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Articles and reports on financial issues within football – soccer – from The Political Economy of Football.
Chelsea are becoming an ’embarassment’ to the Premier League after sacking André Villas-Boas after just eight months at the club, according to League Managers’ Association chief executive Richard Bevan. He claimed on Radio 5, ‘Looking for what is an eighth manager in nine years is a serious embarrassment to the owner, the club, the fans and the league.’
Blackpool have broken the record for payments to a non-playing member of staff with the chairman’s father, Owen Oyston, receiving £11m in the last accounting year for his work as a director. That works out at £211,538 a week and very few players get that much.
Clubs are, of course, entitled to set renumeration levels as they see fit but this does seem somewhat excessive to say the least.
There are a number of worrying aspects to the latest accounts of Cardiff City FC. The £12m loss, up from £900,000, is not the biggest concern as the previous year’s figures were influenced by the sale of Ninian Park and associated sites.
With all the doom and gloom surrounding Portsmouth FC at the moment it’s good to get a positive slant on events there and that’s what Ashley Brown, the chairman of the Pompey Supporters Trust, provides in The Times this morning.
He argues that Pompey are the largest undeveloped ‘big’ football club left in England. The could be available for a knockdown price. Next to it lies ten-and-a-half acres of development land for sale. The approved planning brief foir the land allows for retail, residential and stadium development.
Portsmouth are likely to run out of money by mid-April and may not be able to complete the season’s fixtures. Should that happen the results would be expunged. The last time this happened in the Football League was in 1992 when Aldershot and Maidstone United went out of business.
Wrexham was only taken over by the Supporters Trust in November but now it looks as if they could be heading for a surplus of around £200k at the end of the season rather than a projected deficit of £700k. A great cup run helped, of course, while average attendances have been 700 above a projected figure of 3,100.
Some caution is necessary as the club is still spending £1.27 for every £1 it brings in.
The financial benefits of a year in the Premiership are demonstrated by the latest financial results from Blackpool FC. After making a loss of £6.7m the previous year, the club has reported record profits of £20.9m.
Turnover rose from £9.4m to £51.7m. Just £3.5m was spent on new signings and the wage budget reached £12.1m. Overall costs rose to £30.7m. The figures are believed not to include the sale of star midfielder Charlie Adam to Liverpool and other departures.
Smaller Scottish clubs have been hit hard by Rangers going into administration. Dunfermline are still waiting for £85,000 from Rangers for tickets sold to away fans for a match at their ground on 11 February. As a consequence some players have received only 60 per cent of their wages for February.
Port Vale have been served with a winding up petition by Revenue and Customs over an unpaid tax bill. The club failed to pay players’ wages for February.
Vale last went into administration in 2002. In 2008 singer Robbie Williams invested £240,000 in the club.
Profits at Wolverhampton Wanderers have dropped by nearly £7m compared with last year, but the club still managed to record a pre-tax profit after player trading and net interest charges of £2.2m in the year to 31 May 2011. The figures take into account record £7m buy Steven Fletcher and other acquisitions.
Operating costs increased to £37.9m compared with £29.8m in 2009-10 mainly due to players’ wages. Turnover was up to £64.6m compared with £60.4m in 2009-10 largely because of the new three year Premier League television deal.