SJM interview with BBC

[Bucks Dave]

You left one category out Floyd. We also rely on low price signings from elsewhere, thanks to our scouting network(which also costs), and hope a certain proportion make the grade. So far we've done well unlike with a lot of higher price signings (>£1M)we've made!

[Z175]

this year's £6-7M will start to pay-off Mr Mad's £20M loan that is still outstanding.

I'm sorry to disagree with such a legendary fan but surely Madejski never thought he would ever get than money back, none of it has ever been paid back, he has never mentioned getting it back, the website has even made a statement that this money is not being paid back and the financial accounts are filed on the basis the chairman has confirmed to the auditors he will not request this money back.

Last years 6-7m was not to pay off any overdrafts - it was to pay the difference between the wagebill and the gate receipts. To remain competitive in the Championship you need to spend a rough figure of 20m on wages, based on the fact this is roughly the wagebill of the top 12 teams. The income is about 12-14m from gate receipts and TV money. Swansea have been very successful at paying low wages but unless they change this they risk losing players, other clubs increase their overdrafts. Therefore we claim to be "well run" as we sell players to pay our wagebill, rather than increase the deficit. If we paid a wagebill based on gate receipts of 16,000 we would be be paying league 1 wages and run the risk of slipping back down.

It terms of consequences the chairman and manager will try and make the least effective ones on the team. I would imagine that keeping Long will be hard if he wants to go, so may as well cash in there and get in a replacement, job done. If Shane wants to stay then in my opinion they will ship out Jobi, Federici, Howard and of course Kishinishvili, with an eye on Robson Kanu, McCarthy, Taylor and Pearce. This will be sad but we would still fancy our chances of getting to the playoffs if we kept the boy up front.

[Svlad Cjelli]

The only way SJM will get money back is by selling up the club. I also think partly that the money he's owed is partly acting as an inhibitor to the club's sale, as any buyer would need to find this in cash.

I have written about 5,000 words on http://www.thetilehurstend.co.uk if anyone's interested.

[RG30]

The personnel within the club means that regardless of a sale of players or not, the club will survive and will recruit accordingly + promote from within and still remain competitive. Panic over

[Barry the bird boggler]

Evening Post OS

Multi-millionaire Sir John Madejski has slipped down the Sunday Times Rich List again this year.

The Reading Football Club owner may have seen his team climbing the Championship league table, but he has tumbled to 393rd in the survey of the UK’s 1,000 wealthiest people.

Sir John’s fortune is valued at £175 million, compared with £200 million last year when he was placed at 309th in the list. He also saw his ranking drop in 2009 and 2008.

As well as owning the Royals, the 70-year-old has interests in hotels, printing operations and radio station Reading 107fm.

Sir John made his fortune from the £174 million sale of Auto Trader in 1998.

He was knighted in 2009 for his service to charity and has helped the Royal Academy of Arts, the Victoria and Albert Museum and is chancellor at Reading University. Sir John, who attended the recent Royal Wedding, is also a trustee of the John Madejski Academy, in Whitley, and has an art gallery named after him at Reading Museum.

Swiss born financier Urs Schwarzenbach, of Shiplake, has seen a better year with an £80 million boost to his wealth, although he has slipped two places in the list.

The 62-year-old, who has a growing property empire, now has a reported fortune of £820 million, putting him at 85 on the list.

It has also been a good year for David Mabey, 49, of Hare Hatch-based construction company Mabey Holdings.

He and his family have shot up from 329th to 273rd this year with an increase of £86 million to give a value of £282 million.

The wealth of Lord Iliffe, 66, chairman of Yattendon Investment Trust, remains static at £240 million, but he slips a few places to No 299.

And Eliasz Englander, 78, owner of the Broad Street Mall and other properties, saw a £3 million boost to the family coffers putting them at 420th with a value of £165 million.

The Rich List 2011 is topped for the seventh year in a row by Indian steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal, who has an estimated fortune of £17.514 billion

[Z175]

Sir John’s fortune is valued at £175 million, Sir John made his fortune from the £174 million sale of Auto Trader in 1998.

If he had only just put it in the bank!

[Svlad Cjelli]

Sir John’s fortune is valued at £175 million, Sir John made his fortune from the £174 million sale of Auto Trader in 1998.

If he had only just put it in the bank!

My thoughts entirely! Down £26M from last year - publishing and property are having hard times.

[Rev Algenon Stickleback H]

Agreed, but in football you can only "invest" in infrastructure and facilities - if you're spending money on player, managers etc that's not "investing", it's "gambling".

There are no guarantees of returns, and because the number of trophies/promotion places etc stays the same, the more other teams there are who are gambling in the same way then the more likely it is that the gamble won't pay off.

...which is what those who say the club should invest in players seldom grasp.

Even worse is a completely incorrect belief that Madejski is pocketing money that could otherwise be spent on players.



As for the quote himself, the context of the statement would reveal a lot. If, for example, he was asked about what would happen if we didn't go up, it's a very reasonable answer. What would anyone else expect him to do? Lie?

[Drew_3]

Some of the comments in this and other threads make me laugh. I read things like we are over achieving, one person in this thread suggesting we have done so since 2002!! Tell me how do you propose to be successful and continue to grow as a club if its not to keep pushing forward and achieving more each year?

That sort of comment is what stops people and organisations from getting to the top, "well done people we have done really well, but you can relax now and take your foot of the gas because, I mean really we have done far better than we should have, so who gives a stuff if we balls it up from here!!".

What a load of crap!!

Ok, I should have also added you are also an idiot of we don't know the difference between spending money you don't have an investing.

Someone above said businesses grow by investing money to get bigger.

That is certainly true. The difference is that an investment brings in a return. They don't just spend more than their income year on year. Businesses that do that go bankrupt, not grow.

I never said anything about spending money, or indeed money you don't have. I simply said I hate and disagree with the statement regarding overachieving.

[Bucks Dave]

http://www.football-lineups.com/tourn/T ... _Avg_Atte/ shows that we are 10th in attendance levels in the Championship so to that extent we are overachieving although not by a massive amount. Go back to where we were when SJM took us over and its a massive achievement for him.

[Drew_3]

http://www.football-lineups.com/tourn/The_Championship_2010-2011/Stats/Home_Avg_Atte/ shows that we are 10th in attendance levels in the Championship so to that extent we are overachieving although not by a massive amount. Go back to where we were when SJM took us over and its a massive achievement for him.

With all due respect and with out wanting to offend, what the hell does attendance have to do with achievement?

Surely achievement is not tied into attendance? Otherwise no one other than utd would be able to win the premier league!?

[Svlad Cjelli]

Achievement is relative to investment - football economists have shown that there is a 93% correlation between investment and league position.

So if there are more than four clubs in the Championship with higher wage bills than us then we are over-achieving. If there aren't then we're not!

Although I don't have any figures this year to back it up, my feeling is that our wage bill is likely to be somewhere between 8th & 12th.

[Bandini]

Achievement is relative to investment - football economists have shown that there is a 93% correlation between investment and league position.

So if there are more than four clubs in the Championship with higher wage bills than us then we are over-achieving. If there aren't then we're not!

Although I don't have any figures this year to back it up, my feeling is that our wage bill is likely to be somewhere between 8th & 12th.

I guess that you mean "spending" rather than "investment"...

[Svlad Cjelli]

Achievement is relative to investment - football economists have shown that there is a 93% correlation between investment and league position.

So if there are more than four clubs in the Championship with higher wage bills than us then we are over-achieving. If there aren't then we're not!

Although I don't have any figures this year to back it up, my feeling is that our wage bill is likely to be somewhere between 8th & 12th.

I guess that you mean "spending" rather than "investment"...

Sh*t! Of course I do - I mean spending on player wages.

[Bandini]

Which teams, that finished beneath us in the table, do you think had a higher wage bill? Boro, Hull, Leicester, Ipswich, Sheff U, Pompey, Forest?

I guess that Swansea and Norwich might well have a lower wage bill than us.

[Svlad Cjelli]

Forest, Leeds, Leicester & Sheffield Utd certainly, and also the clubs in receipt of parachute payments (Hull, 'Boro, Burnley, Portsmouth). I think we'd be on about the same level as Swansea - too close to call on that one, and not sure about Ipswich.

Also not sure about Norwich - they do have large debts and in 2009/10 they had a Wages to Turnover Ratio of 71.6% on a turnover of £17.019M - that's a wage bill of £12.2M in Tier 3 so I'd be surprised if they're not higher than us.

So by my reckoning, with QPR & Cardiff included that's 11 or 12 clubs spending more than us on wages.

[Bandini]

£12m on player wages in Div 3? Crazy.

[Svlad Cjelli]

£12m on player wages in Div 3? Crazy.

You don't get to be £23M in debt without effort.

[Rev Algenon Stickleback H]

I never said anything about spending money, or indeed money you don't have. I simply said I hate and disagree with the statement regarding overachieving.

We are at best an average club for this division, with average support and a reputation for at least making some effort to balance the books.

On that basis, anything above mid-table is over-achieving.

Since 2002 we've not finished lower than 9th, been in the top 6 four times, and had two years in the premier league.


If you'd like to state why such achievement is no more that we should expect, then be my guest.

[Royal Rother]

It's a well run club.

It appears that, except for the year of relegation, in each of the last 7 years we have finished higher in the final points table than we did for Average gate, and for Wage bill. (And in the relegation season we were probably only 1 place off "parity" for both....)

Some might see that as "overachievement" - I just see it as evidence of the wisdom and skill of our Chairman. The very man that some idiots want replaced asap.