I took this from another forum also:
The above post reads like a tidy PR explainer: “we sold big, didn’t gamble, fixed the wage bill, stability first, owners took nothing out”. Some of that is true. But it’s also selective, and it skips the bit that actually matters. As in this could be setting us up for not gaining promotion this season.
The core issue isn’t that the money “disappeared”. The issue is what the accounts reveal about how dependent we’ve become on selling the squad to stop the business bleeding.
1) Profitability wasn’t delivered by good operations — it was delivered by selling players
The accounts for the year ending 30 June 2024 show:
- Turnover fell from £145.5m to £84.8m.
- The club posted an operating loss of £86.6m.
- The club recorded £123.0m profit on disposal of players.
So yes, we “returned to profit”, but only because player sales dwarfed the operating loss. Strip out player trading and we are massively underwater.
That isn’t “a clever reset”. That’s “player trading did the heavy lifting because the underlying business didn’t stand up after relegation”.
2) The “barely reinvested” line doesn’t match the cash flow
The post leans on “£40–60m reinvested”. But the cash flow statement shows:
- Proceeds from sale of player registrations: £154.0m.
- Purchase of player registrations: £88.1m.
That is not a tiny rebuild. That is a lot of money going back into the market.
So the real debate isn’t “did they reinvest”. They did. The debate is whether the recruitment and allocation of that spend has been smart enough to justify the churn and the sporting risk. Spoiler alert - it wasnt.
3) “No dividends” is a low bar, not a gold star
The accounts say no dividend is proposed. Fine.
But owners don’t need dividends to benefit, and “no dividends” doesn’t mean “supporter-friendly model”. It just means they didn’t extract value in that one specific way.
Supporters should be looking just as hard at financing and structural cost, because interest payable in the same accounts is £22.2m. That’s not nothing. That is a serious drag.
4) The wage bill drop is real, but it’s also the relegation reality
Yes, staff costs dropped from £122.5m to £80.9m.
That’s not automatically “good stewardship”. Relegation forces wage reductions, player exits, and contract resets. It’s the bare minimum of survival behaviour. The question is what we got in exchange for the reset, and whether the football decisions matched the scale of the change.
5) Multi-club ownership means internal incentives, not just Saints’ incentives
The accounts also show related-party charges exist in principle (small amounts, but the point is the mechanism is there).
I’m not claiming anything dodgy. I’m saying: once you’re in a multi-club structure, supporters are entitled to ask how Saints’ priorities are protected over time, and how internal fees and “group logic” stay aligned to on-pitch outcomes here.
So no — the money hasn’t “vanished”. It is visible in the statements.
But the bigger truth is this: 2023/24 is a picture of a club that relied on player sales to counterbalance a very large operating loss, while still spending heavily on registrations, while still carrying meaningful debt and interest cost.
That isn’t “asset stripping”, but it also isn’t a comforting story of “stability-first excellence”. It’s a warning sign about how fragile the model becomes if the next window doesn’t produce big sales, or if recruitment doesn’t land, or promotion achieved.
For me, the owners don’t get credit for “not taking dividends”. They get judged on whether the strategy and decision-making deliver a squad and cost base that can compete without needing a £100m+ trading win every year.
Structured, Consultant-Style Framing
The Language Is AI-typical
The Narrative Arc Is Textbook AI
The Emoji Use Is Artificially Placed
