Here Are The Accounts.

[Parma Ham's gone mouldy 2,226]

2 hours ago, essex canary said:

The five year figures attached providing a little clarity on where we lost £66.6 million.

Excellent work.

Parma 

[nutty nigel 7,555]

It seems to me that a black swan broke the self funding model. Of course I'm just a bog-cleaning bingo caller by trade. But the constant figure across two years would suggest this to me. I'm assuming Attanasio rode into town on that swan and that's how it's been dealt with.

[Midlands Yellow 4,018]

1 hour ago, By Hook or Ian crook said:

Possibly but think of it this way. We paid £8 mill up front, he’s in his third season here we can assume his average salary over that time would be about 40k a week so we’ve paid 6 million in wages. So total outlay of roughly 14 mill. Yes that’s spread over 3 years but it’s still an outlay we have to plan for and offset. 
 

if we sell him for 12 looks great we’ve got 4 mill profit against fee paid. Net spend though we are still down 2 mill after his wages for 3 season are taken into account. Now if you take into account there is no youth team player in that position coming up to take his place, so now we have to buy a new striker. Ideally the replacement you sign should be able to fill the gap of say 15 goals a season at championship level.  That means we are going to need to fork out another 5-8 million depending on who you go for but look at fees the likes of Piroe or Akpom went for this summer. Plus their wages over a 4 year period all of a sudden you’re down a financial rabbit hole and you’re reliant entirely on the new striker appreciating in value through performance or promotion to offset the additional cost you’ve incurred. 
 

I would not grumble at all if we went down the Athletic Bilbao cantera philosophy. If you’ve not heard of it you should look it up. It’s astonishing given they are the 4th most successful la liga team in history. 

Only signing players from the Basque region is admirable but they’ve won no major Spanish honours of note since 83. 

Edited November 4, 2023 by Midlands Yellow

[Unthink road 132]

2 hours ago, essex canary said:

The five year figures attached providing a little clarity on where we lost £66.6 million.

Covid really hit us hard with the current financial strategy. Bit of a snowball situation relating to  the course of the five year plan Webber envisaged. 

[nutty nigel 7,555]

Also these accounts spell out where we were 4 months ago. Despite the notes, projecting where we are now and where we will be in 12 months time seems to be akin to soothsaying. 

Edited November 4, 2023 by nutty nigel
Poor maths

[Branston Pickle 3,669]

20 minutes ago, NewNestCarrow said:

You are mentioned because you climbed all over someone who suggested that the accounts were not "up to scratch"

 

There is more than one other poster who feels that the accounts are badly presented (possibly even below code)

Really. I said that if accounts are deliberately incorrect and misleading that is illegal.  It is fraud. Report the club and their auditors and I’m sure that will make you happy.  

Edited November 4, 2023 by Branston Pickle

[nutty nigel 7,555]

7 minutes ago, Unthink road said:

Covid really hit us hard with the current financial strategy. Bit of a snowball situation relating to  the course of the five year plan Webber envisaged. 

This is true. And I assume it is the reason why it looks like we will be ultimately seeing our club owned on another continent. Doesn't make that fact any more palatable for me.

[Badger 2,407]

17 minutes ago, Indy said:

Indeed and whose fault is that? As I said any other club would have got shot of mr 80% when we sacked Smith!

Ultimately it is, of course the board, and their belief that they could buy PL status. The man they charged to do it, the SD failed in his brief as well, but then, most SDs and managers of promoted clubs fail. 

The strategy was too optimistic. Perhaps they behaved as fans rather than investors. I suspect that our new investor owners (aka "modern owners - KC) will be more hard- headed. If I have interpreted what @shefcanary said correctly, they are already charging interest on the loans that they have made. This is not unreasonable from a business perspective, but I was never clear how paying millions in interest was supposed to help the club.

[Parma Ham's gone mouldy 2,226]

3 hours ago, essex canary said:

The five year figures attached providing a little clarity on where we lost £66.6 million.

Further to this excellent work @essex canary wouldn’t it be interesting to have a comparative figure showing the value of the ‘playing roster’ (as Attanasio would have it).

This would be a highly salient figure compared over a five year period - and one of course that I am quite sure the legions of forecasters at Norwich have a detailed version of.

My point is this: if you are Attanasio and you arrived with a playing roster valued at £100m. Then you agreed the heads of your deal. Then ones Sporting Director had an active period of trading (at a time when he was considered for Chelsea allegedly), then sporting decline ensued. 

Perhaps unavoidable, perhaps nobody’s fault. Though jet’s imagine that the playing roster is now worth £50m.

Doesn’t that rather materially change your position? Your purchase parameters?

Equally might you feel that the seller had ‘hollowed out’ the offer a bit?

That a seller was ‘running lean’ …reducing significantly the ‘stocks’? The players are where the easy liquid money is. 

You can make the company look nice and profitable, you can run smaller squads, you can sell off the shiniest family silver. It’s all fine provided the activities of the business are not too negatively impacted..

The rolling figure of stock value (playing roster) has surely dropped significantly to the point we are at now. Thus your cost of your impending investment - and your upside of promotion - just got longer and harder.

As a seller you might say this was all part of natural, normal, cost-cutting exercises, though lots of old players on frees? Is that what we’ve always done under Webber? What stock value do they now have?

Maybe we’ve shafted old Attanasio. We’ve also sadly shafted our sporting competitiveness, plus we have pretty limited family silver to liquidate in future. 

A fair judge of a sporting Director and club is to assess the playing roster value over a reasonable period. The club will do this internally. 

If you have hollowed your stock value out (say) 50% - and you have no new stadium, nor any meaningful trade for your silver sales - what have you achieved?

Parma 

Edited November 4, 2023 by Parma Ham's gone mouldy

[Indy 3,307]

2 minutes ago, Badger said:

Ultimately it is, of course the board, and their belief that they could buy PL status. The man they charged to do it, the SD failed in his brief as well, but then, most SDs and managers of promoted clubs fail. 

The strategy was too optimistic. Perhaps they behaved as fans rather than investors. I suspect that our new investor owners (aka "modern owners - KC) will be more hard- headed. If I have interpreted what @shefcanary said correctly, they are already charging interest on the loans that they have made. This is not unreasonable from a business perspective, but I was never clear how paying millions in interest was supposed to help the club.

As I posted on the other thread, I was one saying back in May, MA and his team are a business franchise and will do their due diligence to purchase any club at the optimal price. To think otherwise would be naive! How we got here is down to the former majority share holders and their way of allowing the club to be run. So is MA actually someone they really wanted or is it that financially they have little choice to go this way as the gamble on promotion last season didn’t work out! Had we gone up I’m sure the current finances and shareholding would look very different! 

[hogesar 9,709]

1 hour ago, Sufyellow said:

The boards job was to get value for money,  they totally failed. 

I dont think anyone has ever questioned that we failed at Prem level and that is ultimately on our SD and board.

But there has to be an understanding of how hard it is to be successful with our financial outlay. There's only a small handful of examples of where it's worked at other clubs with similar money.

[Jim Smith 2,325]

1 hour ago, PurpleCanary said:

Yes, for season after season you could hardly move on this message-board for calls for "a calculated risk/gamble". Which meant spending money we didn't have. Eventually the board - quite independently - went and did that, and now you can't move for posts (probably in some cases from the same people) bemoaning our resultant financial troubles...😍

A calculated gamble though would have been pushing the boat out to keep Emi and sign the two or three targeted players shy idiot could see we needed. What Webber actually did was beyond inept/idiotic when you look at who and what he signed. 

[Dean Coneys boots 1,400]

These accounts tell me we have zero chance of retaining sarge Sara and probably Gunn too. It says we will again be scraping round the bargain bucket in the windows. It says we cannot compete and that all calls for new ownership in recent years had merit. 

[Indy 3,307]

1 minute ago, hogesar said:

I dont think anyone has ever questioned that we failed at Prem level and that is ultimately on our SD and board.

But there has to be an understanding of how hard it is to be successful with our financial outlay. There's only a small handful of examples of where it's worked at other clubs with similar money.

So what you’re saying is that we had the choice of treading the championship on a controlled manner or to go up we needed more powerful financial power! New owners then? 
The reality of how we got where we are is really just lip service Hogesar, the challenge is and question where are we headed?

This season looks to be very strange, almost like the shackles put onto the club by MA in the hope that we don’t move forwards allowing the full takeover on the fund’s currently invested as loans meaning a very cheap takeover!

What are his and his organisations long term goals for the club? That would be a nice thing to hear, as if they are looking for the best return possible then promotion and staying up for a couple seasons would be the optimal return for their investment. Maybe they will once in place invest more into the club’s structure or maybe they won’t we wait to see. But for now whoever it be we need a leader in place, we need that new Bowkett at the top!

[BigFish 1,988]

2 minutes ago, Jim Smith said:

A calculated gamble though would have been pushing the boat out to keep Emi and sign the two or three targeted players shy idiot could see we needed. What Webber actually did was beyond inept/idiotic when you look at who and what he signed. 

That is certainly a different strategy. Although the likely outcome is that we were only able to afford 1/2 additions, you would have gone mad on here about a lack of ambition and we got relegated anyway.

This is a thread about finances, subjective alternate histories really don't add value.

[hogesar 9,709]

1 minute ago, Indy said:

So what you’re saying is that we had the choice of treading the championship on a controlled manner or to go up we needed more powerful financial power! New owners then? 
The reality of how we got where we are is really just lip service Hogesar, the challenge is and question where are we headed?

This season looks to be very strange, almost like the shackles put onto the club by MA in the hope that we don’t move forwards allowing the full takeover on the fund’s currently invested as loans meaning a very cheap takeover!

What are his and his organisations long term goals for the club? That would be a nice thing to hear, as if they are looking for the best return possible then promotion and staying up for a couple seasons would be the optimal return for their investment. Maybe they will once in place invest more into the club’s structure or maybe they won’t we wait to see. But for now whoever it be we need a leader in place, we need that new Bowkett at the top!

Yeah, new owners and a new SD seems to be the only different route to try and that's exactly what we are doing...

[Unthink road 132]

8 minutes ago, Parma Ham's gone mouldy said:

Further to this excellent work @essex canary wouldn’t it be interesting to have a comparative figure showing the value of the ‘playing roster’ (as Attanasio would have it).

This would be a highly salient figure compared over a five year period - and one of course that I am quite sure the legions of forecasters at Norwich have a detailed version of.

My point is this: if you are Attanasio and you arrived with a playing roster valued at £100m. Then you agreed the heads of your deal. Then ones Sporting Director had an active period of trading (at a time when he was considered for Chelsea allegedly), then sporting decline ensued. 

Perhaps unavoidable, perhaps nobody’s fault. Though jet’s imagine that the playing roster is now worth £50m.

Doesn’t that rather materially change your position? Your purchase parameters?

Equally might you feel that the seller had ‘hollowed out’ the offer a bit?

That a seller was ‘running lean’ …reducing significantly the ‘stocks’? The players are where the easy liquid money is. 

You can make the company look nice and profitable, you can run smaller squads, you can sell off the shiniest family silver. It’s all fine provided the activities of the business are not too negatively impacted..

The rolling figure of stock value (playing roster) has surely dropped significantly to the point we are at now. Thus your cost of your impending investment - and your upside of promotion - just got longer and harder.

As a seller you might say this was all part of natural, normal, cost-cutting exercises, though lots of old players on frees? Is that what we’ve always done under Webber? What stock value do they now have?

Maybe we’ve shafted old Attanasio. We’ve also sadly shafted our sporting competitiveness, plus we have pretty limited family silver to liquidate in future. 

A fair judge of a sporting Director and club is to assess the playing roster value over a reasonable period. The club will do this internally. 

If you have hollowed your stock value out (say) 50% - and you have no new stadium, nor any meaningful trade for your silver sales - what have you achieved?

Parma 

See your point to a degree. But American sports in my opinion only have the sports science in common. Football squads can rise and fall in a short time frame basd on player development. American sport with its college and draft system allow for a steadier roster value. Just hope MA isn't following the tradition of using the football club solely for getting bigger returns on his loans. 

[BigFish 1,988]

1 minute ago, Dean Coneys boots said:

These accounts tell me we have zero chance of retaining sarge Sara and probably Gunn too. It says we will again be scraping round the bargain bucket in the windows. It says we cannot compete and that all calls for new ownership in recent years had merit. 

Sorry, what?? Don't we effectively have new ownership? Nothing changed? Well then perhaps ownership isn't the root cause of all this.

[keelansgrandad 6,679]

7 minutes ago, Parma Ham's gone mouldy said:

Further to this excellent work @essex canary wouldn’t it be interesting to have a comparative figure showing the value of the ‘playing roster’ (as Attanasio would have it).

This would be a highly salient figure compared over a five year period - and one of course that I am quite sure the legions of forecasters at Norwich have a detailed version of.

My point is this: if you are Attanasio and you arrived with a playing roster valued at £100m. Then you agreed the heads of your deal. Then ones Sporting Director had an active period of trading (at a time when he was considered for Chelsea allegedly), then sporting decline ensued. 

Perhaps unavoidable, perhaps nobody’s fault. Though jet’s imagine that the playing roster is now worth £50m.

Doesn’t that rather materially change your position? Your purchase parameters?

Equally might you feel that the seller had ‘hollowed out’ the offer a bit?

That a seller was ‘running lean’ …reducing significantly the ‘stocks’? The players are where the easy liquid money is. 

You can make the company look nice and profitable, you can run smaller squads, you can sell off the shiniest family silver. It’s all fine provided the activities of the business are not too negatively impacted..

The rolling figure of stock value (playing roster) has surely dropped significantly to the point we are at now. Thus your cost of your impending investment - and your upside of promotion - just got longer and harder.

As a seller you might say this was all part of natural, normal, cost-cutting exercises, though lots of old players on frees? Is that what we’ve always done under Webber? What stock value do they now have?

Maybe we’ve shafted old Attanasio. We’ve also sadly shafted our sporting competitiveness, plus we have pretty limited family silver to liquidate in future. 

A fair judge of a sporting Director and club is to assess the playing roster value over a reasonable period. The club will do this internally. 

If you have hollowed your stock value out (say) 50% - and you have no new stadium, nor any meaningful trade for your silver sales - what have you achieved?

Parma 

Attanasio's roster and how it was achieved at Milwaukee would be vastly different from ours though. I don't know whether US sports still tend to use the moneyball theory but if they do then they might see they way we recruit as somewhat bizarre. Our last minute deals for Hwang, Forshaw and Batth would not resemble in any way the way a baseball, NFL roster is formed.

And of course, they do pay money, lots of it for a roster of pitchers. And those guys are treated with kid gloves considering the punishing schedule they have. And apart from the minor leagues, its pretty much retirement if you don't succeed.

Also, you might put all your eggs in one basket and trade for a real giant and proven winner. And the remuneration would be huge. Nick Bosa, a defensive end for the 49ers held out preseason and ended up with a contratc worth £1M a week for a whole year for three years, yet he might only play 16 games.

Attanasio may find our system fairly antiquated in that it is left to the directors each season to sanction spending whereas in US sport it is left to the front office.

[Branston Pickle 3,669]

17 minutes ago, hogesar said:

I dont think anyone has ever questioned that we failed at Prem level and that is ultimately on our SD and board.

But there has to be an understanding of how hard it is to be successful with our financial outlay. There's only a small handful of examples of where it's worked at other clubs with similar money.

I think that’s the nub: everyone expects their club to make good decisions, but they are all in direct competition with one another so it can’t be easy.  We definitely didn’t go at all well with our transfers two seasons ago and are still paying for them.  
But it can be a fine line. For jnstance, I recall huge excitement from some when we signed Rashica - I’d never heard of him, but we were told he was great: that proved wrong.  Not to single him out, there was a long list of what turned into poor transfers that summer.

Edited November 4, 2023 by Branston Pickle
Sp

[komakino 272]

4 hours ago, king canary said:

On the other hand it does rather show what many of us have said for the last few years, that our owners idea of competing while being sustainable financially in the top flight was unworkable.

Yes the wage spend was big by our terms but it was nothing remarkable for a Premier League club. Our transfer spend was similarly large for us but not by Premier League standards and was largely subsidised by selling Buendia. If this sort of spend is so financially damaging then something at the club isn't fit for purpose in the modern game.

It seems the board reached the same conclusion too.

The cynic is me would suggest that one of the reasons why Delia/MWJ don't like the EPL is that is shows how out of depth they are financially. Therefore 'bobbing along' in The Championship suits them better as getting promoted and trying to stay causes more problems once relegation happens. 

I just hope these set of accounts shows everybody once and for all that the club isn't partially well run. I trust and believe things will get better once MA is in majority control and the club ceases to be a loss making social club for the recent majority shareholders. 

[Branston Pickle 3,669]

5 minutes ago, Dean Coneys boots said:

These accounts tell me we have zero chance of retaining sarge Sara and probably Gunn too. It says we will again be scraping round the bargain bucket in the windows. It says we cannot compete and that all calls for new ownership in recent years had merit. 

You might need to give a timescale - or is this just another vagueness so you can say ‘I was right all along’ as usual.

[By Hook or Ian crook 917]

1 hour ago, Midlands Yellow said:

Only signing players from the Basque region is admirable but they’ve won no major Spanish honours of note since 83. 

I’m not suggesting we only sign or play players from Norfolk but maybe only play players from are own academy or signings from other uk Academies. They are the only side other than Barcelona and Real Madrid who’ve never been relegated from la liga. 

[Badger 2,407]

2 hours ago, Sufyellow said:

There will come a time soon that you will have to say Webber got it totally wrong and unfortunately now Mrs Webber let it happen. Shall we have a guess that 10 million of that debt went on replacing Farke,  to get too Wagner? You keep saying we had a go in the prem,  yet we didn't buy one quality prem player , but looks like we paid them the wages. It all comes down to Webber. 

No - it is the BOD who are responsible - he wouldn't have been able to spend money without their authorisation. The real issue is that we simply spent too much, leaving us with debt which will be a drain on the club in future years.

[Badger 2,407]

48 minutes ago, Indy said:

As I posted on the other thread, I was one saying back in May, MA and his team are a business franchise and will do their due diligence to purchase any club at the optimal price. To think otherwise would be naive!

Agree, and it looks like he has driven a pretty hard bargain as far as I can see. 

How we got here is down to the former majority share holders and their way of allowing the club to be run.

Agree again - they behaved like fans rather than people running a business.

So is MA actually someone they really wanted or is it that financially they have little choice to go this way as the gamble on promotion last season didn’t work out!

When you are in debt, you are in a far weaker position to drive a hard bargain - "beggars can't be choosers."

Had we gone up I’m sure the current finances and shareholding would look very different! 

The debt would have been bigger - c10+ million on player bonuses and transfer/ loan clauses. If we had been promoted, it begs the question of whether posters on here would have wanted to gamble further with a starting point of debt in excess of £80 million (let's assume a new SD to avoid the obvious answers!)

 

[......and Smith must score. 1,349]

44 minutes ago, hogesar said:

Yeah, new owners and a new SD seems to be the only different route to try and that's exactly what we are doing...

Maybe we could try a new manager too while we’re at it.

[Indy 3,307]

5 minutes ago, ......and Smith must score. said:

Maybe we could try a new manager too while we’re at it.

And new younger set of players? 

[Badger 2,407]

59 minutes ago, Indy said:

What are his and his organisations long term goals for the club? That would be a nice thing to hear, as if they are looking for the best return possible then promotion and staying up for a couple seasons would be the optimal return for their investment. Maybe they will once in place invest more into the club’s structure or maybe they won’t we wait to see. But for now whoever it be we need a leader in place, we need that new Bowkett at the top!

His long term goals will be profit maximisation. From the fan's perspective we would hope that he achieves this by the promotion + staying up route + then hopes he sells it on to someone decent. However, my fear is that tis is a rather expensive way to make a profit and he could far make a profit more easily using other methods. Shef has already told us that he is charging interest on the loans he has given us, which is one way.

The "safest" way to profit maximise would be to sit tight, keep costs low, profit from player trading and interest charges. I wouldn't expect him to say that in any public statement though. He has bought us very cheaply, so it is difficult to see how how he can fail to make a profit as long as he doesn't overspend and keeps us in the championship. Several owners have transferred the ground + training facilities into separate companies as a safeguard/ insurance.

[Disco Dales Jockstrap 1,898]

OK peeps, I've read all the responses in detail. I can’t count or add but think I’ve got a handle on these accounts.  I feel a summary of our current financial situation would help all involved:

We are sh*t loads in debt. This is mainly due to spending/pissing/gushing/spelunking loads on transfers and wages in our 21/22 Premier League season.

*Some* fans wanted us to do this as they thought it would give us a better chance of staying up. B*stards.

*Some* other fans didn't think this and were happy for us to spend a little/nothing. B*stards.

Webber, reviewing this forum as he does on an hourly basis, started to agree with the first set of b*stards.

"These c*nts might be on to something," he thought.

Getting his big book of transfer targets out of the cupboard, he put on his blindfold, grabbed a pin and turned the pages rapidly, like a man possessed.

Suddenly, he stabbed his pin into one of the pages. Taking off his blindfold, he noticed that he had stuck his pin in the page labelled 'Dogsh*t'.

Using his best crayon, he circled several random players (mainly wingers, because they be mega quick) and then got on the blower to whoever he could to make it happen. Once the last deal was done, he screamed triumphantly, "I'M THE BEST!"

Exhausted, he then had a 90% *sorry minute* power nap.

We end up with a team that is worse than the one we had for the previous Championship winning season. We get relegated. Again.

An American millionaire turned up, bizarrely interested in us despite us not being a port (nod to Lakey) or being a financial basket case ripe for the picking. Or were we?

Fast forward a Dean ‘as much fun as eating cold sick’’ Smith season and it’s now the summer of 2023.

Webber has given up reading this forum as even his acolytes having nothing good to say about him. For a moment, he self reflects, "Is it me? Am I the tw*t?"

But he snaps out of it quickly, “C*nts - the lot of them; especially the turn coats who have loving partners and are in a stable relationship.”

Once again he makes a grab for his big book of transfer targets but this time he has learned his lesson. He slowly turns each page, reviewing the page heading carefully before moving to the next. “Ah ha! Got it! This time, I can’t go wrong!”

Looming large and clear at the top of the page the label reads:

‘Ready for the glue factory’

Feel free to point out where I’ve got any figures wrong; I’m no good at rounding.

OTBC

[nutty nigel 7,555]

1 hour ago, Indy said:

So what you’re saying is that we had the choice of treading the championship on a controlled manner or to go up we needed more powerful financial power! New owners then? 
The reality of how we got where we are is really just lip service Hogesar, the challenge is and question where are we headed?

This season looks to be very strange, almost like the shackles put onto the club by MA in the hope that we don’t move forwards allowing the full takeover on the fund’s currently invested as loans meaning a very cheap takeover!

What are his and his organisations long term goals for the club? That would be a nice thing to hear, as if they are looking for the best return possible then promotion and staying up for a couple seasons would be the optimal return for their investment. Maybe they will once in place invest more into the club’s structure or maybe they won’t we wait to see. But for now whoever it be we need a leader in place, we need that new Bowkett at the top!

But didn't Bowkett do the same? I seem to remember we spent massive fees on RVW, Hooper, Naismith and Klose. Got relegated twice from the prem. I don't think we recouped anything from the players mentioned. Then put stadium improvements and Colney improvements back on hold.

To properly evaluate our recent history people should stop using personalities they like or dislike as a starting point.