Player trading profit

It seems pretty obvious that the model adopted by the ownership group is one to make profit from player trading and, to some extent, manager trading.

Since the arrival of the international consortium there have been five years worth of accounts filed. Over those five years player trading profit is as follows:

2018 - £1,226,979 profit
2019 - £1,356,812 profit
2020 - £2,780,195 profit
2021 - £491,324 profit
2022 - £238,101 loss

So overall the last five years has seen an aggregate transfer profit of around £5.5m. Remembering that the big sales of Morris, Woodrow, Britton and Helik are in the year to 2023. So overall the club’s transfer policy has been a success in purely financial terms.

To put the transfer profit in context over those five years, total company losses have been around £15m. In actual terms more like £12m removing the £3m loss to finance the repayment to purchase the club.

Going in to the first game of the season tomorrow it is absolutely obvious that the club can’t continue under the current model, even making modest transfer profits.

Unless the club achieves promotion in the very near term or receives significant funding from the owners the future does not look great.

The only reason for doing this was to illustrate why the use of transfer funds are desperately needed for the running of the club and why the incoming transfers are from a much lower level than we have been used to,

 

Laugh if you want but I heard oldham gave 300k for Norwood which I think is very good business for us. We got a fee for stones winning the champions league, a fee for Duff and mads.

 

As Grandfathertyke said to me several seasons ago, our natural centre of gravity is now in the third tier. Given the current modus operandi we may eventually fall further.

 

Bigger clubs than us in the 4th tier tbh. Having said that theirs smaller teams than us in the championship and similar size in the premier league

 

That makes it o.k everyone down my street is banging the village bike so I think I'll have a go.

 

It’s no longer about size of fan base though. It’s about how much money your owner is willing to lose in the pursuit of the Premier League

 

I agree when you have Bournemouth in the premier league getting 10k a week and their Russian owner pumping his billions in its wrong.

 

The big issue with our club is we sell well under market value and are well known for doing so. A failed business model in any industry it really is hard to make progress. Yes harder to get value for players stepping up a league now where in league one but it was no different in the championship when selling to other championship clubs.

 

Genuine question @redrum - which clubs do you consider bigger than us in League Two and what criterion are you using to form that view?

 

In terms of potential fan base I can only see Notts County and Bradford. In terms of cash, Wrexham.

 

Just Bradford really big city big fan base. Could argue Notts County but I disagree only ever known them as a club in the lower leagues not attracting many fans.

 

Think we have made more money on managers than players tbh.

 

I can see that. I wonder whether we'd sell similar (if we were allowed to of course) if we adopted the same pricing strategy though.

 

Russian sold upto an American consortium.
Still traded loss of over 50 million though.

 

So, undisclosed means sold on the cheap. I never knew that.

 

We're not well known for doing so. That's a complete fabrication. We and virtually every other club these days do not disclose fees. The problem is that people hear and amplify the guesswork and biases of others at the same time as believing the, seemingly, totally discredited propaganda put out by Peterborough's owner.

 

We are yer to hear the getting to the play offs cost us money lol

 

Go look at the accounts on company houses. Look under “trading of intangible assets”.

 

Look at the players that have left us in the last 10 years do you really think we’ve sold successfully? Go look at the annual accounts published. I’m not talking about 12 or 24 months I’m talking about the club over the last decade.

 

Well this summer alone we’ve got 3.5m for Mads, 0.5m for Duff, 0.3m Stones money, 0.3m for Collins (?), 0.3m for Norwood.
That’s almost £5m in revenue and I’d estimate we’ve spent no more than £0.5 on incomings, £0.75 absolute maximum.
We start the season massively weaker than we ended the last one. It’s been a terrible preseason, no dressing it up otherwise. A good one if you’re an accountant I suppose….