[Archived] Rovers £54.5m in debt.

[tomphil]

John Williams proved that good management worked for 10 years.

His only mistake was getting Ince. He soon put that right by getting Big Sam in as replacement. It has been suggested on here more than once, that the decline of Rovers is being done on purpose.

What I want to know is this? What has happened to the £40m+ that the club brought in through player sales since Venky arrived?

We must have had 20 odd mill in signings since they pitched up. Probably more, mostly crap of course.

[TBTF]

if i was venkys, then would it not make sense to find a sponsor for ewood park? they have a multi billion pound turnover a year they must have a lot of friends with similar wealth they can lean on to say "you sponsor Ewood for £80million over 2 years and ill give you the cash for it."

Would that still infringe on FFP?

I would rather Ewood was called Air India Arena or whatever than a transfer embargo, monster fine and administration.

Mmmm!! Nice thought getting £40m a year for sponsoring the ground when advertising boards are £400 each for the rest of the season.Think the unusual transaction bods under FFP would blow that idea out the water.

[perthblue02]

Why would someone do this on purpose?

An expendable vehicle as a front for other activities? Served it's purpose ? Falling out of thieves? Plan gone wrong? Writing was on the wall when Jerome's man beat an hasty retreat.

Bet if Rovers do go under there will be many a sigh of relief down at FA HQ, under the carpet was getting quite full

[footypix]

Why would someone do this on purpose?

All Venky's had to do was keep the club ticking over in the Premier League by following JW's model and this season would see their investment pay-off massively with the new TV deal. People said at the time of takeover it was a 'cut and run' job. These people are being proved right.

[Amo]

Yep spending more money on transfers and wages, thats the solution to a 50million plus debt problem.

Send in your CV, Venky's might appoint you to the board, your clearly signed up to the premier league or bust plan.

Then, pray tell, what is the solution?

[Simon Says]

All Venky's had to do was keep the club ticking over in the Premier League by following JW's model and this season would see their investment pay-off massively with the new TV deal. People said at the time of takeover it was a 'cut and run' job. These people are being proved right.

We all know what they should have done, but running the club down on purpose? Sorry, I just don't buy the conspiracy theory.

They are simply incompetent. Took bad advice, and now trying to salvage an already sinking ship.

[jim mk2]

I don`t care what anybody says, the fact of the matter is that the club down the road have proved that good management on and off the field can yield success on a shoestring budget. We should all take a leaf from their book. All credit to them. It makes a mockery of teams in this league spending £8m on a forward. Truth hurts eh?

You should be careful of making sensible posts.

We're going to go bust and be reformed with other insolvent clubs as Lancashire United according to the experts.

[Proudtobeblue&white]

All Venky's had to do was keep the club ticking over in the Premier League by following JW's model and this season would see their investment pay-off massively with the new TV deal. People said at the time of takeover it was a 'cut and run' job. These people are being proved right.

But they were given a new vision by Jerome & his leaches, Coco was the messiah, and they obviously let the knobs get on with it. Took eye off the (foot) ball, now have no idea what to do as they are losing money hand over fist.......complete idiots!

[den]

Then, pray tell, what is the solution?

Unless the owners are prepared to pay the debts off, there isn't one.

[Roverall]

I read some of the book "Football and Gangsters" yesterday. Towards the end there is a chapter on Scottish football, alleging that it is rife with dodgy characters looking to launder money. Glasgow was highlighted as a hot-point.

I then re-read the infamous "Glasgow Gangsters" post from the LT boards, relating to acquaintances of our ex-manager. Nothing is too incredible to believe at this point. Either the person who wrote it had a superb imagination or there was something in it.

[Proudtobeblue&white]

Sadly we are off radar now, as we are a mid-table Championship team, and probably where most Journo's think we should be. Our owners are long forgotten, well done Cryer for keeping us in the spotlight.

Where are we going to get any information from, as we are left with the worlds most uselessly expensive MD, allied to the worlds most useless owners - bling boy, say something?

[footypix]

But they were given a new vision by Jerome & his leaches, Coco was the messiah, and they obviously let the knobs get on with it. Took eye off the (foot) ball, now have no idea what to do as they are losing money hand over fist.......complete idiots!

I'd like to ask what has happened to the 'Dossier'?...and isn't this the time to let everyone know if the 'smoking gun' actually exists. The people of Blackburn and it's elected representatives need to be asking questions.... i.e. what are the owners going to do next?.....

[Guest Norbert]

Yes, what happened to this dossier of naughtiness? Perhaps one of the remaining BRAG people can inform us about what they intend to do with the information.

[Proudtobeblue&white]

It doesn't matter as the football authorities don't give a Kean, we made our bed......trust had open hand who to sell to, they will never make an example of us, otherwise every club in the country would be under scrutiny. Sadness is we got the idiots, city got the bottomless pockets!

[West Yorks Rover]

I read some of the book "Football and Gangsters" yesterday. Towards the end there is a chapter on Scottish football, alleging that it is rife with dodgy characters looking to launder money. Glasgow was highlighted as a hot-point.

I then re-read the infamous "Glasgow Gangsters" post from the LT boards, relating to acquaintances of our ex-manager. Nothing is too incredible to believe at this point. Either the person who wrote it had a superb imagination or there was something in it.

I for one found this explanation totally believable, and after the boys from Glasgow left, the brothers became confused.

[John]

Confused, no direction, constant dithering, sometimes speak in public then months in silence, power struggles etc etc - would hardly be a shock if others were involved.

[tomphil]

When you read those books and watch stuff like the Bryan Robson thing and also do some research about similar goings on at clubs across the world where wrong doing has happened it's frightening how many parallels there are to some of the goings on at Ewood. Ive never bought the completely naive theory and never will.

[Roverall]

I think the organisation formerly known as BRAG have been great in their efforts to do something about this whole mess. It isn't their fault that the dark lord has pockets deep enough to silence the press. Somebody, someday will blow the assorted scum buckets out of the water (metaphorically speaking of course ).

[glen9mullan]

Sadly no quick fix ,

With players like Etuhu being on. £30k a week and having nearly 3 years left on his contract who is

1. Going to buy him

2. Why would he leave on that sort of money

3. He wouldn't accept a pay off unless it was all his contract

We have a number of players like this which ensures for at least 3 years we will record figures like this unless we are a premiership team .

Ticket sales are a drop in the ocean , TV money down by £20 million , these accounts are no surprise, but when you put it into perspective we was over £20 mill in debt prior to the takeover and the biggest debt now is to the parent company and not the bank , the bank debt is also not secured on club assets .

Whoever owns rovers or wants to own Rovers will continue to amass debts as we have premiership facilities and a large squad of players who are not worth an awful lot .

[thenodrog]

But they were given a new vision by Jerome & his leaches, Coco was the messiah, and they obviously let the knobs get on with it. Took eye off the (foot) ball, now have no idea what to do as they are losing money hand over fist.......complete idiots!

The Venkys 'Ees bettah.... ees cheepah' philosophy has been blown to smithereeens by their actions and to their cost. Replacing proven talent both on the field and off it with cut price options has cost big. Very big.

[philipl]

Why would someone do this on purpose?

Betting

[Paul]

Ticket sales are a drop in the ocean , TV money down by £20 million , these accounts are no surprise, but when you put it into perspective we was over £20 mill in debt prior to the takeover and the biggest debt now is to the parent company and not the bank , the bank debt is also not secured on club assets .

I can't help but feel the argument that our previous debt of £20m puts the current debt of at least £55m could provide false comfort.

Three years ago Blackburn Rovers was an entirely different animal. I won't bother listing all the positives we had then but in a nutshell £20m debt for a PL club with a valuable squad was not an issue. Today £55m and growing represents an almost insurmountable problem and huge threat to our club's existence. No perspective in that.

[47er]

Proof that it doesn't need a long convoluting post to make complete sense.

Me. I hated the sight and actions of the Venkys from the start, in fact I doubt anyone could abhor them more but once we fell off the Prem gravy train they became completely necessary. If they had withdrawn their funding we'd already have the closed sign on the door at Ewood.

Well if they are "completely necessary" they would have to stay forever with ever-mounting debts. Since they won't it doesn't seem much of a strategy.

And before you pat yourself on the back once more "for hating the sight and actions of the Venkys from the start", is there any Indian owners you would have given a chance to?

[awhom111]

Here are a few general observations that I have from the accounts and general Financial Fair Play stuff:

Financial Fair Play information is found here:

http://www.football-league.co.uk/page/FLExplainedDetail/0,,10794~2748246,00.html

Based on the current rules if we are not promoted, we will have a transfer embargo starting on January 1^st, 2015.

If we are promoted this season, we would owe a tax after our results are announced next December. Just to give you an idea of the tax, if we were say 20 Million above the allowed losses, we would owe 16,681,000 in Fair Play tax.

To get context for our matchday and commercial income, I looked at this Swiss Ramble post from the 2011-12 season, which has some information for Championship clubs in that season that we could use to compare our figures with:

http://swissramble.blogspot.com/2013/08/championship-finances-201112-numbers.html

Our income from those two sources declined by about 4 Million to a little under 9 Million. Our matchday income would rank us right above the bottom third by the Swiss Ramble figures and our commercial income would put us just inside the top half. Intuitively, one would think that these figures for this season would be no worse than last season and probably a little higher.

Our staff costs were obviously quite high last season. In theory at least, some of those costs should be lower. The accounts explicitly say that all expenses related to Danny Murphy and Nuno Gomes are included in this set of accounts. It is possible that we tried to take a “Big Bath” for this set of accounts, putting all possible expenses/losses knowing that there were no penalties in order to lessen future penalties.

Transfers:

-Last season we bought players recorded at a cost of 16.25 Million. This alone does not say anything about how the payments are structured or anything.

-We amortized 9.7 million of value for players. By accounting and FFP rules, transfer fees are amortized over the length of the player’s initial contract. That means that if we sign a player for four years for an 8 Million fee, we amortize 2 Million for each of those four years unless we sell the player. We still had 20.4 Million of value to amortize at the start of this season, so even if we made no more transfers that were not for free, we would still have that amount of expense to incur over the next few years that will count against our FFP figure as long as we are in the top two divisions. This does not count wage expenses for the associated players. Remember that this figure is more than double our combined matchday and commercial income.

-Not counting sales from this summer, we are owed about 1 Million in transfer fees this season after receiving 5.5 Million over the course of the last season. On the flip side, we owe nearly 9.7 million just during this season not including our purchases this summer. This is slightly less than the transfer fees we paid out over the past season. Again for perspective this is around the amount that we would expect to receive from matchday and commercial sources. In future seasons we still owe 4.5 million and if all of the add-ons to our purchases became due, they would amount to 8 Million.

-For people who wanted reference compared to our last Premier League season. In that season we paid out 12.2 Million in transfer fees and received 24 Million.

-The accounts also note that we essentially broke even on this past summer’s dealings.

-Can anyone figure out which players are included in the transfer fees that we owe over the course of this season? I just cannot figure out how to get what I would suspect to added up to such a big figure.

[Stuart]

"Based on the current rules if we are not promoted, we will have a transfer embargo starting on January 1st, 2014."

Why does Shelfy think it's 2015?