by From Despair To Where? »
06 Sep 2022 06:27
YorkshireRoyal99 tidus_mi2 YorkshireRoyal99
Only one's I saw during the off-season were Stoke, Bristol City and Middlesbrough, but it all seemed to have gone a bit flat. Having said that, this time last year, that was the same case with ourselves, where it was in the news during the off-season, then it never came to fruition until mid November time, so something may come of it yet.
Apparently, both Bristol City and Birmingham are losing a hell of a lot of money at the moment. I think they are losing something like £412,000 and £600,000 a week respectively. Bristol City have been losing roughly that amount every week for the last 10 years or so now on day-to-day operations I believe.
Birmingham breaching FFP twice in less than 5 years would be an absolute farce but then their owners are batshit.
I think the only thing that has got them out of it really is the big sales of Che Adams and Jude Bellingham. If that didn't happen, they'd be completely stuffed again.
They sold Adams for £15m but spent £10m of that on Sunjic, Giminez and Crowley. They've spent £7m of the £22m for Bellingham on Hogan, Cosgrove, Etheridge and Leko so the balance is significantly less.
The Adams sale goes off the FFP calculations this season so I'd expect the shit to hit the fan this year.
Bristol City made a transfer profit of about £13m in 19/20 but that goes off the FFP books. They've mame a modest profit of about £1.5m over the past 2 seasons. Again, if operating losses of £400k a week are accurate, I'd imagine they'll be in trouble.
I'd imagine the thing saving them both is the aggregation of losses over 2 seasons due to Covid as the big sales came in 19/20.