Madejski's comments to BBC Radio Berkshire

[brendywendy]

I realise that Rother, but there has to be reasons why we are not prepared to invest in players that will improve our status, quality players will or should naturally make a better side thus increasing the amount of fans that will want to watch games thus increasing the income through the turnstiles. We have been reluctant to spend for a few years now and we did "get lucky" with the signings of Doyle, Sonko and Hunt, but since then our "free" or low fee players has been pretty dismal, why ? that can only be explained by the scouting network, the old adage of "speculate to accumulate" might not be the ideal to qoute when conversing about the rights and wrongs of paying high transfer fees but surly some speculation should be possible ?? after all unless JM is taking back all his loans, as has been suggested in some of these threads, there has to be some sort of floating kitty for the manager to dip into the market, £8.5m transfer money in so far this close season, and if what we read is true, a possible £7 or £8m for Doyle then there has to be a reinvestment in the side, if not it is going to be a very rocky road for JM from the attending fans.

if we are going to lose 6-10 M this year as a club id guess that money should probably go towards keeping us business like

[howser]

I hadn't read or realised that we expecting to lose £6-£10m this year ? with salaries cut by 40%, I believe that was the figure being banded about, I find that figure incredibly hard to believe or understand, however if it was a statement from the club that said we are expecting to lose that much, then, with all the other rather contradictory, bland and "self-sympathy" statements, I would find that equally hard to accept as true.

[brendywendy]

I hadn't read or realised that we expecting to lose £6-£10m this year ? with salaries cut by 40%, I believe that was the figure being banded about, I find that figure incredibly hard to believe or understand, however if it was a statement from the club that said we are expecting to lose that much, then, with all the other rather contradictory, bland and "self-sympathy" statements, I would find that equally hard to accept as true.

i mean a loss on the week to week business side- i imagine we may well make it into the black with the player sales included.

the year we went up we had full stadium for half the year and still made a 6 million loss
this year, we will have a little more in ticket sales/prices but a bigger squad etc

so id assume about the same-apart from the sales we have made

[brendywendy]

.

[Royal Rother]

...if not it is going to be a very rocky road for JM from the attending fans.

Not if we carry on playing like Saturday...

[working class hero]

wage bill doubled
gate receipts increased by?...........
.................no way near 100%.

The wage bill might have doubled.

But receipts in 2004 were roughly £4.6 mill [330 x 14000], in 2005 I would assume roughly £8 mill to allow for the increase in numbers.

In 2006 we sold 24000 at nigh on 580 or a total of £13.9 million.

Not far off doubling then?

Then of course there is the SKY bounty.

And doubling the crowd might have increased revenue from replica kit / souvenirs / programmes / catering / golden gamble / tocket office phone line / away ticket sales etc.

Any pleas of poverty are hard to accept.

It is Madejski's cash so he can do what he wants with it. But what is the point of saying we need to sell before we can buy, then after selling change the story to we won't pay high enough wages for quality players?
Personally I would rather watch League 2 football than pay what are [imho] obscene amounts of money out to players. But stop telling us money is there - when the manager cannot buy because of our wage policies.

[papereyes]

Any pleas of poverty are hard to accept.

I think the club, should they want to make such pleas, are going to have to work hard to persuade most fans who, rightly or wrongly, think we must have made some money out of the last few seasons.

It is Madejski's cash so he can do what he wants with it.

Of Reading FC's total income, how much is Madejski's and how much is paid to him by the fans on the gate. I think that the answer to the latter point there and the first point raised may be connected.

If we go through a dodgy patch (which we might avoid, if we're lucky), then I can see continued pleas of "but we're skint ... " not playing well with fans who have not been given enough reason to see why.

[howser]

Isnt it self destruction then to sell payers to subsidise the narural income, the players that are likely to go are the"better ones" that will attract the higher fees, and a such reducing the quality of the side, and in itself that will reduce the crowd sizes etc........

[Dirk Gently]

Isnt it self destruction then to sell payers to subsidise the narural income, the players that are likely to go are the"better ones" that will attract the higher fees, and a such reducing the quality of the side, and in itself that will reduce the crowd sizes etc........

I don't think anyone wanted to sell players. But they all recognised that it was inevitable that we would lose a number of players - you can't keep a player who wants to leave, and with PL clubs waving cheque books it was always going to happen. So accepting it always happens to relegated clubs and taking the positives from it is a bit different from looking for it to happen.

[Rev Algenon Stickleback H]

I just wish that Egomaniac did not broad brush his statements about players wages - if he is referring to Lampards abhooresnt £150k a week fair enough - if he's talking about Championship level players earning £20k a week plus - dont think so!

any championship player on £20k a week is hideously overpaid. The average is supposed to be more like £4k a week.

And if you are saying that championship players aren't overpaid, take a look at the ticket prices we have to pay and see if you can see some sort of correlation between the two.

[IMAMATEOFJOVSKY]

...if not it is going to be a very rocky road for JM from the attending fans.

Not if we carry on playing like Saturday...

Not every team is going to be as piss poor as Plymouth were - lets see how we fair when we are playing the teams that are going to be there or thereabouts!

[IMAMATEOFJOVSKY]

I just wish that Egomaniac did not broad brush his statements about players wages - if he is referring to Lampards abhooresnt £150k a week fair enough - if he's talking about Championship level players earning £20k a week plus - dont think so!

any championship player on £20k a week is hideously overpaid. The average is supposed to be more like £4k a week.

And if you are saying that championship players aren't overpaid, take a look at the ticket prices we have to pay and see if you can see some sort of correlation between the two.

So how come Doyle is on £24k a wage he commanded before promotion to the premier league??

[Arch]

As far as I can tell, parachute payment plus gate income is likely to be pretty close to wage bill (assuming a wage bill of around 20m and gate income of 8-10m). That leaves us on a bit of a shoestring from Setanta money and commercial income for day to day running of the club. Conceivably, we could spend some of the transfer receipts and presumed profit from last season, but it would make sense to use that also for loan payments and to keep some liquidity. I think it's pretty obvious that there couldn't be large sums of money just sloshing about. If we don't go up in two years it will be absolutely impossible to make ends meet with our current commitments, which is why clubs end up like Wednesday, Leicester or Southampton.

[howser]

I am not discounting that Arch, we could trade within the loans market, sides like Arsenal and Chelsea have some outstanding young players desperate for first team football, we can all wallow in the display on Saturday, I wasnt there, but by all accounts on here it was a massive improvement on the previous two, but lets see how we do against a more competative side before we get into "rapture land" our aims are all the same to see the club a success, but we shouldn't be allowed to let the fantastic time we have had over the last couple to disappear into a distant memory . I reiterate something that I have said before on here, lets have less of the contradictory statements from the club and once and for all all lets hear from them as to where they see us heading, and where they want us to be in the next two or three years, my concern of this is bought around the comments from JM that we will stay where we are comfortable in the championship. I realise that no company has to by right explain its decicions to its customers, but we as fans invest, some more heavilly than others, in the club and there has to be a moral judgement from them as to how much information they will let us as supporters and investors know what their intensions are.

[The 17 Bus]

I f Doyle is now on £24k a week i would be well surprised.

[Gordons Cumming]

but we as fans invest,.

We don't invest..............we pay to be entertained................we pay for merchandise................but invest?

I don't think so.

[Southbank Old Boy]

I just wish that Egomaniac did not broad brush his statements about players wages - if he is referring to Lampards abhooresnt £150k a week fair enough - if he's talking about Championship level players earning £20k a week plus - dont think so!

any championship player on £20k a week is hideously overpaid. The average is supposed to be more like £4k a week.

And if you are saying that championship players aren't overpaid, take a look at the ticket prices we have to pay and see if you can see some sort of correlation between the two.

So how come Doyle is on £24k a wage he commanded before promotion to the premier league??

I have no idea if that is correct or not, but I doubt we would've accepted paying him that if we weren't assured of promotion. I'm sure someone can retrace the dates but I seem to remember that Doyle has renogotiated his contract twice since he's been here. Both of those have been as a result of his performances on the pitch and I'm sure will have included the type of clauses people mentioned to cover dropping those wages as and when the team suffered a turn in fortunes.

When Doyle joined us as a nobody mick from Cork he wouldn't have been on anything like that money. Paying him close to his going rate means that we're now fending off bids around £8m for him. If we hadn't been ready to pay him the wages he's been receiving since those new contracts were tabled we'd have lost him a long time ago.

[Southbank Old Boy]

The complexity of the financial situation just goes to show how costly our cock ups last season are for the club!

[Gordons Cumming]

Is it so then that not all players get a cut in wages when the team are relegated?

[Stranded]

but we as fans invest,.

We don't invest..............we pay to be entertained................we pay for merchandise................but invest?

I don't think so.

I agree. Whether you like it or not, we as fans, pay £425 to watch 23 games of football - that's it, no more, no less.

Yes we invest a lot of time in our clubs and may well put more money into the club by purchasing shirts etc, but that is our choice and we get something in return - either 90mins of football or a shirt/scarf.

If you don't agree with what the club or those running at are doing then the only way you can really impact that is by making the decision not to go.