We’ve heard it repeatedly from the manager and other club officials that we had a low budget in League 2, so I’m surprised anyone would ask @devc for his source on that.
Maybe I misread, but I thought the specific evidence PPF wanted to clarify was Dev’s suggestion that our L2 budget was ‘bottom 2’. I’ve certainly never read that, even though it was often said more generally that we were among the lower budgets. If Dev wants to claim it was bottom 2 and PPF is challenging him on that then it seems reasonable for Dev to point to the evidence... or retract the claim...
I'm not sure how poor @DevC is going to provide any evidence this time as he hasn't the hundreds of times he's refrained the Doomsday scenario before.
In the spirit of posting the same thing as in loads of other threads my view is that our total playing budget is amongst the lowest but our first team budget is not.
I do find myself as ever when Mr Middle posts this theory, quite what is this non academy non first team “playing budget” that all the other teams seem to spend for no discernible benefit but we cunningly avoid?
Back to the key point. None of us know the precise total of our first team budget. We are lead to believe that it was one of the lowest in Lg2 when we were there last season. We still lost in excess of £500k before transfer revenue. If we are forced to break even, we would have to reduce our playing budget by £500k unless other income or cost savings could be found.
To put that into context, 20 players each earning an average £50k would cost £1m, so a £500k cut in whatever ours is feels very significant. If you believe we could stay in lg2 sustainably despite that sort of cut, could I ask why you believe that?
@DevC - I suspect Mr Middle means a lot of other teams have a budget which includes other players outside the first team squad. Luton for example currently have 26 first team players (plus 7 out on loan) and a Development Squad which play in the Southern Division of the Central League. They also run a youth team that plays in the Football League Youth Alliance.
We use all our budget on I think currently 22 players, instead of spreading it out on development and youth squads.
I’m not sure Luton are a typical lg1 and certainly not a typical Lg2 team. Surely you are not suggesting we spend as much on our “first team squad” as Luton?
@DevC Quite honestly it's a complete waste of time having a worthwhile adult discussion with such a self-opinionated individual as you.
You know exactly what I (and probably Mr Middle) meant, but in case your currently in a confused state, Wycombe spend all their budget on around 22 players. Many other teams, whilst having far bigger budgets, spread it out by having larger squads, plus a reserve and/or youth team. I would suggest (but like you) don't know, that the likes of Bayo, Mccarthy and Gape are on at least the average wage in this division.
@mooneyman has it. For a team with supposedly the lowest budget in the history of the world last year, we managed to get such high profile lower league players such as Tyson, Saunders, CMS, Bayo, El Abd etc.
Unless they were all playing for the love last year.
Don’t dignify his stupid questions with the answers he forcefully demands every time. If you answer it he follows it up with either wilful ignorance or actual thickery, there’s simply no point in answering him.
But actually isn't the point DevC makes about how can we cut anything like £500k from our playing budget and yet still be competitive actually valid?
In fact, if as others have said, we don't spend any wages on players outside of the 22 man first team squad it's even more of a valid point.
Whether we have a relatively high or low wage bill relative to other teams is irrelevant. Even if we only have to cut £250K it does equate to 5 players at £50k each (ignoring other tax & NI elements).
I still haven't heard any credible alternative to accepting one or other bid that doesn't fill me with absolute dread about what might happen next season to the playing squad.
My original proposition, controversial as it no doubt was, related to the potential scope to reduce the size of the squad by two or three of the more highly paid members as one component of the overall strategy to reduce costs and increase revenue. Come to think of it, we seem to have already embarked on that course.
Our real financial problem will not be solved by a cutting expenditure, the only way forward is by increasing Revenue. Matchday with more spectators and during non matchdays getting more revenue through the Stadium facilities.
Feeling somewhat mellow after an enjoyable Saturday (decent if one sided game and then Seth Lakeman and family holding an impromptu jam session in my local pub). Personally I can’t see how a £500k (somewhere approaching 50per cent?) cut in last years playing budget wouldn’t massively affect on field performance but if that’s what you want to believe......
Armageddon as predicted by Dev (and also by the Trust board collectively) is a very pessimistic view IMHO. My gut feeling is that private ownership would present just as many problems as supporter ownership does now.
Whilst I don’t disagree about the pitfalls of private ownership @LordMandeville the most pressing problem of supporter ownership at the moment seems to me that we will probably go bust. We have no means (as far as I can see) to pay our way currently which means either a) bankruptcy, b) a fire sale of players or c) loans by well-meaning/evil ‘friends’ of the club.
I agree that private ownership means kicking the can down the road, but this may be the least worst option.
@bookertease - You say we have no means to pay our way without taking out loans. Isn't that effectively what we will do with Harman's bid, I.e. taking on a £2m loan. He may say that he won't want the money back, but we all know someone else who said that!
The Americans are supposedly going to convert their loan to equity, but thereafter are they really going to cover the losses year after year? They say that their object is to put the club on a firm footing financially, but I don't see how they can cut costs or get in enough extra income to cover the current losses, particularly when they live thousand of miles away. If they think it is possible that costs can be cut and extra income brought in, why can't we do that as a supporter owned club with a competent Board in place?
@mooneyman in answer to your final point I think we probably could but the differential is likely, in my opinion, to mean a significantly reduced player budget. Where we would level out is a moot point but I think it would be unrealistic to expect it to be mid-table in League One (or play-off contenders as we apparently were yesterday).
Personally I don’t have too much of a problem with that but I can’t easily see a path to pay off our debts and get there.
I don’t know enough about Plan A or Plan B to know if they would provide an answer to your earlier questions but I do share your concerns long-term.
Ultimately to survive at around this level I think we have to find someone willing to lose around £500k pa for the kudos of owning a football club in the oldest professional league in the world or we cut our cloth and see where that takes us.
@Bookertease is right i fear for a club of our size and attendances. We need significant investment but where that comes from and in what form is the rub.
@DevC said:
Feeling somewhat mellow after an enjoyable Saturday (decent if one sided game and then Seth Lakeman and family holding an impromptu jam session in my local pub). Personally I can’t see how a £500k (somewhere approaching 50per cent?) cut in last years playing budget wouldn’t massively affect on field performance but if that’s what you want to believe......
@micra , last season like the ones before it, we lost over £500k before cup and transfer income.
This means that the cash from revenue coming in less cash going out in non playing expenses was £500k less than the playing wage bill. That gap was funded either by transfer revenues, Cup runs or as an ultimate backstop loans from directors.
It seems now that the backstop has been removed (paralells to Brexit continue.....) so we can no longer rely on loans to bridge any gap.
We may get transfer revenue but you wouldn’t want to rely on it when signing playing contracts.
We may have a cup run but again you couldn’t rely on it knowing that a first round defeat at Accy would put the club into administration, so you would have to assume zero here.
The club management have already been trying to increase revenue and cut nonplaying costs. Unlikely to be sure of any upside here (indeed you would probably have to allow for a revenue fall if playing results were likely to worsen.
With no loan backstop, no certainty of transfer or cup income, no prospect of revenue increase or non playing cost reduction, and a £500k gap between playing cost and net revenue, the only alternative to give reasonable chance of getting through the season would be a massive cut in the playing budget. There is nowhere else to save the cash.
It's quite sad that you call this hilarious without addressing any of the points DevC raises, yet again
You can debate the actual numbers for sure but the picture he paints of our finances is largely correct.
We will have no choice but to cut back on costs significantly, while trying to increase income, to return to breakeven without outside investment,/loans.
I'm no fan of outside investment or increased debt but I do accept that will come with necessary consequences.
@Twizz - Debt has to be repaid at some point and as it grows it becomes more and more difficult to do so. Eventually it becomes impossible and the club goes bust. If Harman loans us £2m that will be used up in 4 years at the current rate, so what then?
I believe the bottom line is that like any individual, the club should not blindly spend more than its income.
Then we won’t be a sustainable football club. When was the last year we spent less than our income, excluding revenues that could not have been forecast prior to the start of the season (ie cup runs and transfer income)?
As an aside, is an individual buying a house through a mortgage spending more than their income?
@mooneyman, if I understand your question correctly the answer is " We would be an additional £2m in debt beyond our current position".
Which is why we will, at some point, have to significantly reduce our costs. I hope that if/when that time comes we have the right people involved who can manage it to an outcome that we are happy with ...
In a world where we can't borrow from a bank. I also believe that it's not only wrong for the football club to blindly spend more than its income but may be bordering on illegal, unless there are guarantees in place for loans to cover those losses.
Given that my uderstanding is those parties who might have provided such guarantees in the past are no longer able/willing to do so I don't see how we can budget for anything better than breakeven but without the football fortune element.
If football fortune gave us a windfall every couple of years that would be an added bonus, but not sure we could budget with an expectation of those monies to balance the books.
@DevC your waffle makes a lot of sense but I still don’t know where your £500,000 cut in the playing budget comes from. No one has suggested that. All I said, several times because you repeatedly seemed to ignore/“misunderstand” the fact, was that of all the areas where savings could be made (and there has clearly been a start, unwittingly or not) the playing budget would appear to have the greatest potential. I will not be returning to this point again.
Comments
We’ve heard it repeatedly from the manager and other club officials that we had a low budget in League 2, so I’m surprised anyone would ask @devc for his source on that.
Maybe I misread, but I thought the specific evidence PPF wanted to clarify was Dev’s suggestion that our L2 budget was ‘bottom 2’. I’ve certainly never read that, even though it was often said more generally that we were among the lower budgets. If Dev wants to claim it was bottom 2 and PPF is challenging him on that then it seems reasonable for Dev to point to the evidence... or retract the claim...
@peterparrotface has asked straightforward questions of @DevC which dev has refused to answer.
@peterparrotface stay honest and remember Admiral Akbar. It's a trap!
I'm not sure how poor @DevC is going to provide any evidence this time as he hasn't the hundreds of times he's refrained the Doomsday scenario before.
In the spirit of posting the same thing as in loads of other threads my view is that our total playing budget is amongst the lowest but our first team budget is not.
I do find myself as ever when Mr Middle posts this theory, quite what is this non academy non first team “playing budget” that all the other teams seem to spend for no discernible benefit but we cunningly avoid?
Back to the key point. None of us know the precise total of our first team budget. We are lead to believe that it was one of the lowest in Lg2 when we were there last season. We still lost in excess of £500k before transfer revenue. If we are forced to break even, we would have to reduce our playing budget by £500k unless other income or cost savings could be found.
To put that into context, 20 players each earning an average £50k would cost £1m, so a £500k cut in whatever ours is feels very significant. If you believe we could stay in lg2 sustainably despite that sort of cut, could I ask why you believe that?
@DevC - I suspect Mr Middle means a lot of other teams have a budget which includes other players outside the first team squad. Luton for example currently have 26 first team players (plus 7 out on loan) and a Development Squad which play in the Southern Division of the Central League. They also run a youth team that plays in the Football League Youth Alliance.
We use all our budget on I think currently 22 players, instead of spreading it out on development and youth squads.
I’m not sure Luton are a typical lg1 and certainly not a typical Lg2 team. Surely you are not suggesting we spend as much on our “first team squad” as Luton?
@DevC Quite honestly it's a complete waste of time having a worthwhile adult discussion with such a self-opinionated individual as you.
You know exactly what I (and probably Mr Middle) meant, but in case your currently in a confused state, Wycombe spend all their budget on around 22 players. Many other teams, whilst having far bigger budgets, spread it out by having larger squads, plus a reserve and/or youth team. I would suggest (but like you) don't know, that the likes of Bayo, Mccarthy and Gape are on at least the average wage in this division.
@mooneyman has it. For a team with supposedly the lowest budget in the history of the world last year, we managed to get such high profile lower league players such as Tyson, Saunders, CMS, Bayo, El Abd etc.
Unless they were all playing for the love last year.
Don’t dignify his stupid questions with the answers he forcefully demands every time. If you answer it he follows it up with either wilful ignorance or actual thickery, there’s simply no point in answering him.
But actually isn't the point DevC makes about how can we cut anything like £500k from our playing budget and yet still be competitive actually valid?
In fact, if as others have said, we don't spend any wages on players outside of the 22 man first team squad it's even more of a valid point.
Whether we have a relatively high or low wage bill relative to other teams is irrelevant. Even if we only have to cut £250K it does equate to 5 players at £50k each (ignoring other tax & NI elements).
I still haven't heard any credible alternative to accepting one or other bid that doesn't fill me with absolute dread about what might happen next season to the playing squad.
My original proposition, controversial as it no doubt was, related to the potential scope to reduce the size of the squad by two or three of the more highly paid members as one component of the overall strategy to reduce costs and increase revenue. Come to think of it, we seem to have already embarked on that course.
Our real financial problem will not be solved by a cutting expenditure, the only way forward is by increasing Revenue. Matchday with more spectators and during non matchdays getting more revenue through the Stadium facilities.
The biggest single component of overall expenditure is the playing budget. It cannot be ring-fenced.
Feeling somewhat mellow after an enjoyable Saturday (decent if one sided game and then Seth Lakeman and family holding an impromptu jam session in my local pub). Personally I can’t see how a £500k (somewhere approaching 50per cent?) cut in last years playing budget wouldn’t massively affect on field performance but if that’s what you want to believe......
I'm with you @mooneyman.
Armageddon as predicted by Dev (and also by the Trust board collectively) is a very pessimistic view IMHO. My gut feeling is that private ownership would present just as many problems as supporter ownership does now.
Whilst I don’t disagree about the pitfalls of private ownership @LordMandeville the most pressing problem of supporter ownership at the moment seems to me that we will probably go bust. We have no means (as far as I can see) to pay our way currently which means either a) bankruptcy, b) a fire sale of players or c) loans by well-meaning/evil ‘friends’ of the club.
I agree that private ownership means kicking the can down the road, but this may be the least worst option.
@bookertease - You say we have no means to pay our way without taking out loans. Isn't that effectively what we will do with Harman's bid, I.e. taking on a £2m loan. He may say that he won't want the money back, but we all know someone else who said that!
The Americans are supposedly going to convert their loan to equity, but thereafter are they really going to cover the losses year after year? They say that their object is to put the club on a firm footing financially, but I don't see how they can cut costs or get in enough extra income to cover the current losses, particularly when they live thousand of miles away. If they think it is possible that costs can be cut and extra income brought in, why can't we do that as a supporter owned club with a competent Board in place?
@mooneyman in answer to your final point I think we probably could but the differential is likely, in my opinion, to mean a significantly reduced player budget. Where we would level out is a moot point but I think it would be unrealistic to expect it to be mid-table in League One (or play-off contenders as we apparently were yesterday).
Personally I don’t have too much of a problem with that but I can’t easily see a path to pay off our debts and get there.
I don’t know enough about Plan A or Plan B to know if they would provide an answer to your earlier questions but I do share your concerns long-term.
Ultimately to survive at around this level I think we have to find someone willing to lose around £500k pa for the kudos of owning a football club in the oldest professional league in the world or we cut our cloth and see where that takes us.
@Bookertease is right i fear for a club of our size and attendances. We need significant investment but where that comes from and in what form is the rub.
Barry Homeowner.
FFS @DevC. Who has suggested a £500,000 cut in the playing budget?
@micra , last season like the ones before it, we lost over £500k before cup and transfer income.
This means that the cash from revenue coming in less cash going out in non playing expenses was £500k less than the playing wage bill. That gap was funded either by transfer revenues, Cup runs or as an ultimate backstop loans from directors.
It seems now that the backstop has been removed (paralells to Brexit continue.....) so we can no longer rely on loans to bridge any gap.
We may get transfer revenue but you wouldn’t want to rely on it when signing playing contracts.
We may have a cup run but again you couldn’t rely on it knowing that a first round defeat at Accy would put the club into administration, so you would have to assume zero here.
The club management have already been trying to increase revenue and cut nonplaying costs. Unlikely to be sure of any upside here (indeed you would probably have to allow for a revenue fall if playing results were likely to worsen.
With no loan backstop, no certainty of transfer or cup income, no prospect of revenue increase or non playing cost reduction, and a £500k gap between playing cost and net revenue, the only alternative to give reasonable chance of getting through the season would be a massive cut in the playing budget. There is nowhere else to save the cash.
It’s just basic maths I am afraid.
Hilarious.
It's quite sad that you call this hilarious without addressing any of the points DevC raises, yet again
You can debate the actual numbers for sure but the picture he paints of our finances is largely correct.
We will have no choice but to cut back on costs significantly, while trying to increase income, to return to breakeven without outside investment,/loans.
I'm no fan of outside investment or increased debt but I do accept that will come with necessary consequences.
@Twizz - Debt has to be repaid at some point and as it grows it becomes more and more difficult to do so. Eventually it becomes impossible and the club goes bust. If Harman loans us £2m that will be used up in 4 years at the current rate, so what then?
I believe the bottom line is that like any individual, the club should not blindly spend more than its income.
Then we won’t be a sustainable football club. When was the last year we spent less than our income, excluding revenues that could not have been forecast prior to the start of the season (ie cup runs and transfer income)?
As an aside, is an individual buying a house through a mortgage spending more than their income?
@mooneyman, if I understand your question correctly the answer is " We would be an additional £2m in debt beyond our current position".
Which is why we will, at some point, have to significantly reduce our costs. I hope that if/when that time comes we have the right people involved who can manage it to an outcome that we are happy with ...
In a world where we can't borrow from a bank. I also believe that it's not only wrong for the football club to blindly spend more than its income but may be bordering on illegal, unless there are guarantees in place for loans to cover those losses.
Given that my uderstanding is those parties who might have provided such guarantees in the past are no longer able/willing to do so I don't see how we can budget for anything better than breakeven but without the football fortune element.
If football fortune gave us a windfall every couple of years that would be an added bonus, but not sure we could budget with an expectation of those monies to balance the books.
@DevC your waffle makes a lot of sense but I still don’t know where your £500,000 cut in the playing budget comes from. No one has suggested that. All I said, several times because you repeatedly seemed to ignore/“misunderstand” the fact, was that of all the areas where savings could be made (and there has clearly been a start, unwittingly or not) the playing budget would appear to have the greatest potential. I will not be returning to this point again.
The answer surely is equity wins over loans and then the question of whether or not we like the terms of the
majority stake?