Club watch

Very unlikely where I worked, cleanliness was a must. Standing outside giving a '****er' hand signal to celebrities was the norm if you got treated badly/rudely.

 

When Danny Rose is out classing you you must surely recognise you're being a twat ... but apparently not if you run Spurs ...FFS ... can they really be that blind?

 

Maybe, but someone still has to cut it, put it in a box and deliver it.
Without wishing to sound like a parrot, there are better ways to help people out - whilst recognising that the intention behind the gesture is beyond reproach

 

Bored of Fifa and wants to play cod instead

 

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I think Rose's contributions are peanuts. Just a couple of nights out for him but.....better than nothing. Now if he handed over a couple of wage packets......

 

Judging by some comments on Twitter, some of the Lunatic Fringe think we've sacked our non-playing staff

See what I mean about people exploiting this so they can shout, even though they are somewhat lacking when it comes to the facts?

 

While totally agreeing with the moral outrage about the poorest employees being made to suffer most, I do think that the legal implications of the current situation on the club boards are being severely underestimated on here:

I've extracted the following information from the most recent accounts of three of the richest clubs:

£M Arsenal Liverpool Tottenham
Net Assets 393 246 404
Value of Players 240 371 125
Assets excluding players 153 -125 279
Monthly Expenditure 25 30 25
Months to insolvency if no income 16 8 16
Months to insolvency exc players 6 -4 11
Cash 167 38 123
Bank facility -37 150 50
Total 130 188 173
Months to run out of cash if no income 5 6 7

The insolvency test for a UK company is twofold:

1) the company is unable to pay its debts - debts in this context means payments due so it is effectively the cash measure above.
or
2) the value of the company's assets is less than the amount of its liabilities, taking into account its contingent and prospective liabilities. - so the insolvency row above.

Under UK insolvency law, wrongful trading occurs when the directors of a company have continued to trade a company past the point when they:

• knew, or ought to have concluded that there was no reasonable prospect of avoiding insolvent liquidation; and
• they did not take "every step with a view to minimising the potential loss to the company’s creditors".

So if the current situation of zero income goes on for 6 months or more then there is a real danger of even the richest clubs failing these tests in which case Levy and the like could face jail for not acting to reduce costs.
I've included the rows excluding the player values because most other clubs in the world are in the same position so the prospects of selling players at their balance sheet value must be very low.

 

I'm one of the few members of my family who isn't an accountant, so will readily accept the figures...but it discounts selling players to realise their value and reducing their wage cost. It's what football clubs in trouble do and it allowed us to buy Danny Rose, Paul Robinson, Robbie Keane, etc.on the cheap from Leeds.

Jan Vertonghen must be on nearly £100k per month. Chuck in Mich Vorm, selling Rose to Newcastle, if we sold an Academy graduate or two, the non-playing staff who have been furloughed could be paid in full for a long time. Daniel Levy could give up some of his bonus and it's job done

If there was real need, the club could have sought external assistance from shareholders or fans. I'd far rather have committed to buy something to be produced when circumstances allow, than see staff furloughed.

This is unacceptable to a significant section of our support. This summer sees us at a crossroads...we've chosen the wrong path and it will cost us for a lot longer than finding the money would.

 

This is where the PFA's stance becomes downright dangerous

Plenty of pundits have hand-wrung about clubs going to the wall, yet the PFA's continued insistence that their members won't give up a penny - coupled with their cowardly attempts to use the NHS as a human shield where they may as well have said they'd get £350m a week from players' salaries - is what is far more likely to see clubs go to the wall than anything else...and of course the pundits aren't saying anything about that, which of course has nothing to do with being former members or anything

 

There is no doubt that the decision was wrong. One of my points is that no club can rely on selling players, because every other club will have no money either. By the time we get to 1 June every club will have burnt through three months of cash. It might even be worse than my estimate because they are not getting season ticket cash which would have already been in the bank at the last accounting date.
And the issue isn't creating a few thousand to pay the lowest paid....that isn't how wrongful trading works.

 

The source of the players' massive wages is the income from TV and gate money both of which is suspended. Logically they should have the majority of their wages suspended too. That would actually solve the problem.

 

1. All this does is show how well THFC is run as a "business of its
own account" (in contrast to the Sugga Daddy FCs of this world) .

2. It conforms to an adage in systems engineering :

the true measure of a system is how well it performs when its environment goes BAD


I'm sure it pains the "Levy/ENIC out" brigade immensely, but then when I look
at this info and think back to 1991, I am very happy indeed.

 

Don't be so down on yourself over this (there are plenty of other reasons for
us to do that to you ) .

Tis not that difficult to do basic reading/calcs on accounting reports.

 

I agree with the "pay what you can afford to" philosophy we have followed over the past 20 years but what staff are being subjected to is unacceptable.

Re the staff pay issue...

Imagine the 550 staff are on £30,000 each per year...that is £577 per week per member of staff and £313307 per week for all 550 staff

If this lasted 6 months it would cost £15000 per member of staff or £8.25m for all 550 (and remember I have picked a large average wage so the amount is probably lower).

To suggest that paying £8.25 over 6 months would bankrupt us is beyond a joke.

However, we have gone one worse and are refusing to pay the missing 20%.

So we now have a situation that the Government would be paying £6.6m (if it went on for 6 months) ... this mean tax payers are giving the 8th richest club in the world £6.6m!

As if that aint bad enough the club are refusing to make up the remaining 20%
in order to save just £1.65m (if it lasted 6 months).

For the club to suggest that they (the 8th richest in world football) can not afford £1.65m over a 6 month period is to treat us like idiots.

 

but RCL, you don't know the reasons behind the club doing this.....

Look China spread the disease and are financially benefitting from it

Google aren't paying their taxes!

Seriously though, it's so disappointing to hear people defending this decision, at the very least even if you are "taking advantage" of the government scheme, at least top up the wages of your workers

 

It really would help if the club could "show its workings" as to why it has
come to this decision (whether one likes the outcome or not) .

 

CoD? He's Korean, he's playing DOTA, Overwatch or League of Legends

 

The workings I posted show that the club can only just afford to cover their cost base over 6 months with no income. I actually suspect it is worse than that because with no season ticket income and the money we spent on January transfers I suspect our current cash balance is lower than in the last accounts.
There is absolutely no doubt that the Board need to have a plan to deal with this a long time before they actually start missing payments or they would be guilty of wrongful trading. I think they have other options than the one they have chosen but I don't have all the information necessary to be sure.
The fact that we are amongst the richest clubs doesn't mean we are immune to loss of our entire revenue stream. Very few businesses of any sort could survive losing 6 months of revenue without cutting costs.
That's why the Government scheme exists. I don't see how a company director could claim that he had taken all steps to protect creditors unless he had taken advantage of it.
What is needed is for the main source of costs that is players wages to be substantially reduced so the club remains solvent for longer and can therefore pay everyone else.
By the way I don't think the 'taxpayer' is funding anything. The money for the bailout is effectively just being printed which in the long run will mean it is being paid for out of wealth.

 

Levy's a dickhead.

Hope everyone's well and safe