CONFIMRED - The final countdown

[Snowflake Royal]

Currently it seems we're all back at square 1 with anyone interested talking to Dai. No nearer, nor any clue whether the idiot even wants to sell the mess as he can't seem to agree a price, or accept the amount of money he'll get will decrease, as these groups seem to have to pay the club wages and tax as part of the negotiations. Shame you can't force people like this to accept a proposed deal. This time next month we'll all still be waiting and quite probably a few months into the season too, are SBWD going to be returning to the tennis balls and getting games abandoned if that's is where we are in September? Always fancied a league trip to Bromley - if we still have a club.

If we aren't sold by season start, I'd like to see a boycott of the first home game. Just a completely empty stadium.

Im sticking to no sale soon means we won't see out the season. We might limp into starting it still.

[Sutekh]

Currently it seems we're all back at square 1 with anyone interested talking to Dai. No nearer, nor any clue whether the idiot even wants to sell the mess as he can't seem to agree a price, or accept the amount of money he'll get will decrease, as these groups seem to have to pay the club wages and tax as part of the negotiations. Shame you can't force people like this to accept a proposed deal. This time next month we'll all still be waiting and quite probably a few months into the season too, are SBWD going to be returning to the tennis balls and getting games abandoned if that's is where we are in September? Always fancied a league trip to Bromley - if we still have a club.

If we aren't sold by season start, I'd like to see a boycott of the first home game. Just a completely empty stadium.

Now that makes good sense, would back that all the way.

[Stranded]

Currently it seems we're all back at square 1 with anyone interested talking to Dai. No nearer, nor any clue whether the idiot even wants to sell the mess as he can't seem to agree a price, or accept the amount of money he'll get will decrease, as these groups seem to have to pay the club wages and tax as part of the negotiations. Shame you can't force people like this to accept a proposed deal. This time next month we'll all still be waiting and quite probably a few months into the season too, are SBWD going to be returning to the tennis balls and getting games abandoned if that's is where we are in September? Always fancied a league trip to Bromley - if we still have a club.

If we aren't sold by season start, I'd like to see a boycott of the first home game. Just a completely empty stadium.

Im sticking to no sale soon means we won't see out the season. We might limp into starting it still.

Total boycott eventually worked for Blackpool. Seriously considering if I bother with the Royals TV International Pass this year. Will probably get it on the credit card to protect myself but not 100% at the mo.

[Hound]

Do credit cards protect you in instances of partial refunds? Ie if you bought a ST and then we collapsed in January, would you get anything back?

[Clyde1998]

Why is the operating costs too much in league 1 compared to championship? What revenue are we missing out on being a division below? We signed our long term sponsorship deal with scl whilst in the champ. Ticket prices increased last season, and we had a higher average attendance. Genuine question, what are we missing out on? What’s the difference between championship prize money and league one, and what is the difference in TV rights between champ and league one. As they seem to be the only two things that could be different.

TV money is vastly different for a start.

Income in the Championship is roughly £14m - £16m a season. In L1 we haven't seen the accounts yet, but somewhere between £8m and £10m seems about right. A Cat 1 academy costs about £2m a year.

There's a reason only us and Derby had one in L1, iland it's because we didn't immediately downgrade on relegation in the hopesof bouncing back.

I'm sure I've seen stuff implying a Category 1 academy is closer to £5 million a year in total.

I've seen that too, but it's been unclear whether they were talking about £5m total or £5m more than having a Cat2 academy.

The initial costs were suggested to be between £2.3m and £4.94m, according to the Premier League's plan for Cat1. Cat2 was between £1.020m and £1.775m; Cat3 was between £315k and £540k and Cat4 was £285k.

The big financial differences between a bottom Cat1 and a top Cat2 academy is in coaching costs and accommodation and travel (I'm guessing the latter being lower is due to the more regionalised nature of Cat2). Between those two factors, a club would spend around £500k less by being Cat2. Simply employing staff seems to be over 60% the cost of an academy at any category.

Some of costs in the document have likely ballooned due to inflation (both general and of football players/staff wages). It's possible it's £2m more than Cat2 and £5m in total at the moment.

If it is £5m in total, that's going to be at least half our revenue - unless we're selling players coming through the academy for decent fees regularly, that's far too large for a League One club.

That said, there's also a grant for having a Cat1 academy (smaller grants for other categories) which would offset some of these costs.

[Clyde1998]

Do credit cards protect you in instances of partial refunds? Ie if you bought a ST and then we collapsed in January, would you get anything back?

I think the STAR statement said it was pro-rata. So if you've paid for 23 matches and you only get ten, you should get 13/23rds of the season ticket price back.

[tmesis]

TV money is vastly different for a start.

Income in the Championship is roughly £14m - £16m a season. In L1 we haven't seen the accounts yet, but somewhere between £8m and £10m seems about right. A Cat 1 academy costs about £2m a year.

There's a reason only us and Derby had one in L1, iland it's because we didn't immediately downgrade on relegation in the hopesof bouncing back.

I'm sure I've seen stuff implying a Category 1 academy is closer to £5 million a year in total.

Me too, but not from anything or one reliable, and that's a ludicrous figure for even a top Championship club to afford.

Maybe, but it would be some way to explaining why we are still losing a fortune, despite having good crowds and a team that's not meant to be all that highly paid.

[Snowflake Royal]

I'm sure I've seen stuff implying a Category 1 academy is closer to £5 million a year in total.

Me too, but not from anything or one reliable, and that's a ludicrous figure for even a top Championship club to afford.

Maybe, but it would be some way to explaining why we are still losing a fortune, despite having good crowds and a team that's not meant to be all that highly paid.

Every year people massively underestimate how much our squad costs.

There's this weird myth that our wage bill is small, yeah for a Championship club, but we got relegated.

Smith, Wing, Knibbs, Savage and Elliott are unlikely to be on small L1 wages. Button is going to be on decent. Yes Ejaria has gone, but we'll have to have paid up a lot of his contract to July. We don't have a particularly small squad.

Even at £1k a week, which is certainly very believable for a lot of our Academy graduates is over £50k a year.

I expect a lot of our senior squad are on £3k to £6k comfortably.

It's very easy to get to an estimated wage bill of £4m-£5m ignoring paying off historic transfers and wages. And I suspect its higher. That's half or more of our income right there.

It's only a couple of seasons ago it was over £20m. Yes we've lost a lot of high earners, but it's just not realistic to think we're anything but a fairly big L1 wage bill.

[Armadillo Roadkill]

Me too, but not from anything or one reliable, and that's a ludicrous figure for even a top Championship club to afford.

Maybe, but it would be some way to explaining why we are still losing a fortune, despite having good crowds and a team that's not meant to be all that highly paid.

Every year people massively underestimate how much our squad costs.

There's this weird myth that our wage bill is small, yeah for a Championship club, but we got relegated.

Smith, Wing, Knibbs, Savage and Elliott are unlikely to be on small L1 wages. Button is going to be on decent. Yes Ejaria has gone, but we'll have to have paid up a lot of his contract to July. We don't have a particularly small squad.

Even at £1k a week, which is certainly very believable for a lot of our Academy graduates is over £50k a year.

I expect a lot of our senior squad are on £3k to £6k comfortably.

It's very easy to get to an estimated wage bill of £4m-£5m ignoring paying off historic transfers and wages. And I suspect its higher. That's half or more of our income right there.

It's only a couple of seasons ago it was over £20m. Yes we've lost a lot of high earners, but it's just not realistic to think we're anything but a fairly big L1 wage bill.

Given that pretty much everyone who wasn't an academy graduate was signed under deals that had to be authorised by the EFL, I think our wage bill isn't going to be massive. Who's left on a Championship contract - Yiadom?

[Snowflake Royal]

Maybe, but it would be some way to explaining why we are still losing a fortune, despite having good crowds and a team that's not meant to be all that highly paid.

Every year people massively underestimate how much our squad costs.

There's this weird myth that our wage bill is small, yeah for a Championship club, but we got relegated.

Smith, Wing, Knibbs, Savage and Elliott are unlikely to be on small L1 wages. Button is going to be on decent. Yes Ejaria has gone, but we'll have to have paid up a lot of his contract to July. We don't have a particularly small squad.

Even at £1k a week, which is certainly very believable for a lot of our Academy graduates is over £50k a year.

I expect a lot of our senior squad are on £3k to £6k comfortably.

It's very easy to get to an estimated wage bill of £4m-£5m ignoring paying off historic transfers and wages. And I suspect its higher. That's half or more of our income right there.

It's only a couple of seasons ago it was over £20m. Yes we've lost a lot of high earners, but it's just not realistic to think we're anything but a fairly big L1 wage bill.

Given that pretty much everyone who wasn't an academy graduate was signed under deals that had to be authorised by the EFL, I think our wage bill isn't going to be massive. Who's left on a Championship contract - Yiadom?

This isn't true. There weren't any restrictions last season other than whether we had paid our tax bill and were able to make signings at all.

The signings that had to be approved under that level of FL scrutiny were in the Championship and the limit was about £8k a week. Which is a big L1 salary.

It's not about Championship contracts.

[WestYorksRoyal]

I would assume our 1st team wage bill is top 6 L1, but not ridiculous and something we should be able to manage with 14k fans or so a week. Like others, I can't signings like Wing, Knibbs and Smith pushing us beyond this.

The issue is the cost of maintaining our academy and infrastructure. Scholarship contracts, coaching staff, groundsmen at Bearwood etc.,. The sort of thing it's hard to trim around the edges; it needs a strategic decision whether it's worth it or not, a decision that's not being made due to uncertainty.

[kwik-silva]

Every year people massively underestimate how much our squad costs.

There's this weird myth that our wage bill is small, yeah for a Championship club, but we got relegated.

Smith, Wing, Knibbs, Savage and Elliott are unlikely to be on small L1 wages. Button is going to be on decent. Yes Ejaria has gone, but we'll have to have paid up a lot of his contract to July. We don't have a particularly small squad.

Even at £1k a week, which is certainly very believable for a lot of our Academy graduates is over £50k a year.

I expect a lot of our senior squad are on £3k to £6k comfortably.

It's very easy to get to an estimated wage bill of £4m-£5m ignoring paying off historic transfers and wages. And I suspect its higher. That's half or more of our income right there.

It's only a couple of seasons ago it was over £20m. Yes we've lost a lot of high earners, but it's just not realistic to think we're anything but a fairly big L1 wage bill.

Given that pretty much everyone who wasn't an academy graduate was signed under deals that had to be authorised by the EFL, I think our wage bill isn't going to be massive. Who's left on a Championship contract - Yiadom?

This isn't true. There weren't any restrictions last season other than whether we had paid our tax bill and were able to make signings at all.

The signings that had to be approved under that level of FL scrutiny were in the Championship and the limit was about £8k a week. Which is a big L1 salary.

It's not about Championship contracts.

Were there no restrictions? We were told we had to sign up to a business plan last summer after breaking the previous one, you would assume that that did have some restrictions - though we never found out what they were if so.

[Snowflake Royal]

Given that pretty much everyone who wasn't an academy graduate was signed under deals that had to be authorised by the EFL, I think our wage bill isn't going to be massive. Who's left on a Championship contract - Yiadom?

This isn't true. There weren't any restrictions last season other than whether we had paid our tax bill and were able to make signings at all.

The signings that had to be approved under that level of FL scrutiny were in the Championship and the limit was about £8k a week. Which is a big L1 salary.

It's not about Championship contracts.

Were there no restrictions? We were told we had to sign up to a business plan last summer after breaking the previous one, you would assume that that did have some restrictions - though we never found out what they were if so.

We had to comply with our overall wage budget, but not individual deals.

We have several clubs on record that they couldn't compete with us in the transfer market on wages for players like Wing and Smith.

[The Royal Forester]

This isn't true. There weren't any restrictions last season other than whether we had paid our tax bill and were able to make signings at all.

The signings that had to be approved under that level of FL scrutiny were in the Championship and the limit was about £8k a week. Which is a big L1 salary.

It's not about Championship contracts.

Were there no restrictions? We were told we had to sign up to a business plan last summer after breaking the previous one, you would assume that that did have some restrictions - though we never found out what they were if so.

We had to comply with our overall wage budget, but not individual deals.

We have several clubs on record that they couldn't compete with us in the transfer market on wages for players like Wing and Smith.

Didn't the other half of Lewis Wing say he took a pay cut to come to Reading, the longer contract being a part of the reason? If we are paying less than Wycombe. as the Wanderers are not the biggest payers by a long way, so many other clubs could have offered more.

[Sutekh]

Were there no restrictions? We were told we had to sign up to a business plan last summer after breaking the previous one, you would assume that that did have some restrictions - though we never found out what they were if so.

We had to comply with our overall wage budget, but not individual deals.

We have several clubs on record that they couldn't compete with us in the transfer market on wages for players like Wing and Smith.

Didn't the other half of Lewis Wing say he took a pay cut to come to Reading, the longer contract being a part of the reason? If we are paying less than Wycombe. as the Wanderers are not the biggest payers by a long way, so many other clubs could have offered more.

QPR wanted him but he chose struggling at Reading over being cr@p in west London. Perhaps that shows how far QPR's finances must have fallen.

[Armadillo Roadkill]

This isn't true. There weren't any restrictions last season other than whether we had paid our tax bill and were able to make signings at all.

The signings that had to be approved under that level of FL scrutiny were in the Championship and the limit was about £8k a week. Which is a big L1 salary.

It's not about Championship contracts.

Were there no restrictions? We were told we had to sign up to a business plan last summer after breaking the previous one, you would assume that that did have some restrictions - though we never found out what they were if so.

We had to comply with our overall wage budget, but not individual deals.

We have several clubs on record that they couldn't compete with us in the transfer market on wages for players like Wing and Smith.

Every single deal, including loans, had to be approved by the EFL. There was a ceiling on individual contracts.

I haven't got the pettiness to go back and find the exact quote from Bowen, so will have to rely on yours, and my memory.

[Crusader Royal]

Were there no restrictions? We were told we had to sign up to a business plan last summer after breaking the previous one, you would assume that that did have some restrictions - though we never found out what they were if so.

We had to comply with our overall wage budget, but not individual deals.

We have several clubs on record that they couldn't compete with us in the transfer market on wages for players like Wing and Smith.

Every single deal, including loans, had to be approved by the EFL. There was a ceiling on individual contracts.

I haven't got the pettiness to go back and find the exact quote from Bowen, so will have to rely on yours, and my memory.

There was a point where we had an average wage agreed with the EFL and an overall wage cap and a limit on squad size. No new signings or new contracts could push us above either figure. Not entirely sure how the breach of the average wage worked but it did mean there were restrictions on both individual and squad wages. Have lost track of exactly when this was in place !

[Snowflake Royal]

Were there no restrictions? We were told we had to sign up to a business plan last summer after breaking the previous one, you would assume that that did have some restrictions - though we never found out what they were if so.

We had to comply with our overall wage budget, but not individual deals.

We have several clubs on record that they couldn't compete with us in the transfer market on wages for players like Wing and Smith.

Every single deal, including loans, had to be approved by the EFL. There was a ceiling on individual contracts.

I haven't got the pettiness to go back and find the exact quote from Bowen, so will have to rely on yours, and my memory.

That was 100% the case, but in our last Championship season.

After which Bowen assured us there were no restrictions and there would be no more problems.

[Snowflake Royal]

We had to comply with our overall wage budget, but not individual deals.

We have several clubs on record that they couldn't compete with us in the transfer market on wages for players like Wing and Smith.

Every single deal, including loans, had to be approved by the EFL. There was a ceiling on individual contracts.

I haven't got the pettiness to go back and find the exact quote from Bowen, so will have to rely on yours, and my memory.

There was a point where we had an average wage agreed with the EFL and an overall wage cap and a limit on squad size. No new signings or new contracts could push us above either figure. Not entirely sure how the breach of the average wage worked but it did mean there were restrictions on both individual and squad wages. Have lost track of exactly when this was in place !

Championship relegation season.

[Stranded]

50 days until the new season starts.

Be very surprised if we have new owners or any new players in by then.

Also likely to have Noel Hunt in charge as Selles gets fed up and walks.