by paddy20 »
29 Jul 2019 17:32
Stranded paddy20 One87One
No. Simply put. No.
Personally still think we could easily have lost a lot more last season. EFL would not be able to take action on a forecast as it could never be legally binding until the official audited accounts are published. If we only lost £10m last season we would have a lot more leeway this season to spend some money as (based on at £10m loss last season) we could still lose £12m and be ok. There is no sign we are prepared to spend any money at all which tends to suggest the losses for last year are much higher. We may have just about survived the 9 pt deduction this year but we have to have a massive turnaround this season to get to a break even situation. I think we will have to sell either Moore or Swift or perhaps Loader & Olise in January if not before to avoid it.
They can and do take action on the forecast as it is part of the rules all clubs have signed up for. The audited accounts aren't due until March 2020 which would make waiting pretty pointless. If a club grossly underplays a loss in a forecast then it will only come back to bite them on the arse and I'm pretty sure that would be classed as cooking the books and see a harsher penalty handed down - doubt the PL or FA would take to it kindly if a club got promoted.
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If we forecast a loss of 10m last season then yes our FFP result this year would be a 27m loss, so comfortably meeting the FFP requirements - however, 10m plus 20.9m means we start the 2019/20 assessment at -31m so we only have 8m to play with - if we've lost more then the leeway for the next assessment is clearly less. However, for the embargo to have been lifted and for us to have signed any players at all (free or loan) both the EFL and us must be comfortable that we stand an even chance of meeting the next assessment.
Lets look at what has come in/out:
Wages freed up for about 10 players
Fee for Bodvarsson
Sell on for Stacey
New Sponsorship
Fees for Bacuna and Illori in Jan will help this years forecast (lets say circa 3.5m for those two)
We may still see more players leave on loan/perm to free up more wages and we may see a fee or two. We have brought in - 2 players whose combined wage will be much lower than those who have gone and for the loans, the parent clubs are playing all (or the majority) of wages. We probably have scope to bring 1 or 2 more players on loan, free or for a very small fee.
None of this would be happening without EFL blessing, so we are not in any danger of losing points this season. For us to have breached FFP this year, we will have had to forecast a loss that will mean we are already over the restriction for next - so we would have already sold Moore, Barrow or anyone else we could get decent money for and would probably be fielding close to a full academy 11. The fact that we are not and have brought in some players to enhance the best academy players is a good sign. If, and it's a big if at this stage, come January we feel we are in dangerous waters then expect us to try and ship out a player or two for a decent fee.
The Championship is a different beast this year, clubs simply aren't spending money unless they have sold a player up to the PL. Brentford have spent a lot but pretty much all financed by 1 or 2 big sales. Bristol City sold a player for about 13m and have used this money to buy - without selling or a parachute payment - cash deals will be much fewer in number going forward.
So in short, relax - we won't see a points deduction this season and are doing all we can to ensure we meet the requirements for 2019/20, to avoid a penalty during the 2020/21 season.
Some very good points here and I agree with you regarding this season and there being no points deduction. However I believe we came very very close to exceeding the loss allowed of the cumulative £39m, i'e a loss for 18/19 of £22m. (39-21+4 = 22). The reason I say this is as follows;
1. Our revenue was predicted to be about the same as 17/18 for 18/19 although I think it will be slightly lower
2. Although our players in and out will show a small profit for last season, the loss in player trading in 17/18 of 8.2m was largely cancelled out by the purchase of the stadium and a lease back by the owners for 6.5m
3. Although wages may have gone down a bit last season the real savings will be expected this season
I think therefore we will have achieved a loss short of the 22m but not by very much at all. The big question then is how on earth do we turn a loss of an estimated 20m into a small profit or break even. We need to find saving of around 20m in one season!! Its a massive ask and that can only come from reduced wages and big player sales. I think only about 5 teams achieved it in 2017 and probably most of them had parachute payments or a very low wage structure.