Minority Report 2019-20 - Talking Finance (2)

I do not believe that our owners are with us just for the ride. You may be right, but until there is proof conclusive, I will believe otherwise.

I'm sorry but I do not think you are accurate. Indeed, most owners loan money to their clubs. It is simply that loans are ignored in FFP and SCMP, for different reasons.

 

So lets play devils advocate.
Both buttercup and craine are local lads.
Their agents seeing their clients are out of contract and that Barnsley a club they knew quite well had got promoted approached the club saying our clients would be more than happy to sign for a season on reduced terms to allow the club to get established in the champsionship... and the club said no your too old

 

I think you have summed up how I feel about things. Key assets like Woodrow, Sibbick, Mowatt, George Williams, Brown could be worth a lot more in the summer if we are a championship side. By adding a level of experience we would be using their experience to develop our assets. I think most of the summer signings individually look OK, but collectively, not so much.

 

Then to me that’s where we need to amend our strategy.

Interesting one of them two did offer to come back to the club & got that response allegedly

 

That’s how I feel about most of our squad to be honest.

There’s a few I’m not sure will ever make the grade but at least two thirds of them I think will do a good job for us over the long term or be sold on for profit.

It’s just like you say getting them to that stage where they deliver collectively

 

And that in its self if true speaks volumes.

Better get the L1 road map out again.

 

I think this is bang on. At half time against Fulham I was delighted. But I said to Grandfathertyke and Sir Les "Can we keep this up for another 45 minutes?" As it happened, we did. But we haven't been able to put that much in since that first game. It's just too much. And clubs have had the chance to study our videos and work out how to play us. You look at Derby on Wednesday night and they played the press as well as we did. They also moved the ball much more swiftly than we did to counter our press. I would imagine Cocu to have been very frustrated that they didn't go on to win the match. But they seem to have a little bit missing - whereupon Lampard could only take them so far. We're too far out of our comfort zone to garner enough points to survive as things stand. But I can't fault the effort of Stendel or his staff in any way whatsoever.

 

I can't have 1). They already had Nice, and Sunderland would have been a better buy once Short appeared to expunge the debt and cut his losses. They at least have the massive fan base to generate further investable revenue.

 

Not really. Sunderland are still a basketcase

 

not finished reading it all yet and someone else may have picked this up, but i find it hard to believe we received more from the EFL (inc TV) than LEEDS!!!

they consistently finish above us and are on sky every week

 

Short wrote the debt off and they still have potential for 20 - 30,00 crowds. If you've the Lee/Conway/Heung etc money, what's not to like?

 

The massive wage bill. Squad thats not really going to generate sales. Tje massive overheads.The massive mortage on the stadium to the same people who Short brought it.
The bloke whos got it now brought it hoping for a quick sale.
They as you can see are queuing up to buy it.

From the top of my head

 

One area which I am disappointed with is there is no sign of us upgrading the academy to tier 1. If the strategy is to make money from (young) player turnover to reinvest then surely this fits that strategy perfectly. How much is Jacob Brown worth? We’ve made more then enough from Holgate and Stones to justify the investment. It does make me question how “long term” our new owners are thinking.

 

I think the owners are hoping to emulate Brentford i.e. improve the quality of the acquisitions and sell for even more money ad infinitum. Brentford sales were £40,000,000 on just 2 players this close season. Isn't that what Moneyball was about? Also, If they wanted to get around FFP there are plenty of loop holes the owners could exploit if they want to e.g Shirt sponsorship on RR figures are £3,000,000 less than Blackburn Rovers (Div 1). Ground naming rights got to be worth a few million. Sell your half of the ground back to yourselves another £10,000,000.
However, football is not simply mathematics otherwise Man U would win the Premier League every year and Leeds, Wednesday, Forest etc would also be in the top flight. To say we can't compete at this level is throwing the towel in. We obviously can because we've done it for 80% of our existence, (That's a guesstimate by the way). The Premier League was always out of our reach yet we got there. I still harbour dreams that one day we might do it again so Finances (as Midge Ure would sing) they mean nothing to me.

 

I must confess that I am not as convinced about the academy.

I wrote a piece on here last year which used a figure for academy annual costs that I had heard bandied about on the BBS. I was immediately informed that the £1m annual cost was the figure before grants received, and that the net cost is much less. I retired to lick my wounds. Nevertheless, more and more of the players that graduate to the U23 team seem to be players that came to our club as 18 year olds. Lads that either did not get an offer from their first choice academy, or lads who looked around for the best offer they could find at that age. Some of our youngsters moved on also. One played for Nottingham Forest U23s last week I believe. I am just not sure any more which is the most cost effective way to proceed, and I understand the Paul Conway does not feel the academy offers good value for money in its present form either.

One of the problems is in assessing the contribution that the the academy made to the eventual selling price obtained for the player. You see, we can take youngsters from other academies at the age of 18, so why should our academy be credited with any more income at that age than any other academy would attract in respect of their youngster. After all, we do not need to have an academy in order to run an U23 team. We can simply take all the players in that team from sources outside the club, and as I say, it is going that way any how, whether we like it or not. If our academy is regarded as a third party, and has potential turnover commensurate with any 3rd party academy, then the economics of the thing become entirely different. You point out quite rightly that John Stones and Mason Holgate used that route, but it is not right that the whole of the fees obtained for those players be allocated as academy income. Otherwise, that income cannot be used for any other purpose.

Anyway, the whole subject of the academy will be featured in a future Minority Report that will look at the best way to finance young player acquisitions. We all love to see a player born and bred in Barnsley, do well in the academy and successfully graduate to the first team. It is an emotional attachment which many would be reluctant to give up. The question is, does it make equal financial sense.

 

I'm sorry, but I have bumped this because after reading tonight, many still seem not to understand.

 

An incredible thread, authoritative and enlightening. Demonstrates why we cannot simply buy our way to some mythical stable championship team status.

 

and they never will because they dont even want to try

 

Fascinating post. Thank-you!

 

Since last Monday, when the departure or Daniel Stendel was confirmed, I have read plenty but posted very little. What I have read began as overwhelming support for a much loved coach, but it now seems to have changed focus. It now seems to have become to be a concerted witch hunt against our owners. They are being accused of everything from falsifying their financial standing through to lying about their aims and methods. For my part, I cannot remember much about what they said when they took over other than that they had looked at other Championship clubs and thought that they were badly run, and that they were not going to do anything "crazy". All the rest was made up by the fans in response to their reported financial status. The fans are now disappointed that the new owners have not lived up to the standards that they expected, but which the owners never actually subscribed to.

Most fans are interested only in the win/loss ratio and league position. They have no interest at all in Balance Sheets, finance, FFP and SCMP. I had hoped that if I placed these things on public record, the new information would be taken into consideration the next time a major issue raised its ugly head. I had no idea at the time I posted this information that the issue would be the sacking of the Chief Coach. It could have been anything, but I knew that the subject would eventually come up. It always does. The answer to most of the questions that the directors have been asked to answer lies within the pages of text and the tables that I posted. The questions can easily be answered provided the questioner has an open mind and is not just looking to point a finger in accusation of wrong doing. I am not going to go any further with this, because I know how hard it can be to get a lynch mob to listen to anything which does not reinforces its own narrow view of the facts, but I would urge all those who can still think, to do so.