the unpaid tax and fines we are probably going to have to pay to HMRC. It's just very weird the wage bill going up so much and I'm pretty sure it didn't the last time we were promoted.
You're right. You can't put the cart before the horse. Why would Rafa sign a new contract without any indication that the owner wants to move forward the same way he does
