Top earners

things move on.

Football wages have gone up a lot and if you think Anderson colace JayMac Moore Shackell Gray GOC would sign for anything like 5k then that london's finally made you lose it.

 

It was the bank not keeping there gentlemens agreement with the club with the overdraft that sent us into admin,not the players wages

 

What overdraft? Or is that what the bank said? If we were going to the bank to ask for an overdraft to pay staff wages what does that spell? Clue: it begins with insolvency and ends in administration.

What bank makes 'gentleman's agreements'? That sounds like a John Dennis-ism.

 

LOL

It was the truth though the collapse of the ITV deal caused the club to use there overdraft as they had budgeted the deal with itv in.

which the bank then declined so they had no other alternative so as to safe guard the club

 

Personally I have no idea what any of our players earn. To take a guess would be pointless as I have nothing to base it on. Anything I have ever said on the subject in the past or will say in the future is pure waffle.

While the above certainly applies to me, I reckon 99.99% of us should use that as our signature.

 

They had a very good alternative, but chose not to take it because it would have meant the board members would have got nothing for their shares. The irony is that they got nothing in the end anyway.

Patrick Cryne offered to come in and buy the club, but the money he was offering would pay the debt off and then pay for the running of the club. None of what he was offering would have gone to the shareholders. The board at the time were the majority shareholders by some considerable margin. What they should have done was call a shareholders meeting and have a vote. The majority of shareholders would have realised that Cryne's offer would safeguard the future of the club and for their small amount of shares would have quite happily foresaken their value. However, the board members had large amounts of shares that they thought would bring them a windfall, so they held firm, trying desperately to find another buyer who would give them what they wanted. Of course, that didn't happen and Cryne ultimately ended up having to cough up a damn sight more, as we had a damn sight more debt by the time he finally got hold of the club (the less said about that the better!).

We therefore went into administration for three reasons. Firstly the players wages were out of hand for a club our size. As soon as the TV money collapsed it was exposed. Secondly the bank withdrew the overdraft. But thirdly, and most importantly, the board chose not to take an option which would have avoided administration because it would have wiped out the value of the shares that they thought would bring them a windfall.

 

Based on the fact that the club's annual expenditure is about the same as the income (maybe not this season due to cup run/transfers) then I'd hazard a guess that the average wage among the senior pro's is about £3500 - some of those left over from the era before the club went on and on about finances will more than likely be on at least double that...ie Steele.

All a total guess but to suggest the players recruited from the lower leagues are on as "low" as a grand a week is laughable. The Championship is easily the strongest and most-watched second tier in the world, I'd love to get my hands on the books at Barnsley it would be a real eye-opener. Obviously at the so-called big clubs in the league the numbers will be even more obscene.

 

I didn't know that - I always thought our going into administration was strange because the debts compared with other clubs who went through it before and after were tiny. I believe it was somewhere in the region of £2m which I'd have thought for a company with a turnover of about £15m (could be way off there, just a guess) could have been managed better. Yes there would have had to be contract terminations and job losses but that happened anyway. For me, administration did nothing for us, it certainly wasn't the easy way out that it seems to have been for a lot of other clubs which is why I fully agree with the points deductions that clubs have had in the years after.

 

The accounts are published every year. Not in detail of individual contracts but enough to know that too many players on 5k+ isn't feasible without other players being on a grand or so.

 

Unfortunately, we only went into administration over a debt of around £750k or something. It was several million more than that when Cryne finally got control though. You can perhaps see why he wouldn't entertain the previous decision makers back at the club. And how did a debt so small get so big?

But you're right, whilst any club going into administration, laying off low paid office staff, stiffing local companies and charities for money owed and wiping off the bad financial management of the club (whilst the players, whose high wages got the clubs into the mess in the first place, get every penny of their contracts paid?!?!) is never a good thing, we weren't as bad as the likes of Leicester, who wiped millions of debt off only for their new owners to pay millions to build a squad that immediately got them promoted back to the Premiership. It was the Leicester incident, and the ensuing outrage, that led the FA and Football League to act.

 

Funny that! Still doesn't excuse their actions though in turning down Cryne's offer. Selfish? Greedy? Both I'd say.

Actually though, now that you mention it, it does ring a bell. Although I understood it was more along the lines of 'didn't have to inform the shareholders', rather than 'couldn't hold a vote'.

 

Wasn't it how a question was phrased that allowed Dennis to say no and avoid a vote?