Topic: Commercial Deals and their Value

[the_red_pill]

Yup. I just don't necessarily think the best example of it are a club who milk their fans harder than anyone else and give them very, very little in return. If you'd said Bayern, then sure.

Been sayin it mate. Arsenal are the dream model for money-men and investors- not for supporters(at this stage). "Oh arsenal this" or "that". You always find new investors citing Arsenal as a model, because they're confused of what matters to the supporters. Is it any wonder they're so loved by neutrals? Seems they cater more for them neutrals...

[walshys_mullet]

So out of interest do you not class £60m+ net spend in Rodgers 18 months as manager as 'fruits' of these deals?

The comparison isn't even there. Arsenal had no money as the stadium left them skint. We have lowered a ridiculous wage bill, whilst spending money as this was supplemented by the owners, and now have massively increased revenues which should see the amount be can spend be of a consistently high level without input from the owners.

60m is poor.

Can we just stop to consider something for a minute? Under Hodgson and hell even under Benitez we never had a deep squad with plenty of quality coming off the bench.

In fact the time when the squad did have a little depth was under Kenny when we splashed out on Adam and co, even then we still got players off the books, the likes of Meireles and co.

You say 60 million is good? I say you are wrong. Effectively when they sacked Kenny they restarted and thus, Rogers had to dump over half of the squad he had and start again and that squad wasnt flushed with quality.

Last season for half of it we had one striker. Thats one striker. We had to bring in kids to help, last year the squad was on its knees and he wasnt given a great resource to fill it even though he lost the likes of Bellamy, Aquilani, Adam, Cole, Rodriguez and more. Until we got Sturridge in and Coutinho we were struggling badly.

This season he brought in a few more squad fillers and about three first teamers, but dont forget he also lost Shelvey who was a regular last year and shipped out other involved first teamers like Suso and Borini, Reina went out too, Downing also. I couldnt give a crap at this point if you rated any of them or not, the fact is bodies left the squad.

So its always been a balancing act. hes never had a big squad to start with and had the luxury of adding, its always been a 2 out 1 in scenario or a three out 1 in scenario.

Thats why we lack decent cover in most positions bar centre back.

[walshys_mullet]

Definitely. If you see a support as something akin to a battery chicken, they're the model to follow. No club has seemingly delighted as much as Arsenal have in milking their support for everything it's worth and giving them little in return. No trophies, no real success, hero's sold off year after year... Not a lot of return for the most expensive tickets in the world and £12 fish and chips. Maybe it'll be all worth it for them if they win the league this year. ... But that's a pretty big if. I'm sure it's a nice if for them to have at this time in the season for the first time in about 6 years, but if they don't... Just another year being gorilla-fucked in the wallet by little old Arsenal. How we should praise them for seeing past the banality of fans as human beings and simply viewing them as a resource. At least they'll get Champions League though, which will give them a better shot of making Champions League next year.

Arsenal will not win the league this year.

[the_red_pill]

Arsenal will not win the league this year.

They always look like the real deal until January. How many times over the past 6-7 season have Arsenal looked nailed on to walk the league by Christmas? Untouchable!

Come March- they're decimated and in disarray. They always have a run of fixtures that contribute to that- there I cannot disagree with Wenger, but it's the same damn thing every year. Just think of that run of fixtures in March and before. Poor bastards.

[walshys_mullet]

They always look like the real deal until January. How many times over the past 6-7 season have Arsenal looked nailed on to walk the league by Christmas? Untouchable!

Come March- they're decimated and in disarray. They always have a run of fixtures that contribute to that- there I cannot disagree with Wenger, but it's the same damn thing every year. Just think of that run of fixtures in March and before. Poor bastards.

I cant see them taking points off city and chelsea to be fair and they may slip up against those underneath.

[The Woolster]

Think we're 10 million or so in the clear(at least from the bullshit that's being touted around). People revert back on that to explain our valuation of Salah.

I saw that and do think its rubbish.

You are allowed to make a €45m loss over the 3 seasons to the one we are in (this is the 2nd monitoring period, the first period was last year, but we haven't published the accounts yet). However losses above €5m must be funded with an equity injection.

Year 1 we made a £40.5m accounting loss, which at current exchange rates, puts us over the limit. However you can make certain cost exceptions. In year 1 only you are allowed to not include the wages of contracts signed before June 2010. I had a quick check, and I think in terms of the big contracts, that includes Reina, Agger, Maxi, and any wages we paid for Aquilani when out on loan. I reckon that could be about £15m (or more). So that brings it down to £25m FFP Loss.

In all years we can exclude costs on youth development and community costs. Man City said they are abel to exclude £10m per year from this, perhaps we are not that much, but I'd say that it would be at least £5m. So we are down to a £20m FFP loss.

You can also exclude costs on building a new stadium, and I am sure we have had some costs for that despite not building anything. What I am not sure about is general capital expenditure, for instance repair/renew work on the stadium, but that came to just over £2m in the last acounts.

For year 2 we know that revenues increased by £18m. My guess is that wages may have fallen by £10m, but lets say it was only £5m. All else being equal (which it won't quite be), a loss of between £15m to £20m sounds about right for our next accounts. Again, take off youth costs and stadium costs, maybe about £10m FFP loss. So for 2 years I make it maybe £30m FFP loss if I am being conservative, which is below the threshold.

This year we are not in Europe but we are getting an extra £25m+ most likely from the new TV deal. This has been done pretty roughly in my head, but I can't see how we would only have £10m headroom in our FFP profits at the end of this monitoring period. Perhaps the last one, but thats been and gone.

[DonkeyWan]

60m is poor.

Can we just stop to consider something for a minute? Under Hodgson and hell even under Benitez we never had a deep squad with plenty of quality coming off the bench.

In fact the time when the squad did have a little depth was under Kenny when we splashed out on Adam and co, even then we still got players off the books, the likes of Meireles and co.

You say 60 million is good? I say you are wrong. Effectively when they sacked Kenny they restarted and thus, Rogers had to dump over half of the squad he had and start again and that squad wasnt flushed with quality.

Last season for half of it we had one striker. Thats one striker. We had to bring in kids to help, last year the squad was on its knees and he wasnt given a great resource to fill it even though he lost the likes of Bellamy, Aquilani, Adam, Cole, Rodriguez and more. Until we got Sturridge in and Coutinho we were struggling badly.

This season he brought in a few more squad fillers and about three first teamers, but dont forget he also lost Shelvey who was a regular last year and shipped out other involved first teamers like Suso and Borini, Reina went out too, Downing also. I couldnt give a crap at this point if you rated any of them or not, the fact is bodies left the squad.

So its always been a balancing act. hes never had a big squad to start with and had the luxury of adding, its always been a 2 out 1 in scenario or a three out 1 in scenario.

Thats why we lack decent cover in most positions bar centre back.

What's poor is spending huge sums on Borini (loan), Alberto (bench), Aspas (bench), Allen (bench quite a lot) and then moaning at the lack of depth in the squad. Fact is, Rodgers has spent a lot and not often all that wisely.

[gorgepir]

I saw that and do think its rubbish.

You are allowed to make a €45m loss over the 3 seasons to the one we are in (this is the 2nd monitoring period, the first period was last year, but we haven't published the accounts yet). However losses above €5m must be funded with an equity injection.

Year 1 we made a £40.5m accounting loss, which at current exchange rates, puts us over the limit. However you can make certain cost exceptions. In year 1 only you are allowed to not include the wages of contracts signed before June 2010. I had a quick check, and I think in terms of the big contracts, that includes Reina, Agger, Maxi, and any wages we paid for Aquilani when out on loan. I reckon that could be about £15m (or more). So that brings it down to £25m FFP Loss.

In all years we can exclude costs on youth development and community costs. Man City said they are abel to exclude £10m per year from this, perhaps we are not that much, but I'd say that it would be at least £5m. So we are down to a £20m FFP loss.

You can also exclude costs on building a new stadium, and I am sure we have had some costs for that despite not building anything. What I am not sure about is general capital expenditure, for instance repair/renew work on the stadium, but that came to just over £2m in the last acounts.

For year 2 we know that revenues increased by £18m. My guess is that wages may have fallen by £10m, but lets say it was only £5m. All else being equal (which it won't quite be), a loss of between £15m to £20m sounds about right for our next accounts. Again, take off youth costs and stadium costs, maybe about £10m FFP loss. So for 2 years I make it maybe £30m FFP loss if I am being conservative, which is below the threshold.

This year we are not in Europe but we are getting an extra £25m+ most likely from the new TV deal. This has been done pretty roughly in my head, but I can't see how we would only have £10m headroom in our FFP profits at the end of this monitoring period. Perhaps the last one, but thats been and gone.

I think you are forgetting the net £20m transfer spending in the summer. So taking your figure of £30m adding another 20 for transfer spending (and keeping your falling wages), subtracting the £25 would mean we are around the 10m mark mentioned.

[walshys_mullet]

What's poor is spending huge sums on Borini (loan), Alberto (bench), Aspas (bench), Allen (bench quite a lot) and then moaning at the lack of depth in the squad. Fact is, Rodgers has spent a lot and not often all that wisely.

Why is the balme at rogers door if we have a commitee? Surely if he ha sthe biggest say we would have had more of the players he actually wants?

[The Woolster]

Transfers get amortised in the accounts over the life of the contract, we spent about £45m on tranfsers, over an average of 4 year contracts for each player (can't be bothered to check), that would be a cost of about £11m each year.

We also sold Carroll, so we no longer have an amortisation of £6m a year on him, and we sold Downing who was amortising at about £5m a year.

I make that about a net zero cost increase.

We made an accounting loss of around £5m on Downing, and a couple of million on Carroll, but I think we made an accounting profit of about £5m on Shelvey plus the couple of million we sold Spearing for as we never paid a transfer fee for him.

Again, I make that about a net zero cost increase.

I may be wrong, and like I said, I'm doing this in my head and from memory, but still don't think we get to that £10m headroom number. I've only seen that number quoted though, I've not seen how it was figured out, so maybe I am missing somehting

[robgomm]

The £10 million number came from someone tweeting that the owners had "put in £90 million and you're only allowed to put in £100 million over 3 years on FFP" or some other such statement. I've seen no evidence at all that FFP limits the amount that can be invested into a club over a given period, only that debt must be match by equity.

[Coady]

Why are we chipping away at 300m of debt when that debt was said to have been written off as part of the fsg purchase?

It seems Ayre has let slip some rather worrying information.

What has Ayre said?

[The Woolster]

Ok, well that may be in reference to the Premier League FFP in which you are permitted £15m losses over 3 years without equity injection, and £105m with equity injection, ie £90m injection.

But this is the first year of the Premier League FFP, so we haven't yet made any losses that FSG need to inject equity into to cover, so it sounds even more like bullshit to me.

[robgomm]

Ok, well that may be in reference to the Premier League FFP in which you are permitted £15m losses over 3 years without equity injection, and £105m with equity injection, ie £90m injection.

But this is the first year of the Premier League FFP, so we haven't yet made any losses that FSG need to inject equity into to cover, so it sounds even more like bullshit to me.

Ah thanks for that mate. Yeah I think the £10 million figure is baseless bollocks to be honest.

[Schmidt]

It's probably worth remembering that our network of new stores, the stadium expansion work and growth into new countries will all be costing money to set up. While we see a bunch of money coming in from Warrior and see it purely as transfer funds, no doubt the owners will be thinking it can be used in the short-term to invest in the club so long-term we have all of these commercial deals plus cash from other income streams they've invested in.

[Draex]

Why is the balme at rogers door if we have a commitee? Surely if he ha sthe biggest say we would have had more of the players he actually wants?

He has final say in all transfers and it was his idea not to have a Director of Football.

[robgomm]

He has final say in all transfers and it was his idea not to have a Director of Football.

Supposedly aye, I'm not sure the issue will be how much say he has as opposed to whether the club can match their ambition with spending.

But right now the issue is we didn't get a deal done and we should be using every available window to strengthen incrementally, we're not at the point where we have a strong enough squad not to sign anyone. I still think Brendan has been well backed generally though and I'd hope he would sign a new contract.

[Grobbelrevell]

Why is the balme at rogers door if we have a commitee? Surely if he ha sthe biggest say we had a skilled negotiating team with football related experience we would have had more of the players he actually wants?

[LiamG]

Does anyone know if any of the deals we have will be performance related? for example if we make the champions league will we get more?

[N0rnIr0nRed]

Does anyone know if any of the deals we have will be performance related? for example if we make the champions league will we get more?

Dunno, but you would imagine securing a place in Europe's elite cup competition would  make LFC even more appealing for sponsors.

Not to mention that core money from CL qualification and TV money.

You have to believe we have secured a great platform of commercial deals to build upon. There is no doubt that whoever is responsible for this is doing a fantastic job.

[pudgethemidget]

What's poor is spending huge sums on Borini (loan), Alberto (bench), Aspas (bench), Allen (bench quite a lot) and then moaning at the lack of depth in the squad. Fact is, Rodgers has spent a lot and not often all that wisely.

Don't bother, nothing is ever Rodgers fault and FSG are the worst ever in his world.

Shelvey not good enough? FSG fault. Borini on loan? FSG fault. Suso on loan? Their fault too.

They came in, saved us from administration, provided a LOT of money for us, have started to get us ahead in the commercial game, kept our best player and renewed his contract and most importantly of all they plan to make us a self sustaining club.

I'll never understand people's expectations and how it isn't good enough. Have they made mistakes? Sure. Everyone running the club has, even Rodgers. But they all truly do have our best interest at heart I believe.

[keyop]

It's not about having money for this transfer window. It's about the long term financial model of the club to ensure longevity. What FSG is doing is to build the club from ground up (although we have a big head start due to our established branding globally). It's an encouragement to see that FSG is not a fly-by-nighter. Therefore, we shouldn't expect instant success but gradual improvement which will lead to successes both on-field and off-field.

Spot on. Patience is the key and the success will follow.

[Gainsbarre]

For a club not even in the CL, advertising and all that, we are getting some great revenue from that side of the club.
So, where is it going?

Imagine if we were in the CL... wonderland

[ManchesterBlue]

The books weren't in good shape though were they?

Leaving to one side the massive debt, we were paying massive wages to a largely under-perfroming squad.  We weren't capitalising on all the commercial income streams like we are now and were essentially paying out more per year than we could afford.

FSG might not be dipping into their own pockets right now and Ayre might not be the best ship's captain the world has ever seen (I am sure that Brendan's comment in the press conference today was a dig at Ayre for the urgent attention of FSG) but you can't argue the fact that we seem to be building a solid 'business' platform.  Surely that can only be good for us in the long-term?

The books weren't in good shape largely because of the pay-outs to Dalglish & Hodgson and their staff from what I could see. With the stability you've had with Rodgers and the cost cutting that's been going on then they should look pretty reasonable for the next year or two. If you get top 4 and qualify for the CL then things look even more favourable.

The 2012/13 accounts should be filed within the next month so it will be interesting to see how they look after all the shenanigans of the last few seasons. Off the top of my head, I think they injected about £50m cash in the last two years as well as the interest free loan.

[TepidT2O]

£16m a season for an airline I've never heard of or will ever use
£8m a season for doughnut sponsorship

Bring it on.  It's all good for me.