It's not the relegation that annoys people though is it? It's the financial fiasco he and his mate Duffen created.
Exactly. Club made a loss of ã10m in 2007/08 due to the gamble with players such as Pedersen and Okocha (Ok, some of that loss was promotion bonus). Without that promotion you're staring into another decade of floundering finacially (remember our turnover from gate receipts is around ã8m a season).
Gamble pays off and big pay day arrives. ã60m (including around ã22m in parachute payments) from promotion. At this point you have to say he's done a good job (although having taken quite a risk with the club).
Wage bill in 08//09 was already making the club insolvent. Fancy payment plans mask seriousness of issue (together with deliberately delaying filing of accounts).
As it stood on relegation:
Losses of around ã30m, with unchecked wage bill likely to cause further ã20m in losses this year plus whatever ridiculous rate was being paid on the Investec loan (guessing north of 10%).
Parachute payments of ã48m over 4 years pretty much put club back at square 1 assuming financial planning to reduce wage bill after year 1, although liquidity issues start raising their head in a big way due to the short0term liabilities.
As it happens, Allams come in and pay off debts. PeArson and PearsoN have a clearout and drag wage bill down to roughly sustainable level. Still have bulk of ã48m of parachute payments in hand.
Who is to say how much of the financial mis-management was down to Brown, how much to Duffen and how much to Bartlett? What we do know is that the club was on the financial edge, and that having secured the riches of promotion. Too many rumours about financial irregularities that I don't want to bring in here.
People claim we were a big fish in a small pond in the lower divisions and our gates essentially allowed us to buy promotion from division 3 into the Championship (Taylor's achievement was rubbish - whatever). IMO Phil Brown effectively bought us promotion from the Championship, much the same way Ridsdale tried to do it with Cardiff and Ipswich gave Keane a blank cheque book. It's Leicester's turn now.
What happened is we got lucky, and succeeded where they failed. There's no doubting that Brown has some talent as a manager. The only question is how much. I like the fact that Nigel is building a team similar to that which got promoted, but on a budget and with resaleable assets in mind.
