Finances

[Snowflake Royal]

Is any player in our squad worth more than £15k p/w?

I think Joao, Swift and Moore would be worth £15k/week tbh. Especially if they're all playing on the regs and at the top of their game.

Somebody posted the players salaries on here a few weeks ago.I have no idea where they obtained the figures from.From memory Moore £35 k a week,Swift £25k a week ,Baldock £20k a week ,Alukho £14 k a week.Jao,Puskas,Ejaria and Rafa were I think on wages somewhere between Baldock and Alukho.
Prior to this I always understood Alukho was on very silly money.But this was fake news.Tom Hughes was on very poor money for a Championship pro footballer.I wouldn’t say he would be better off stacking supermarket shelves but for a short unreliable career it was very poor money.Osho before he left was offered £750 a week;which he said was not enough to pay his mortgage.Seems to be large differences in salary within the first team squad.Not sure how win/league position bonuses are calculated.Anybody think they know ?

It was obviously bollocks with some not far off.

[WestYorksRoyal]

I wonder what the deal is with Laurent's wages. We signed him on a cheap 2 year deal, and he surely commands a better wage now or we may lose him on a free (he has form in this area).

Hopefully there is enough FFP wiggle room to sign him up for 3 years or so.

[Elm Park Kid]

People can't have it both ways though - you move to a low salary model and the chances that you are competitive in the league fall dramatically. It's certainly not impossible - there are examples of clubs that have done well on a reasonable budget - but it is essentially a gamble. It's like buying cheap shares that could balloon in prices but will more likely than not become worthless. There are no guaranteed 'bargains' - no way of knowing for sure that a team put together of players that haven't been successful at our level before will be in the future. A canny management can improve the odds, but not by that much.

I know there's a few on here that believe that everyone involved in football management are clueless and that there are 'obvious' ways of building a successful team on the cheap. But they're just deluded to how difficult this all is - spending vast amounts of money over a few seasons is a legitimate tactic that has proven success for many clubs, but there's also the chance that you don't get promoted and then end up looking like a basket case. That's not a mistake, it's not being irresponsible or 'stupid' - it's a calculated gamble.

I would rather we balanced the books and avoided signing high-wage players. But I acknowledge that could mean we a Championship - League One yo-yo clubs. In terms of size, Reading should definitely be a Championship team; but when you exist in a league where so many clubs are either receiving parachute payments or rolling the dice with owners money, your size is no longer than relevant.

It's pretty simple not to sign bang average players on £25k a week for three / four years for example.

Or not to refuse to sell a decent player for £8m and then give him a three year contract on £30k a week when your finances are already bolloxed.

You look at the signings of Pogrebnyak, Drenthe, Bacuna, McShane, Baldock, Aluko etc and it's not hard to see they were serial failures, vastly over priced or on a steep decline due to age. And yet all got quite long quite high value contracts out of us.


Then you look at Laurent, McIntyre, Rinomhota, and Morrison and you can see how it should actually be done.

Sure - but then the high-wage signing of Jason Roberts arguably got us promoted.

As others had said, the issue is that the value of PL football is so high that any amount you gamble you at Championship level is instantly made to look irrelevant if you 'win'. Who cares if you turned down £8m and pay £30k a week to a defender when the tv money alone for one season of PL football is close to £100m?

Say we didn't buy/loan any of these high-wage players - we might not being doing too much worse, but I can almost guarantee you that we wouldn't be doing better.

Pretty much every club in the top 2 divisions has made a number of high profile flop signings in the past - it's just the nature of the game. If clubs could just guarantee getting decent players in on the cheap or from the academy, why would anyone sign these high-wage players? It's like I said, you're kind of assuming that everyone involved in football is stupid. I'm not sure where our average salary stands now, but last season we were only 8th! There's a lot of clubs spending a lot of money and only 3 teams can go up each season.

[Royals and Racers]

People can't have it both ways though - you move to a low salary model and the chances that you are competitive in the league fall dramatically. It's certainly not impossible - there are examples of clubs that have done well on a reasonable budget - but it is essentially a gamble. It's like buying cheap shares that could balloon in prices but will more likely than not become worthless. There are no guaranteed 'bargains' - no way of knowing for sure that a team put together of players that haven't been successful at our level before will be in the future. A canny management can improve the odds, but not by that much.

I know there's a few on here that believe that everyone involved in football management are clueless and that there are 'obvious' ways of building a successful team on the cheap. But they're just deluded to how difficult this all is - spending vast amounts of money over a few seasons is a legitimate tactic that has proven success for many clubs, but there's also the chance that you don't get promoted and then end up looking like a basket case. That's not a mistake, it's not being irresponsible or 'stupid' - it's a calculated gamble.

I would rather we balanced the books and avoided signing high-wage players. But I acknowledge that could mean we a Championship - League One yo-yo clubs. In terms of size, Reading should definitely be a Championship team; but when you exist in a league where so many clubs are either receiving parachute payments or rolling the dice with owners money, your size is no longer than relevant.

It's pretty simple not to sign bang average players on £25k a week for three / four years for example.

Or not to refuse to sell a decent player for £8m and then give him a three year contract on £30k a week when your finances are already bolloxed.

You look at the signings of Pogrebnyak, Drenthe, Bacuna, McShane, Baldock, Aluko etc and it's not hard to see they were serial failures, vastly over priced or on a steep decline due to age. And yet all got quite long quite high value contracts out of us.


Then you look at Laurent, McIntyre, Rinomhota, and Morrison and you can see how it should actually be done.

You can add Danny Williams to that list- he was on a massive wage.

[Zip]

If we're genuinely in trouble the FL need to take a long hard look at themselves.

We were in a soft transfer embargo two summers ago and came out of it with permission to sign Puscas and Joao for big money.

They allowed us to turn down big money offers for Swift and Loader.

We were in a soft embargo last summer and only really signed Laurent for this season.

We've also moved on McCleary and Gunter. And Baldock and Aluko go at the end of this season. Plus lots more TV money in.

The wages are an absolute disgrace, but they have to have come down this season and again next.

The lack of signings and whole approach has given no signs of desperation for promotion or bust, maybe Bowen's sacking, but replacing him with an unknown with no local experience is hardly promotion or bust.

We now know that our transfer embargo just announced was at least partly down to the filing of accounts, as they've just been published, and could therefore just be the same sort of Admin thing as other clubs.

Not concerned at this point.

Yep. There was something not quite right when we went from being in a soft embargo signing freebies to suddenly paying big money for Joao and Puscas two years ago. The FL sanctioned all of this so I fail to see how they can now hit us hard with a points deduction. Having said that our losses are so bad that we must be in breach of FFP so a points deduction wouldn’t surprise me.

[Snowflake Royal]

If we're genuinely in trouble the FL need to take a long hard look at themselves.

We were in a soft transfer embargo two summers ago and came out of it with permission to sign Puscas and Joao for big money.

They allowed us to turn down big money offers for Swift and Loader.

We were in a soft embargo last summer and only really signed Laurent for this season.

We've also moved on McCleary and Gunter. And Baldock and Aluko go at the end of this season. Plus lots more TV money in.

The wages are an absolute disgrace, but they have to have come down this season and again next.

The lack of signings and whole approach has given no signs of desperation for promotion or bust, maybe Bowen's sacking, but replacing him with an unknown with no local experience is hardly promotion or bust.

We now know that our transfer embargo just announced was at least partly down to the filing of accounts, as they've just been published, and could therefore just be the same sort of Admin thing as other clubs.

Not concerned at this point.

Yep. There was something not quite right when we went from being in a soft embargo signing freebies to suddenly paying big money for Joao and Puscas two years ago. The FL sanctioned all of this so I fail to see how they can now hit us hard with a points deduction. Having said that our losses are so bad that we must be in breach of FFP so a points deduction wouldn’t surprise me.

My guess is that they're not actually on big wages and the headline fees were structured over time and contingent on factors.

[Nameless]

The irony of all this financial stuff is we’re not in any real financial trouble, no danger of going into administrationor not paying the players (Hong Kong public holidays excepted). We can pay players stupid wages, we can pay big transfer fees. But we can’t do it within the ‘profitability and sustainability’ rules as they are.

[Snowflake Royal]

Which is right and proper, because it's that sort of spending that has totally oxf*rd clubs as soon as the alleged bankroll has disappeared.

[Nameless]

Which is right and proper, because it's that sort of spending that has totally oxf*rd clubs as soon as the alleged bankroll has disappeared.

No, it’s skewed way too far the other way. There should be no reason the owners can’t inject their own money into the club in a more substantial way than they can at the moment. They could resolve all our current contractual overspend overnight. Couple that with a commitment to restrict future spending and the issues we are having would be gone. If an owner is willing and able to make big investment to resolve historical issues why should they not be able to do that without then being punished ?

[Zip]

Which is right and proper, because it's that sort of spending that has totally oxf*rd clubs as soon as the alleged bankroll has disappeared.

No, it’s skewed way too far the other way. There should be no reason the owners can’t inject their own money into the club in a more substantial way than they can at the moment. They could resolve all our current contractual overspend overnight. Couple that with a commitment to restrict future spending and the issues we are having would be gone. If an owner is willing and able to make big investment to resolve historical issues why should they not be able to do that without then being punished ?

Why should football clubs rack up massive debts year after year? We are totally beholden to our current owners. If they pull the plug what then? We are in a very precarious position.
High time we started living within our means..

[Stranded]

Which is right and proper, because it's that sort of spending that has totally oxf*rd clubs as soon as the alleged bankroll has disappeared.

No, it’s skewed way too far the other way. There should be no reason the owners can’t inject their own money into the club in a more substantial way than they can at the moment. They could resolve all our current contractual overspend overnight. Couple that with a commitment to restrict future spending and the issues we are having would be gone. If an owner is willing and able to make big investment to resolve historical issues why should they not be able to do that without then being punished ?

Why should football clubs rack up massive debts year after year? We are totally beholden to our current owners. If they pull the plug what then? We are in a very precarious position.
High time we started living within our means..

Of course it is but unfortunately that either likely means accepting that, for a few years at least we struggle against or succumb to relegation from the Championship or it needs a legal agreement from all clubs to do the same.

Doing so though, would likely just leave the Prem as a closed shop as those coming down would have bigger budgets and likely bounce back much more than they do now. Needs to be a lot more parity in income for spending to means becomes likely.

[Taffster]

Which is right and proper, because it's that sort of spending that has totally oxf*rd clubs as soon as the alleged bankroll has disappeared.

No, it’s skewed way too far the other way. There should be no reason the owners can’t inject their own money into the club in a more substantial way than they can at the moment. They could resolve all our current contractual overspend overnight. Couple that with a commitment to restrict future spending and the issues we are having would be gone. If an owner is willing and able to make big investment to resolve historical issues why should they not be able to do that without then being punished ?

Why should football clubs rack up massive debts year after year? We are totally beholden to our current owners. If they pull the plug what then? We are in a very precarious position.
High time we started living within our means..

It really depends who the debt resides with, if it's 3rd parties such as the bank then no it shouldn't be allowed to happen. However if its the owner what's the problem, it's no different to what thousands of businesses do outside of football.

Appreciate a club could be considered a community asset so perhaps a middle ground should be that the owner can invest what ever they like in the club but should also be paying to some form of holding account which the league administer, should the owner then leave that account would be used to pay any outstanding debt.
That or any owner based debt should be written off when being sold in the future.

[Elm Park Kid]

If a football club is privately owned then it is always 100% beholden to it's owner. You can have the most financially successful club in the world, making millions of profit each season, and the owner can still just shut it down on a whim. Like how Rupert Murdoch shut down the successful News of the World because it became an embarrassment. In the same vain, you can have the most financially unsuccessful club in the world and it's future is fine as long as the owners keep piling in what they need to (and are able to avoid FFP).

As other's have pointed out, it's hard to judge the status of a club just from it's debt level, as it's something that can be manipulated for several reasons by an owner (mainly tax). Spurs has a shit-ton of debt, but it's not an issue to the club because it's considered a cheap way of expanding.

[Vision]

If we're genuinely in trouble the FL need to take a long hard look at themselves.

We were in a soft transfer embargo two summers ago and came out of it with permission to sign Puscas and Joao for big money.

They allowed us to turn down big money offers for Swift and Loader.

We were in a soft embargo last summer and only really signed Laurent for this season.

We've also moved on McCleary and Gunter. And Baldock and Aluko go at the end of this season. Plus lots more TV money in.

The wages are an absolute disgrace, but they have to have come down this season and again next.

The lack of signings and whole approach has given no signs of desperation for promotion or bust, maybe Bowen's sacking, but replacing him with an unknown with no local experience is hardly promotion or bust.

We now know that our transfer embargo just announced was at least partly down to the filing of accounts, as they've just been published, and could therefore just be the same sort of Admin thing as other clubs.

Not concerned at this point.

Yep. There was something not quite right when we went from being in a soft embargo signing freebies to suddenly paying big money for Joao and Puscas two years ago. The FL sanctioned all of this so I fail to see how they can now hit us hard with a points deduction. Having said that our losses are so bad that we must be in breach of FFP so a points deduction wouldn’t surprise me.

That was the Stadium deal wasn't it?

I'm not sure it's for the EFL to mollycoddle us once we've convinced them we've got this new hefty revenue stream.

The fact we then went out and got Joao, Puscas, Rafael, Boye, Miazga, Ejaria etc with that money rather than use it to help with FFP (assuming it counts towards FFP) was entirely our decision. That's absolutely how it should be of course but we can't then blame anyone else if that gamble fails.

Of course as Elm Park Kid rightly points out , it would have been a gamble of a different kind to have continued that season with the squad we started it with. We threw the dice and there's still a small possibility it may work (RTGs fully on ) but if doesn't then as a club we have to accept what comes with that failure.

[Snowflake Royal]

Which is right and proper, because it's that sort of spending that has totally oxf*rd clubs as soon as the alleged bankroll has disappeared.

No, it’s skewed way too far the other way. There should be no reason the owners can’t inject their own money into the club in a more substantial way than they can at the moment. They could resolve all our current contractual overspend overnight. Couple that with a commitment to restrict future spending and the issues we are having would be gone. If an owner is willing and able to make big investment to resolve historical issues why should they not be able to do that without then being punished ?

Because it just loads the club with debt to the owner that eventually has to be paid off. And it sets unrealistic spending expectations for fans. For the majority clubs, rich owners are not there for the clubs, they're there for a play thing, prestige, money laundering or publicity. And when they inevitably move on in 2, 5, 10, 15 years, the club is saddled with vast debt and unmanageable spending.

None of this 'investment' is free. It's all loans or converted to equity.

[Taffster]

Which is right and proper, because it's that sort of spending that has totally oxf*rd clubs as soon as the alleged bankroll has disappeared.

No, it’s skewed way too far the other way. There should be no reason the owners can’t inject their own money into the club in a more substantial way than they can at the moment. They could resolve all our current contractual overspend overnight. Couple that with a commitment to restrict future spending and the issues we are having would be gone. If an owner is willing and able to make big investment to resolve historical issues why should they not be able to do that without then being punished ?

Because it just loads the club with debt to the owner that eventually has to be paid off. And it sets unrealistic spending expectations for fans. For the majority clubs, rich owners are not there for the clubs, they're there for a play thing, prestige, money laundering or publicity. And when they inevitably move on in 2, 5, 10, 15 years, the club is saddled with vast debt and unmanageable spending.

None of this 'investment' is free. It's all loans or converted to equity.

So owners of football clubs are no longer allowed to invest their money into the club because they will move on 2, 5, 10, 15 years? If you stop that then football as it currently is will finish over night.
End of the day the state football is in financially now means you have to saddle the club with "debt" whether it be good or bad to be able to compete.

What would be good to have (I'm to lazy to pull together) is a comparison with other clubs in the league.

[Greatwesternline]

The Swiss Ramble twitter thread today is very on point.

Our wage bill for financial year 2019-20, was 211% of revenue.

We are a basket case.

[Snowflake Royal]

No, it’s skewed way too far the other way. There should be no reason the owners can’t inject their own money into the club in a more substantial way than they can at the moment. They could resolve all our current contractual overspend overnight. Couple that with a commitment to restrict future spending and the issues we are having would be gone. If an owner is willing and able to make big investment to resolve historical issues why should they not be able to do that without then being punished ?

Because it just loads the club with debt to the owner that eventually has to be paid off. And it sets unrealistic spending expectations for fans. For the majority clubs, rich owners are not there for the clubs, they're there for a play thing, prestige, money laundering or publicity. And when they inevitably move on in 2, 5, 10, 15 years, the club is saddled with vast debt and unmanageable spending.

None of this 'investment' is free. It's all loans or converted to equity.

So owners of football clubs are no longer allowed to invest their money into the club because they will move on 2, 5, 10, 15 years? If you stop that then football as it currently is will finish over night.
End of the day the state football is in financially now means you have to saddle the club with "debt" whether it be good or bad to be able to compete.

What would be good to have (I'm to lazy to pull together) is a comparison with other clubs in the league.

Who said they can't invest? But unsustainable massive loss making year on year on year. No, get to oxf*rd.

Football clubs operate over centuries and are a community asset. Sooner or later things that continually lose money close. Supporting a business model of pumping in loss after massive loss endlessly is just guaranteeing the club eventually goes out of business.

[biff]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wSBZdXyvMI

Assuming this has already been discussed, but Kieran Maguire paints a fairly bleak picture here.

[Maneki Neko]

If we're genuinely in trouble the FL need to take a long hard look at themselves.

We were in a soft transfer embargo two summers ago and came out of it with permission to sign Puscas and Joao for big money.

They allowed us to turn down big money offers for Swift and Loader.

We were in a soft embargo last summer and only really signed Laurent for this season.

We've also moved on McCleary and Gunter. And Baldock and Aluko go at the end of this season. Plus lots more TV money in.

The wages are an absolute disgrace, but they have to have come down this season and again next.

The lack of signings and whole approach has given no signs of desperation for promotion or bust, maybe Bowen's sacking, but replacing him with an unknown with no local experience is hardly promotion or bust.

We now know that our transfer embargo just announced was at least partly down to the filing of accounts, as they've just been published, and could therefore just be the same sort of Admin thing as other clubs.

Not concerned at this point.

Yep. There was something not quite right when we went from being in a soft embargo signing freebies to suddenly paying big money for Joao and Puscas two years ago. The FL sanctioned all of this so I fail to see how they can now hit us hard with a points deduction. Having said that our losses are so bad that we must be in breach of FFP so a points deduction wouldn’t surprise me.

hard to disentangle what is terrible financial management and what is as a result of playing a season and a half without crowds.
surely every club will be financially oxf*rd due to covid and it seems a bit daft to carry on as normal with FFP