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The Chris Lakey Column

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http://www.edp24.co.uk/content/edp24/sport/football/columns/story.aspx?brand=EDPOnline&category=ChrisLakey&tBrand=EDPOnline&tCategory=ChrisLakey&itemid=NOED08%20May%202009%2012%3A16%3A41%3A570

At the bottom Chris states the following

"Can''t wait to see who''s closer with the estimated losses caused by relegation - him with £3m or me with £5m-£7m. Neither figure is very bright."

Neil has already said the figure of 7 million is total bull.

he stated we will lose about 1 million in TV revenue. (500K vs 1.5M)

We will probably also lose about 1.5-2 million through reduced gate and advertising revenue

YET........ its almost certain that we will slash the overall wage bill by at least 3-4 million.

If not more!

Dejan has already said he has a relegation clause which reduces wages.

Its fair to assume most other players also have this (those that are staying!)

I would assume that several of the higher wage earners at the club will be sold/let go such as Marshall, Clingan, Cureton, Croft and Pattison.

(fozzy and eagles already gone)

Also possibly players like Russell and Semi will be sold/let go.

All replaced by youth players or Cody Mac type players on vastly smaller wages.

We wont have the loans/agent fees next year which cost us a LOT.

Agent fees alone were quoted at 500K

Its fair to assume that loan wages were in the 1-2 million range overall.

What I find stunning is the fact I think Doncaster is actually overstating the cost at 3 million.

Yes we have less revenue but our wage bill will be vastly smaller.

Where Chris Lakey is getting his 5-7 million from I have no idea.

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[quote user="USAcanary"]Not one comment on the figures given by both?[/quote]Good points but we can''t release or sell too many players because we only have 16 contracted for next season and to bring in more loans would be another recipe for disaster. Some will leave certainly, but I would guess that most will stay as we will need to keep a nucleus of contracted players and add to it with bargain signings and bringing more of the academy lads through into the squad. We''ll probably shave the player budget down to 5 million is my guess with a big sale, (Clingan?) to make up the difference after losing a big portion of tv income.

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Its all relative I guess.  Lakey (despite being a journo) doesn''t strike me as the sort of person who would make up a huge figure for the sake of it.  He has enough contacts to know if something is up.  Doncaster may just be saying £3m for damage limitation.

Only time will tell.  Pretty grim whatever it turns out to be.

 

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I think the whole point is 5-7million is loss of revenue!!! Wages are not revenue are they!? The whole reason Norwich have to drop the wage bill is because of the loss in revenue ie TV, sponsorhip, season tickets (those who now cancel), gate reciepts & rebates, merchandise etc. I think all this will add up to way more than 3 million hence why Doncaster is talking out of his ring peice as usual!!

Maye it''s you who is not so bright USAcanary, not the figures!

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First of all, we received 1.5 million in TV revenue this past season, but the 2009-2010 season is under a new contract.  Each Colaship side will get 2.9 million in next years TV contract and League 1 sides will get 400k.  Doncaster agreed with these numbers when he was sent an e-mail complaining that he was looking at 2008 season numbers when he should have been looking at 2009 when discussing lost revenue.

So we''re around 2.5 million in lost revenue right off the bat because of TV. Then factor in the reduction in gate receipts both home and away.  That too is lost revenue.  I also believe that because Brum went right up, their parachute payment is divided among the Colaship teams of next year.  That is another 400k or so we lose because of our relegation.  I think when its all said and done, we will lose between 6-7 million.  Is my logic flawed here? 

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[quote user="VOR"]

I think the whole point is 5-7million is loss of revenue!!! Wages are not revenue are they!? The whole reason Norwich have to drop the wage bill is because of the loss in revenue ie TV, sponsorhip, season tickets (those who now cancel), gate reciepts & rebates, merchandise etc. I think all this will add up to way more than 3 million hence why Doncaster is talking out of his ring peice as usual!!

Maye it''s you who is not so bright USAcanary, not the figures!

[/quote]

He said the following

""Can''t wait to see who''s closer with the estimated losses caused by relegation - him with £3m or me with £5m-£7m. Neither figure is very bright."

It doesnt say loss of revenue but losses which I assumed to mean overall loss.

Yes we will have less revenue but our wage bill will probably be at least 4 million smaller.

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[quote user="VOR"]

I think the whole point is 5-7million is loss of revenue!!! Wages are not revenue are they!? The whole reason Norwich have to drop the wage bill is because of the loss in revenue ie TV, sponsorhip, season tickets (those who now cancel), gate reciepts & rebates, merchandise etc. I think all this will add up to way more than 3 million hence why Doncaster is talking out of his ring peice as usual!!

Maye it''s you who is not so bright USAcanary, not the figures!

[/quote]I''d say we have a winner.Doncaster is deliberately obfuscating the mess we''re in by dodgy maths. Turnover will show damage to the tune of £5-7m but by reducing wages we will only be exposed to a deficit of £3m.A bit like when we went up to the Prem and got all that money in reverse.Of course applying Doomy logic if we don''t actually have a team next year we could make a profit of approx £3m

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Well fair play to you if you think that the loss is only 3 million cos of a 4 million pound lower wage bill....great what fantsastic news...doncaster is right and lakey is wrong!

You are obviously a king of spin, perhaps you were at same school as Doomy, please let me know where that was cos they obviously teach the art of spin very well but you just can''t pull the wool over some peopls''e eyes!!

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Is this like............ irony.

I am interested in how much REAL money we are going to lose next year not some paper fantasy money.

Agreed....... yes our revenue is going to be way down.................

But............ drum roll.............

So will our overall expenditure.

The players that stay will be on less wages.

Dejan has already said he has a clause in his contract that wages are reduced if relegated.

Safe to assume that most of the players have this, especially the higher wage earners.

I would also like to state on record that we are going to lose 50 million in revenue next season by not being in the prem and not getting to the champions league final.

See what i did there!

If we would have stayed in the champs we would have payed higher wages to our contracted players, payed higher wages to prem loan players along with the agent fees/bungs we like to pay.

Plus any players we bring permananetly in would be expected to be payed at the champs rate.

Its obvious that being relegated isnt going to cost us that much in real terms.

Selling Clingan and Marshall would probably

cover the losses if you factor in transfer fees and the saving in wages.

The positives are..........

That we can get rid of a lot of the higher earning mediocre players who we would have kept in the champs.

Players who frankly have shown no heart.

We can now develop a reasonable wage structure at the club to balance our reduced income.

We are forced to develop our own players without relying on loans.

Both from the youth level which does look somewhat positive and from the lower leagues. Finding hungry players looking to step up.

As for spin LOL I hate the fact the board blames the previous managers for their mistakes.

Personally I think Doncaster and Munby should resign.

I have no idea where anyone concluded I am a board apologist.

Complete opposite.

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[quote user="Buckethead"][quote user="VOR"]

I think the whole point is 5-7million is loss of revenue!!! Wages are not revenue are they!? The whole reason Norwich have to drop the wage bill is because of the loss in revenue ie TV, sponsorhip, season tickets (those who now cancel), gate reciepts & rebates, merchandise etc. I think all this will add up to way more than 3 million hence why Doncaster is talking out of his ring peice as usual!!

Maye it''s you who is not so bright USAcanary, not the figures!

[/quote]I''d say we have a winner.Doncaster is deliberately obfuscating the mess we''re in by dodgy maths. Turnover will show damage to the tune of £5-7m but by reducing wages we will only be exposed to a deficit of £3m.A bit like when we went up to the Prem and got all that money in reverse.Of course applying Doomy logic if we don''t actually have a team next year we could make a profit of approx £3m

[/quote]I''d have though that in your newfound role of moral guardian you might have criticised the abusive tone of VOR’s comments. If anything there is admiration in your tone – “we have a winner.”Care to comment?USA Canary, the reason that they have concluded that you are a board apologist is that they say this about anyone who goes slightly off message and questions or qualifies anything that is said that they agree with. For my part, I am guessing that Doncaster may be measuring the TV losses against what we received this year, rather than what we would have received next year. This would account for at least part of the difference and would clearly be “spin.”I also find it a bit annoying that the EDP would make reference to the figures here without any effort to justify them. It is the sort of sloppy journalism that only increases conflict amongst fans. (BTW I am assuming that they have not because no one has referenced it – if they have apologies.)

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As I said in my previous post I am only interested in our "actual" debt this year.

Thats the number that sends you into admin not how much you would or would not have earned.

As already explained we would have had more income in the champs but also much bigger expenses..............

(in the real world they cancel each other out!)

So how does that figure to make us any better off in the real world.

The problems at the club are all due to poor board mangement of our expenses.

We have a wage structure far too big for our position.

Its no surprise that clubs like Us, Saints and Charlton are doing so badly yet teams like Swansea, Preston and Burnley have done much better on much lower incomes.

They have built from the ground up.

They have constructed a realistic club wage structure.

They look for underated players looking for the chance to step up.

Jason Scotland cost $25K AFTER a season of scoring a goal every other game.

We can only move forward when we have some honesty about our position.

That involves a total shakeup from top to bottom, mostly in the boardroon.

We dont need the chaiman telling us he doesnt know anything technical about football!

That statement should have been in his resignation letter FFS.

Doncaster has a lot to answer for IMHO.

He overlooks every single contract at the club yet we have paid way too much for mediocre players and have paid a ton of agent fees (bungs!)

Over the last 2 years we have sold more (in money) players than we have bought.

Thats why I think Munby/board blaming Roeder is pretty disgusting.

Roeder actually achieved his goal in the first season with no money and a horrible squad.

Sure he was a dick but was that frustration at the board.

Anyone else want to call me a board apologist?

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well at least we can get rid of all them overpaid prima donnas now, and sign some good honest players, good bye loanees, Fatty Patty, Cureton, Fozzy and co, and welcome back about £3m of saved wages and loan fees!

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[quote user="USAcanary"]As I said in my previous post I am only interested in our "actual" debt this year. Thats the number that sends you into admin not how much you would or would not have earned. As already explained we would have had more income in the champs but also much bigger expenses.............. (in the real world they cancel each other out!) So how does that figure to make us any better off in the real world. The problems at the club are all due to poor board mangement of our expenses. We have a wage structure far too big for our position. Its no surprise that clubs like Us, Saints and Charlton are doing so badly yet teams like Swansea, Preston and Burnley have done much better on much lower incomes. They have built from the ground up. They have constructed a realistic club wage structure. They look for underated players looking for the chance to step up. Jason Scotland cost $25K AFTER a season of scoring a goal every other game. We can only move forward when we have some honesty about our position. That involves a total shakeup from top to bottom, mostly in the boardroon. We dont need the chaiman telling us he doesnt know anything technical about football! That statement should have been in his resignation letter FFS. Doncaster has a lot to answer for IMHO. He overlooks every single contract at the club yet we have paid way too much for mediocre players and have paid a ton of agent fees (bungs!) Over the last 2 years we have sold more (in money) players than we have bought. Thats why I think Munby/board blaming Roeder is pretty disgusting. Roeder actually achieved his goal in the first season with no money and a horrible squad. Sure he was a dick but was that frustration at the board. Anyone else want to call me a board apologist?[/quote]

The manager (not the Board) makes judgements on how good a player is and how to spend his budget. Roeder thought that the club would get better value by signing lots of loan players. It was his policy not that of the Board''s.

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[quote user="tom cavendish"]

[quote user="USAcanary"]As I said in my previous post I am only interested in our "actual" debt this year. Thats the number that sends you into admin not how much you would or would not have earned. As already explained we would have had more income in the champs but also much bigger expenses.............. (in the real world they cancel each other out!) So how does that figure to make us any better off in the real world. The problems at the club are all due to poor board mangement of our expenses. We have a wage structure far too big for our position. Its no surprise that clubs like Us, Saints and Charlton are doing so badly yet teams like Swansea, Preston and Burnley have done much better on much lower incomes. They have built from the ground up. They have constructed a realistic club wage structure. They look for underated players looking for the chance to step up. Jason Scotland cost $25K AFTER a season of scoring a goal every other game. We can only move forward when we have some honesty about our position. That involves a total shakeup from top to bottom, mostly in the boardroon. We dont need the chaiman telling us he doesnt know anything technical about football! That statement should have been in his resignation letter FFS. Doncaster has a lot to answer for IMHO. He overlooks every single contract at the club yet we have paid way too much for mediocre players and have paid a ton of agent fees (bungs!) Over the last 2 years we have sold more (in money) players than we have bought. Thats why I think Munby/board blaming Roeder is pretty disgusting. Roeder actually achieved his goal in the first season with no money and a horrible squad. Sure he was a dick but was that frustration at the board. Anyone else want to call me a board apologist?[/quote]

The manager (not the Board) makes judgements on how good a player is and how to spend his budget. Roeder thought that the club would get better value by signing lots of loan players. It was his policy not that of the Board''s.

[/quote]

A manager has to work within a budget.

Roeders budget for buying permanent players was actually negative.

(he sold way more than he bought not even including Bell or a possible Lewis add on)

Roeder mentioned several times he was forced into the loan market because we had such a poor squad overall when he arrived.

We just didnt have any money to buy decent players.

To say he thought it was better to loan players than buy them is total total BS.

He said it was better to loan players that we could never afford than have nothing at all.

Before I am accused of being a Roeder apologist let me say he made a lot of mistakes and his time was up when he was sacked.

You can be a dick as long as you are winning!

But the problems at the club were long ingrained when he arrived.

He just delayed the drop in his first season.

Our deluded board forget they were calling him Saint Glenn after getting us out of the hole in his first season.

Now Munby tells us it wa a huge mistake?

Really?

As an example of Roeders thinking he started this past season with Doc and Shacks as 3rd and 4th choices CBs

Clearly he didnt think they were good enough.

I think he would have loved to have signed Leroy Lita permanently as he said it several times but obviously was told by the board there was no money.

(can we blame Roeder for that?)

His highest signing was Bell and we sold him as soon as Roeder was sacked.

(in the 5 live interview he said bell was 400, Hoolahan was 200 and Dejan/Clingan were free)

The board put us in the position we were in when Roeder arrived.

For Munby and Doncaster to claim they dont get involved in football matters is total rubbish IMHO.

If it really is true they should resign.

You are either in charge of the football club or not.

Your job is to oversee all decisions.

How many managers are we going to play the blame game with before people realize the common denominator is the current board.

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[quote user="Jimmy Smith"]well at least we can get rid of all them overpaid prima donnas now, and sign some good honest players, good bye loanees, Fatty Patty, Cureton, Fozzy and co, and welcome back about £3m of saved wages and loan fees![/quote]

Agree 100% We need a brutally huge clear out.

I would personally get rid of the vast majority of the higher wage earners at the club.

If I were to buy one quality player it would be a leader/club captain type who could motivate the team both on and off the pitch.

Being forced to use the younger players and buying from the lower leagues will benefit us long term.

It will also let us construct a more reasonable wage structure so we would be far better equipped for life back in the championship.

Crying over the mistakes is probably not very constructive.

We are in this position and have to look forward and how we can get out of LG1 in a good position to handle the champs again.

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As usual the board will look for the cheapest options rather then the ''best'' option. What I mean is they will go for a simple financial few point when what they do need is a football / financial few. Why? Because this is a business that needs to pay for those who have invested.

The short sightedness of this board is amazing, Worthies budget when in the prem, appointing Grant the inexperienced but cheaper option, Roeder was not so much short sighted but an unbelievably Naive appointment. And lastly appointing someone from within the already floundering football side of things was a catastrophic error. I want to stress that Gunn was not the problem the problem was that he was from the previous set up. The biggest problem the club had was loan players in a relegation battle, the way we played in the last few games sums it up. Why? because they really could not give two F%$£ about what happens after they have finished their loan spell.

This board should not simply be sacked for lack of football knowledge more for just plain old incompetence.

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USA, i agree with alot of your points but to paint all the clubs financial problems as being down to player wages is a red herring.

In 2008 overall expenditure was £24m.  Player wages were just £6.8m of that.  They are the most relevant recent figures we have and suggest that the non-player costs at the club are ridiculously high.

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[quote user="Mr.Carrow"]

USA, i agree with alot of your points but to paint all the clubs financial problems as being down to player wages is a red herring.

In 2008 overall expenditure was £24m.  Player wages were just £6.8m of that.  They are the most relevant recent figures we have and suggest that the non-player costs at the club are ridiculously high.

[/quote]

Are you counting all expenditure including areas that actually derive a profit such as catering or hospitality events?

Are you counting the food and personel expences in those areas.

Why would you make cuts in profitable areas?

Player wages are the one area where huge savings can be made pretty quickly.

Are you also counting agent fees and loan fees in the player wage bill.

Your claim our problems are not down to player wages yet we have not bought anyone of note for years yet are getting deeper in debt.

The major expense at the club is the playing and management staff.

Plus the academy which I count as playing staff.

Its been stated many times by the club that these are the areas that eat up a lot of the money at the club.

If you know of another area that eats money like this then please let us all know?

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[quote user="xcityman"]As usual the board will look for the cheapest options rather then the ''best'' option. What I mean is they will go for a simple financial few point when what they do need is a football / financial few. Why? Because this is a business that needs to pay for those who have invested.

The short sightedness of this board is amazing, Worthies budget when in the prem, appointing Grant the inexperienced but cheaper option, Roeder was not so much short sighted but an unbelievably Naive appointment. And lastly appointing someone from within the already floundering football side of things was a catastrophic error. I want to stress that Gunn was not the problem the problem was that he was from the previous set up. The biggest problem the club had was loan players in a relegation battle, the way we played in the last few games sums it up. Why? because they really could not give two F%$£ about what happens after they have finished their loan spell.

This board should not simply be sacked for lack of football knowledge more for just plain old incompetence.[/quote]

I want to disagree on your Roeder quote.

With the position we were in, Roeder was EXACTLY the type of manager we needed.

We needed a "bastard" to come in and shake things up, he did exactly that and achieved the unlikley goal of keeping us up.

He brought in some quality loans who performed well for a while.

The problem is while he was pefect for that situation he probably isnt the type of manager who could take us to the next level.

Plus the hairdryer/being a dick thing only works for so long.

Also as we have since found out the majority of permenent players he had here dont have much heart.

He didnt fancy either Doc or Shacks at CB but was forced through injuries.

For balance he also made quite a few big mistakes, totally lost the fans at the end which never ends well for a manager especially if you are not winning!

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[quote user="USAcanary"]Is this like............ irony.

I am interested in how much REAL money we are going to lose next year not some paper fantasy money.

Agreed....... yes our revenue is going to be way down.................

But............ drum roll.............

So will our overall expenditure.

The players that stay will be on less wages.

Dejan has already said he has a clause in his contract that wages are reduced if relegated.

Safe to assume that most of the players have this, especially the higher wage earners.

I would also like to state on record that we are going to lose 50 million in revenue next season by not being in the prem and not getting to the champions league final.

See what i did there!

If we would have stayed in the champs we would have payed higher wages to our contracted players, payed higher wages to prem loan players along with the agent fees/bungs we like to pay.

Plus any players we bring permananetly in would be expected to be payed at the champs rate.

Its obvious that being relegated isnt going to cost us that much in real terms.

Selling Clingan and Marshall would probably

cover the losses if you factor in transfer fees and the saving in wages.

The positives are..........

That we can get rid of a lot of the higher earning mediocre players who we would have kept in the champs.

Players who frankly have shown no heart.

We can now develop a reasonable wage structure at the club to balance our reduced income.

We are forced to develop our own players without relying on loans.

Both from the youth level which does look somewhat positive and from the lower leagues. Finding hungry players looking to step up.

As for spin LOL I hate the fact the board blames the previous managers for their mistakes.

Personally I think Doncaster and Munby should resign.

I have no idea where anyone concluded I am a board apologist.

Complete opposite.[/quote]

I guess someone was listening!

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