Realistically, who'll be in the team next year?

If we say we've got a 7 million drop in budget, who do you think will be sold to make that up?

One potential (optimistic) scenario:

Helik - £3m
Morris - £1.5
Collins - £750k
Woodrow - £750k
Iseka - £400k

This gets us to 6.4. Then a few released (Palmer, Halme) and a couple leaving on frees (Thomas, Oduor) might take us to what we need.

Leaves us with:

Walton
Kitching, Andersen, Moon, Brittain, Williams
Benson, Wolfe, Kane (Injured), Styles, Aitchison
Cole, Adeboyejo, Schmidt

In this case we need a couple of strikers, a left back, a centre back and an experienced midfielder, as a minimum.

 

I said recently i expected a complete rebuild and a lot of the players we would need as a backbone to go. I read from one of the local reporters they spoke of a total rebuild with the retained list expected next week. Im ok with this but it perhaps means two options if true:-

We start the rebuild and incrementally develop a squad over the seasons transfer windows. High risk as the longer you stay in this league the longer you stay. Budgets may dictate this.

We throw commitment to getting out this season right now. Would need money either from owners or transfers or both. We would need to start early.

 

Last time we went down, did we save £6 million or so before the next season's kick off?

I can't remember who we firesold, if anyone. Who did we sell?

And is it compulsory for us to save all this money now that we're down?

Just wondering.

 

Where we are financially I'd try and keep Morris and use Aitchison and then wouldn't be that bothered if every one of the others went, some out of necessity, some out of choice.

Personally I think if we can sort the parlous financial situation and start the rebuilding of a balanced squad a safe lower mid-table position would be fine in the context also of getting our club back. (Unless the new Board want to chuck money at it which I'm not sure about).

 

Realistically it is pointless speculating , we do not know at this stage who even our new manager/ coach will be never mind the squad , you would think that the appointment of the new man in charge will have a big bearing on the players & shape of the team for next season, what we as fans can do is state what we think might happen but as I said it is only speculation .

 

I don't think we sold anyone apart from Bradshaw..? Then we replaced him with Woodrow. Might be wrong.

 

We saved some through the relegation clauses in the players contracts that reduces their wages but the main lifeline last time was that we already had the best part of £6m cash on the balance sheet.

From recollection Knasmullner, Pearson, Mallan and McCarthy left for fees but nothing substantial and none of them was a regular. Yiadom's wage was also freed up at the end of his contract.

 

I think the Bradshaw and Woodrow deals with Millwall and Fulham respectively were transacted in the following January - they were both initially loans if I remember correctly.

 

But speculating is fun!

 

Saving the £7m lost in relegation......
(is that a true figure or a Conway figure?) ......
was Conway's financial strategy was it not? Now he's gone maybe the loss will be structured in a different manner? Maybe? Hopefully?

 

Sadly the financials are all too real and why we need to give the new Board some patience to turn things round.

We were losing money annually in the Championship so we have an underlying deficit before the £6-7m reduction in annual TV and EFL central distribution income that comes from relegation.

Hopefully the developments of the last few days will encourage more season ticket sales to help a little.

 

The direct impact of relegation is around £6m as a result in the reduction of the league distribution payments. That is covered in the accounts of the club.

In the year to 2018, football league payments were around £7.9m, the following year post relegation that amount had fallen to £2.4m. That is a direct reduction of £5.5m of revenue. Even though the club had a successful 2019 season, gate receipts also fell from £3.6m to £3.1m, predominately as a result of lower away followings. Add this together and that gets you to the £6m impact of relegation.

As part of the offset wages on relegation fell last time by £2.5m from a pre relegation figure of £10.6m to £8.1m. So the overall impact, turnover falling and wages falling last time was around £3.5m. What that resulted in was an operating loss of £4.8m.

Some of that was clawed back through player trading (Brad Potts) profit of £1.4m, resulting in a loss of £3.4m for the year.

The problem going in to the new season is that there is not the balance sheet strength to absorb losses as there was last time, the cash on balance sheet has all but gone and there is the need to either repay the EFL loan or start to pay interest on that. Couple that with a wage bill of around £14m and likely revenue of around £7m to £8m you can see why club owners decided to act.

There is a need to raise capital, either from player sales or owner injections to see the club through the next year. That amount is not trivial and will be over £6m and probably closer to £8m. If I were an ‘investor’ in BFC I too would have wanted to implement change to remove what is perceived to be the cause of all these problems.

 

Who is paying £400k for Iseka?

 

I reckon Brittain and Andersen will go as well.

 

Helik, Styles and Collins. Hopefully we get the better part of £5m for them. Woodrow isn't worth selling due to the fact we'd have to pay a sizeable chunk to Fulham and pay to get a replacement in. If we can keep Morris as well then we have a decent front two.

 

Us per annum unfortunately

 

i know we should of Bradshaw and Potts during that season. So some costs were cut but as you say not that much.

 

Pearson, Knasmulner, Mallen, Townsend.

 

Whenever the accounts of other clubs are posted on here and we see the losses and see that these are being underwritten by the cash of rich owners, the club is accused of cheating. I'm not immune from making such accusations myself.

If our debts are serviced by a cash injection from our owners*, have we been cheating?

*I have no idea if our owners will do this or even have the finances to afford to do this.