It’s worrying to see us losing so much money every year, but I doubt if there are more than a handful of clubs in the EFL being run sustainably, fewer still profitably. It’s crazy but that’s the football world as it exists today at our level. Your plan to reduce the wage bill would obviously put us near the back of the queue when it comes to signing new players and that could only have a detrimental effect on results and consequently a further drop in attendances and income. Rob has been criticised for showing too much ambition so heaven knows what the reaction would be if he announced he was slashing the wage bill.
Good points above - with the current setup, can anyone be sustainable (apart from "football fortune") or does the dropping attendances as you go down into each new division mean that you will always face the same predicament in some form?
Could it be possible that there are some posters above who are supposedly massively in favour of genuine sustainability who were also screaming that we were doomed because we hadn't signed anyone a week into the off season? I'd suggest based on current attendance only we'd probably have to reduce spending to a level where our league position is at risk and where income would be expected to keep shrinking. When we were operating on a shoe string this affected recruitment and other spending and we were still losing a relative fortune.
It seems the only sustainable position is to be lucky, the league could mandate that all clubs only spend what they could genuinely afford and that would have a massive impact on transfer frees and wages but they won't as it's a members club and many of the owners think that either they are richer or cleverer than all the others so everything will be ok (or are on the take). Without that you are either lucky to have an owner who can cover losses or lucky to have a manager and recruitment team who can work miracles.
We are probably chasing the Rotherham spot of bottom end of the championship and yo-yoing, it's one of the few places where if you don't get silly you can earn enough to keep going for a few years with the one promotion. If you did it a few years in a row you'd have people desperate to go beyond though.
The truth is nobody but Rob really knows either the true financial position or the level of funding he's able to give - or find from elsewhere, he may not even know the last bit. If nobody was prepared to share such things when we supposedly owned the club we're unlikely to start to get this information now.
Would someone else step in if Rob needs to leave, would someone have stepped in if he hadn't arrived in the first place? Maybe but there are no guarantees, several clubs have had runs of absolute horrors being bought out by people who are even worse. The longer he's involved and we are in any way stable and competitive the greater respect he deserves but ultimately his exit will define his legacy.
Very rarely feel sympathy for Barry Hearn but he pumped millions into Orient, did very well and then sold to a consortium with huge wealth who turned out to be absolute weapons and he still gets grief for it now.
It seems you’ve bought into Couhigs own PR if you think he’s “investing” into Wycombe. As of today, he is actually providing the club with loans. And loans are debt.
An investment usually involves purchasing an asset with the expectation of generating income or profit from it, such as stocks, bonds, real estate, etc.
A loan, on the other hand, is when money is borrowed from one party by another with the agreement to pay back the amount borrowed, often with interest. It is more of a debt instrument where the borrower has an obligation to repay the lender.
Another way to look at it, the club itself may have been able to raise its own loan - and take on the same debt - from a bank (not Rob Couhig), on the basis of a business plan consisting of promotion to the championship, with the loan secured against the asset of the ground.
@drcongo , can I suggest that you create a third category in addition to thumbs up and down, an emoji like this ❔ which means 'I don't have a clue what this person is talking about' ?
In the last days of trust ownership I understood we had the maximum overdraft attainable and a short term loan to the last set of prospective owners and owed money to a variety of suppliers and fans.
Whilst loan debt from the Couhigs isn't ideal as it could put off a new owner and give him the opportunity to snaffle up a big payday like a player sale it's likely to be interest free and something that sits dormant in the books until it can be cleared or he sells, he's already admitted he might not get it back when he sells (unless the next owner is rich and agreeable) , if we were to have loaned money from a bank we'd be expected to pay it back in full and on schedule with interest as per the terms of the loan. This is very different. Incidentally the training ground was supposedly being purchased by his company not the club.
We had some momentum in growing the attendances but 17 game spell when the results and performances were …. well appalling took the wind out of those sails.
Anecdotally I saw a pal yesterday that I had taken along to a game during that 17 game spell. I asked if wants to come again and said about the Pompy and Charlton games. No chance was the response. I think that spell did a lot of damage and it will take a while to wash that from people’s minds.
And without growing attendances we will struggle to build income.
We had about eight players on the first day of pre-season before the Couhigs started paying for things. The Trust did a marvelous job in relentlessly trying circumstances, aided by GA and Dobbo working their majic, but the money had run out.
I still think 2018/19 does not get spoken about enough. No money, small squad, and we stayed up in L1 (and were as high as 9th at one point). Legendary!
Just caught up with Phil's interview with Rob, I thought he was remarkably restrained when discussing the idiotic Reading fans pissing the bed about someone trying to help save their club.
But our away attendances would always put us quite a bit higher and in some ways are more indicative of how big a club we are as it removes the artificial impediment Wycombe have of having one of the most inaccessible grounds in English football that makes attending at home such a frustrating experience.
However being so near London I'm sceptical if there'd ever come a time when all those from the area who attend London clubs and have for years would ever consider changing to Wycombe . I doubt it. Many years ago in the 80s I was one of those myself and the amount of supporters you'd see at Wycombe station off up to one of the London sides on a Saturday morning was pretty amazing. From people I still know it still happens and that much make quite a significant hit on our attendances that teams further out across England don't have to such an extent.
Can imagine a scene where that very quest was asked and alarm bells started going off all over the place.
This wasn't in the prospectus, Just shut em up and move on to talking about how much extra you get for promotion and show them some old footage from the Prem.
Comments
It’s worrying to see us losing so much money every year, but I doubt if there are more than a handful of clubs in the EFL being run sustainably, fewer still profitably. It’s crazy but that’s the football world as it exists today at our level. Your plan to reduce the wage bill would obviously put us near the back of the queue when it comes to signing new players and that could only have a detrimental effect on results and consequently a further drop in attendances and income. Rob has been criticised for showing too much ambition so heaven knows what the reaction would be if he announced he was slashing the wage bill.
How many league 1 clubs are sustainable? Defined as broadly speaking, income equals expenditure year on year?
Is it possible to be sustainable in the Championship or league 2 and if so, what do sustainable clubs have that we don’t?
Owners and goalies. Football is a cruel mistress.
Good points above - with the current setup, can anyone be sustainable (apart from "football fortune") or does the dropping attendances as you go down into each new division mean that you will always face the same predicament in some form?
Man United's American owners have given them £1 billion worth of debt which makes us look like complete amateurs.
It's just numbers on a computer screen. Chill out!
We can be ‘sustainable,’ or we can compete near the top of L1.
Based on average attendances our ‘natural’ position would be mid-table League 2
Brown bears were persecuted into extinction in GB. I propose wwfc start an initiative to reintroduce this species in the Chilterns
Sounds about right. However, would our attendances remain the same if we were mid-table League 2.
Or lower League One. We are currently 20th in League One but could be leapfrogged by Stevenage who are only on average 3 fans per game behind us.
Need some big numbers for the remaining home games.
Could it be possible that there are some posters above who are supposedly massively in favour of genuine sustainability who were also screaming that we were doomed because we hadn't signed anyone a week into the off season? I'd suggest based on current attendance only we'd probably have to reduce spending to a level where our league position is at risk and where income would be expected to keep shrinking. When we were operating on a shoe string this affected recruitment and other spending and we were still losing a relative fortune.
It seems the only sustainable position is to be lucky, the league could mandate that all clubs only spend what they could genuinely afford and that would have a massive impact on transfer frees and wages but they won't as it's a members club and many of the owners think that either they are richer or cleverer than all the others so everything will be ok (or are on the take). Without that you are either lucky to have an owner who can cover losses or lucky to have a manager and recruitment team who can work miracles.
We are probably chasing the Rotherham spot of bottom end of the championship and yo-yoing, it's one of the few places where if you don't get silly you can earn enough to keep going for a few years with the one promotion. If you did it a few years in a row you'd have people desperate to go beyond though.
The truth is nobody but Rob really knows either the true financial position or the level of funding he's able to give - or find from elsewhere, he may not even know the last bit. If nobody was prepared to share such things when we supposedly owned the club we're unlikely to start to get this information now.
Would someone else step in if Rob needs to leave, would someone have stepped in if he hadn't arrived in the first place? Maybe but there are no guarantees, several clubs have had runs of absolute horrors being bought out by people who are even worse. The longer he's involved and we are in any way stable and competitive the greater respect he deserves but ultimately his exit will define his legacy.
Very rarely feel sympathy for Barry Hearn but he pumped millions into Orient, did very well and then sold to a consortium with huge wealth who turned out to be absolute weapons and he still gets grief for it now.
Does Tom the Drummer shit in the woods.....
It seems you’ve bought into Couhigs own PR if you think he’s “investing” into Wycombe. As of today, he is actually providing the club with loans. And loans are debt.
An investment usually involves purchasing an asset with the expectation of generating income or profit from it, such as stocks, bonds, real estate, etc.
A loan, on the other hand, is when money is borrowed from one party by another with the agreement to pay back the amount borrowed, often with interest. It is more of a debt instrument where the borrower has an obligation to repay the lender.
Another way to look at it, the club itself may have been able to raise its own loan - and take on the same debt - from a bank (not Rob Couhig), on the basis of a business plan consisting of promotion to the championship, with the loan secured against the asset of the ground.
@drcongo , can I suggest that you create a third category in addition to thumbs up and down, an emoji like this ❔ which means 'I don't have a clue what this person is talking about' ?
Maybe he is trying to create a Bearwood?
In the last days of trust ownership I understood we had the maximum overdraft attainable and a short term loan to the last set of prospective owners and owed money to a variety of suppliers and fans.
Whilst loan debt from the Couhigs isn't ideal as it could put off a new owner and give him the opportunity to snaffle up a big payday like a player sale it's likely to be interest free and something that sits dormant in the books until it can be cleared or he sells, he's already admitted he might not get it back when he sells (unless the next owner is rich and agreeable) , if we were to have loaned money from a bank we'd be expected to pay it back in full and on schedule with interest as per the terms of the loan. This is very different. Incidentally the training ground was supposedly being purchased by his company not the club.
We had some momentum in growing the attendances but 17 game spell when the results and performances were …. well appalling took the wind out of those sails.
Anecdotally I saw a pal yesterday that I had taken along to a game during that 17 game spell. I asked if wants to come again and said about the Pompy and Charlton games. No chance was the response. I think that spell did a lot of damage and it will take a while to wash that from people’s minds.
And without growing attendances we will struggle to build income.
The club very much couldn’t access lending from banks
We had about eight players on the first day of pre-season before the Couhigs started paying for things. The Trust did a marvelous job in relentlessly trying circumstances, aided by GA and Dobbo working their majic, but the money had run out.
Not the greatest joke but wasn't that difficult was it?
❔
No, you are right, not my best effort ever.
Until I read this post I was about to ask if anyone knew their phone number!
I still think 2018/19 does not get spoken about enough. No money, small squad, and we stayed up in L1 (and were as high as 9th at one point). Legendary!
Just caught up with Phil's interview with Rob, I thought he was remarkably restrained when discussing the idiotic Reading fans pissing the bed about someone trying to help save their club.
Rubbish. I saw some in Whipsnade!
But our away attendances would always put us quite a bit higher and in some ways are more indicative of how big a club we are as it removes the artificial impediment Wycombe have of having one of the most inaccessible grounds in English football that makes attending at home such a frustrating experience.
However being so near London I'm sceptical if there'd ever come a time when all those from the area who attend London clubs and have for years would ever consider changing to Wycombe . I doubt it. Many years ago in the 80s I was one of those myself and the amount of supporters you'd see at Wycombe station off up to one of the London sides on a Saturday morning was pretty amazing. From people I still know it still happens and that much make quite a significant hit on our attendances that teams further out across England don't have to such an extent.
Looks like one of the investors involved in the Reading takeover has pulled out..
Maybe it's because they looked at the numbers and asked 'So, how do we make a return on our investment?'
Can imagine a scene where that very quest was asked and alarm bells started going off all over the place.
This wasn't in the prospectus, Just shut em up and move on to talking about how much extra you get for promotion and show them some old footage from the Prem.