Finance

[Hound]

I don’t think the CV can really be left out of any equation tbh

Who knows what sort of money clubs will have to spend. You might have got 12m for Swift before at a push. So many different things to factor in now - whether clubs will have any money, can sign from overseas etc

Mind you, wonder if it’s crossed Howe and co’s minds to shove the useless expensive tossers like Aluko on Furlough immediately

[3points]

Selling Moore does make sense but it leaves us very short at centre back because I cannot see how we could afford another loan of Miazga unless Chelsea pay his wages. That leaves us with Morrison and McIntyre. The latter is good enough but does pick up his share of injuries. I think Osho’s contract expires this summer too.

to be fair we've demonstrated in the past few seasons that decent Championship centre backs do not need to cost the earth. IIRC Moore was about 1.2m? Morrision on a free. We sold Jake Cooper for 0.5m and he does a decent job now for Millwall. I wouldn't be too worried if you can sell him for good money and bring in a relatively low cost replacement

[3points]

Selling Moore does make sense but it leaves us very short at centre back because I cannot see how we could afford another loan of Miazga unless Chelsea pay his wages. That leaves us with Morrison and McIntyre. The latter is good enough but does pick up his share of injuries. I think Osho’s contract expires this summer too.

Christ I forgot Blackett! He must be on 10kish. Another saving made. There are other loans possible.

I remember reading Popa was on about 15k (euros) a week as well. I doubt any of his loan clubs have paid that in full. So that's another one off the payroll.

[3points]

When we spunked all that money on Ejaria and Puskas i said it was mental and that we couldnt afford it. A number of people said i was being a killjoy and should just learn to enjoy football as a releif.

Some of those same people now have a 6 page thread on how the finances are screwed. Anyone cheering on those signings in the Summer must have known this was coming. Why is there so much surprise now? We went from making a massive loss,and not buying players, to within the same Summer splurging on 2 signings from Liverpool and Inter Milan respectively. Did people think players leave clubs like Liverpool and Inter Milan unless a lot of money is thrown at them?

Many people who cheered on Reading's CRAZY spending last year criticise Pompey fans for their overspending but are completely blinded by their own club doing it.

When you say spunked and splurging, it sounds like you are labelling Ejaria and Puscas as failed signings, which is far from the case. These signings are obviously an investment and based on the performances this year (and last for Ovie) I'd say that it is money well spent, I'd certainly rather spend what we did on Puscas than someone like Jordan Rhodes, and Ovie at £3.5m is a snip to what he is actually worth. If Reading wanted to, we could sell him for a decent amount of money.

Also worth remembering that we were under a soft embargo by The FA, which was then released, it must've been released for a reason. We might've even passed those details onto them for review before completion.

Also, also, as Ovie is on loan until the end of the season, I doubt the money will be transferred to Liverpool until the season is finished and he becomes our player so I doubt there is much cost associated with this season, I'd also find it hard to believe that we paid £7m upfront for Puscas, I'd expect it to be £7m over the course of a number of years or heavily performance related.

In terms of player wages? I doubt they are on much more than what we are paying on an average anyway and if you minus Aluko's wages and possibly Barrow's wages (with both of them going out on loan), then there is your gap.

I'll keep saying it till every one has read it. ACCOUNTS ARE NOT DONE ON A CASH BASIS.

It doesn't matter when you pay another team. If you have loaned their player for 1m and pay that 1m in 10 years. It still hits 1m in the season you loaned him.

Football fair play is not done on a cash basis. It is based on your accounting profit and loss adjusted for allowable expenses.

Reading made a 45 million loss. So we were making an incredible loss before we decided to carry on spending loads and loads of money. It doesn't matter if ejaria and puskas are good. We don't have the money. If someone offers me a ferrari half price, it doesn't mean I can afford it.

We have too many players, and then we decided to buy some more, for more money. There I no reason to think Aluko will be on higher wages than a player signed from inter Milan or Liverpool. Unless you can show me a spreadsheet with each players salary I cannot see any argument that would say ejaria and puskas are not on high salaries. If they're not, they have very bad agents.

Reading didn't make a 45m loss. That's tosh. They made a 30m loss within the football club. When you deduct all the things like the academy and other allowable expenses, for FFP purposes the loss will be significantly below 30m. You also have to look at the parent company accounts as well. They only show an 11m loss due to some financial chicanery

[3points]

Well no Gourlay is certainly a start. I dont think we are in a terrible position going forward tbh. Be interesting to see what this years accounts would look like, but obvs we've got those years of losses hanging over us still

We'll see what happens after this Covid mess comes to some sort of conclusion

This year's accounts will look terrible because they will include puskas and ejaria and all the other late Summer signings. We also dont have the sale of the stadium to smooth out losses anymore.

Ejaria won't be in there. That was a commitment to pay in next year. Interesting to see how much we paid for Puscas and Joao though.

We did shed a few big wages - Yann, McShane, Joey, Kelly, Aluko (out on loan for some of it). But yeah, guessing they won't be fantastic

we paid 15.2m per the accounts after the year end. Free transfers such as Rafael, and Morrison won;t be in there as their signing on fees go through the wages/salaries line in the P&L but any loan fees for Miazga, Ejaria, Boye, Pele will be part of the 15m. Suspect the loan fee for Miazga might be pretty steep

[3points]

Thing is a one off pardon won't help. At Reading it is now a cultural problem. Sign too many players. Sign too many not very good players. Pay them too much. Repeat.

What makes us think anything will change.

Why did we sign new players in January who did not improve the team, and have therefore not seen much game time. Presumably to keep some commission coming in for our favourite agents so that they still consider us in the next transfer window when we want to sign our next Puskas.

January was only one permanent signing. I think we have seen improvements since Howe returned. Last summer’s signings were decent and the loan signings in January 2019 were excellent. The damage has been done in the preceding years which were shambolic.

We just lost £40m in a season Howe was mostly in charge. And in the follow up season didn't lose many players and made some crazy spending.

If 18/19 was £40m, even without corona there's no way 19/20 would be anything other than tens of millions of loss again.

There's a decent chance 18-20 could see us lose double the allowed loss for a full 3 year accounting period under FFP.


Let's not forget the financial mismanagement didn't start with Gourlay. It was happening before Howe left. And it happened under him with Burns too.

We lost 30m not 40m due to selling Hogwood. FFP isn't based on the RFC accounts - it's based on the Renhe Sports accounts where we lost 11m

[Snowflake Royal]

January was only one permanent signing. I think we have seen improvements since Howe returned. Last summer’s signings were decent and the loan signings in January 2019 were excellent. The damage has been done in the preceding years which were shambolic.

We just lost £40m in a season Howe was mostly in charge. And in the follow up season didn't lose many players and made some crazy spending.

If 18/19 was £40m, even without corona there's no way 19/20 would be anything other than tens of millions of loss again.

There's a decent chance 18-20 could see us lose double the allowed loss for a full 3 year accounting period under FFP.


Let's not forget the financial mismanagement didn't start with Gourlay. It was happening before Howe left. And it happened under him with Burns too.

We lost 30m not 40m due to selling Hogwood. FFP isn't based on the RFC accounts - it's based on the Renhe Sports accounts where we lost 11m

I mean it doesn't really change the fact we're a financial cluster oxf*rd and we can't sell Hogwood twice.

[3points]

We just lost £40m in a season Howe was mostly in charge. And in the follow up season didn't lose many players and made some crazy spending.

If 18/19 was £40m, even without corona there's no way 19/20 would be anything other than tens of millions of loss again.

There's a decent chance 18-20 could see us lose double the allowed loss for a full 3 year accounting period under FFP.


Let's not forget the financial mismanagement didn't start with Gourlay. It was happening before Howe left. And it happened under him with Burns too.

We lost 30m not 40m due to selling Hogwood. FFP isn't based on the RFC accounts - it's based on the Renhe Sports accounts where we lost 11m

I mean it doesn't really change the fact we're a financial cluster oxf*rd and we can't sell Hogwood twice.

It's fine all the time Mr Dai wants to continue to play. After all, it's his money. The issue is really what happens after him. Sir John obviously had the sensible approach of largely trying to make the club wash its face each season, even if that meant we had to sell our best player every year, but he did support the club financially over many years. I think even he was in for about 25m when he sold to Anton.

[Hound]

January was only one permanent signing. I think we have seen improvements since Howe returned. Last summer’s signings were decent and the loan signings in January 2019 were excellent. The damage has been done in the preceding years which were shambolic.

We just lost £40m in a season Howe was mostly in charge. And in the follow up season didn't lose many players and made some crazy spending.

If 18/19 was £40m, even without corona there's no way 19/20 would be anything other than tens of millions of loss again.

There's a decent chance 18-20 could see us lose double the allowed loss for a full 3 year accounting period under FFP.


Let's not forget the financial mismanagement didn't start with Gourlay. It was happening before Howe left. And it happened under him with Burns too.

We lost 30m not 40m due to selling Hogwood. FFP isn't based on the RFC accounts - it's based on the Renhe Sports accounts where we lost 11m

Interesting and obvs good news

We know full well we are totally at their mercy. A lot of the ffp does seem to be accounting tricks anyway

[3points]

We just lost £40m in a season Howe was mostly in charge. And in the follow up season didn't lose many players and made some crazy spending.

If 18/19 was £40m, even without corona there's no way 19/20 would be anything other than tens of millions of loss again.

There's a decent chance 18-20 could see us lose double the allowed loss for a full 3 year accounting period under FFP.


Let's not forget the financial mismanagement didn't start with Gourlay. It was happening before Howe left. And it happened under him with Burns too.

We lost 30m not 40m due to selling Hogwood. FFP isn't based on the RFC accounts - it's based on the Renhe Sports accounts where we lost 11m

Interesting and obvs good news

We know full well we are totally at their mercy. A lot of the ffp does seem to be accounting tricks anyway

Absolutely right. it's like any rules - people will always look at ways to bend them or get around them. That's why there will be some clever lawyers and accountants working with the owners to help circumnavigate this

[Snowflake Royal]

Personally, I'm not ok with cicumnavigating the rules, or running up ludicrous debt.

[Nameless]

I see Star have done their usual,thing of getting someone who knows what they are talking about to look at the accounts and give their view (fair chance it is someone who has already posted). Presents a rather less apocalyptic view of things which is nice.
While I think everyone would prefer it if football clubs were not bottomless money pits (despite the fact that they have always been like this, it’s not a modern thing), the somewhat daft FFP rules force clubs to be creative. Looks like our owners are juggling their own money between accounts so the numbers work. They have said that they would rather simply put the cash into the club but aren’t allowed to do so.

[tmesis]

They have said that they would rather simply put the cash into the club but aren’t allowed to do so.

Which is utterly daft.

FFP for the championship (and below) is entirely different to the top end of the game. It's meant to be a block to clubs getting into a financial mess at this level, not to stop financial doping.

[Nameless]

Personally, I'm not ok with cicumnavigating the rules, or running up ludicrous debt.

Except we don’t have any meaningful debt (the sort that gets you wound up by HMRC) and we’ve not circumvented rules. If we had circumvented them we would be in trouble. We’ve found ways to organise our finances so we aren’t breaking the rules. I would suggest clubs who go into administration to avoid paying debts are circumventing rules and causing problems for others. Whether you put an asset in one column or another is purely accounting procedure with no ‘victim’

[Jagermesiter1871]

Has there been any reporting on the fact that staff have been furloughed at Reading?

[Snowflake Royal]

Personally, I'm not ok with cicumnavigating the rules, or running up ludicrous debt.

Except we don’t have any meaningful debt (the sort that gets you wound up by HMRC) and we’ve not circumvented rules. If we had circumvented them we would be in trouble. We’ve found ways to organise our finances so we aren’t breaking the rules. I would suggest clubs who go into administration to avoid paying debts are circumventing rules and causing problems for others. Whether you put an asset in one column or another is purely accounting procedure with no ‘victim’

Bollocks. Dress it up how you want, but spending way more than your income and selling assets to yourself is getting into debt and circumventing the rules.

A few years here and there to make a big step followed by paying it off. Fine. But this is a decade of miss spending on shit to a huge scale.

I wasn't ok with it when other clubs were doing it and I'm not ok with us following.

[3points]

Personally, I'm not ok with cicumnavigating the rules, or running up ludicrous debt.

Except we don’t have any meaningful debt (the sort that gets you wound up by HMRC) and we’ve not circumvented rules. If we had circumvented them we would be in trouble. We’ve found ways to organise our finances so we aren’t breaking the rules. I would suggest clubs who go into administration to avoid paying debts are circumventing rules and causing problems for others. Whether you put an asset in one column or another is purely accounting procedure with no ‘victim’

Bollocks. Dress it up how you want, but spending way more than your income and selling assets to yourself is getting into debt and circumventing the rules.

A few years here and there to make a big step followed by paying it off. Fine. But this is a decade of miss spending on shit to a huge scale.

I wasn't ok with it when other clubs were doing it and I'm not ok with us following.

it isn't that different from selling your best player every year to balance the books, which was the case under SJM. I get that you can only sell the family jewels once, but my feeling with Dai Yongge is he is only doing this because that's what the rules force him to do. There's no external / third party debt here (save 5m still owed to the Thais) which is where the real problems come from (remember the Vibrac loan from the Anton days, when the club was 48 hours away from administration and Begbies traynor (a firm of insolvency practitioners) was inside running the club (the club received a fine of about 150k from the EFL for that)).

Don't get me wrong. I'd rather see more of a balance between income and expenditure and perhaps a more conservative view to player transfers. But, as i said before, it's his money. He can just write it off when he sells the club and sell the stadium back to a new owner

[3points]

I see Star have done their usual,thing of getting someone who knows what they are talking about to look at the accounts and give their view (fair chance it is someone who has already posted). Presents a rather less apocalyptic view of things which is nice.
While I think everyone would prefer it if football clubs were not bottomless money pits (despite the fact that they have always been like this, it’s not a modern thing), the somewhat daft FFP rules force clubs to be creative. Looks like our owners are juggling their own money between accounts so the numbers work. They have said that they would rather simply put the cash into the club but aren’t allowed to do so.

IIRC the STAR review is approved by the club, so it will be accurate

[Royals and Racers]

I see Star have done their usual,thing of getting someone who knows what they are talking about to look at the accounts and give their view (fair chance it is someone who has already posted). Presents a rather less apocalyptic view of things which is nice.
While I think everyone would prefer it if football clubs were not bottomless money pits (despite the fact that they have always been like this, it’s not a modern thing), the somewhat daft FFP rules force clubs to be creative. Looks like our owners are juggling their own money between accounts so the numbers work. They have said that they would rather simply put the cash into the club but aren’t allowed to do so.

IIRC the STAR review is approved by the club, so it will be accurate

A fascinating read https://star-reading.org/wp-content/upl ... -FINAL.pdf

[3points]

I see Star have done their usual,thing of getting someone who knows what they are talking about to look at the accounts and give their view (fair chance it is someone who has already posted). Presents a rather less apocalyptic view of things which is nice.
While I think everyone would prefer it if football clubs were not bottomless money pits (despite the fact that they have always been like this, it’s not a modern thing), the somewhat daft FFP rules force clubs to be creative. Looks like our owners are juggling their own money between accounts so the numbers work. They have said that they would rather simply put the cash into the club but aren’t allowed to do so.

IIRC the STAR review is approved by the club, so it will be accurate

A fascinating read https://star-reading.org/wp-content/upl ... -FINAL.pdf

The stuff on Renhe Sports is really interesting as well. You can see the lengths the club is going to to stay within the P&S rules