Accounts

As Neil says: "Debt to an owner is either very worrying or not worrying at all, but without knowing the owner, it's hard to know"

the addition of a tiny little L would have made that so much more exciting.....

As Neill says: "Debt to an owner is either very worrying or not worrying at all, but without knowing the owner, it's hard to know"
 
Last edited by a moderator:
As I said, no comment from me.
You can all dress it up how you like.

Those who follow me on Twitter will have found out 2 weeks ago the debt to Max was £160M.

Carry on everyone, and put some garnish on the dish to make it look better.

I bid you all a good day.

Happy 60th to me.
Followers on Twitter, blimey that makes you sound important !!!!!
Happy 60th birthday anyway, have a good one and don't fall over after too much vino.:party::guiness:
 
Not a lot of new info there tbh. Huge level of debt but owed virtually all to the owner. I don’t think that’s too much of a worry tbh. We obviously can’t pay that back unless we get to the PL. If he decides one day that he wants his money back then what can we do? Doesn’t grow on trees. He can asset strip us and let the club die to recoup a bit I suppose but wouldn’t come close to covering the entire figure, he’d lose money if that were the case. The only way he recoups his money is if we are successful on the pitch.

Spot on. If Denim wants to call in his debt, the only way to do so is to get us back the Prem. Either that or you call it in at the start of this season once relegation is confirmed and you sell all the player assets as soon as you can.

Clearly debt free is preferable, but otherwise the only way the debt can realistically be called in is if we are successful on the pitch.

The two concerns I would have is A) whether Denim can afford to continue the bankrolling of the club at current levels (or even slightly reduced levels) in 2-3 years should we stay in the Championship. B) will we be breaking EFL financial fair play rules that could result in points deductions?
 
Highest paid director nearly 1.4m. That’s good work for a business that’s made a 60m loss and only has 170m turnover of which 100m comes from one source you haven’t influenced.

There would be a lot of FTSE 250 CEO’s who would jump at that cash, have experience of running a business and wouldn’t have made two lazy appointments to the key role in their organisation.

I will leave it to the few happy clappers left to tell me that it’s a justifiable salary for that performance.

Not sure about happy clappers responding but for big public profile businesses then don’t expect to pay peanuts. Probably its more of a debate on the capability of the individual to do the job rather than absolute pay level.

Plus did salary earned equal paid given voluntary wage cuts. It maybe that last season it was more value for money compared to the annual salary of some players!

The salary drift is eye watering in the prem but another year in champ should mean that salary drops dramatically. Ironically expect the job becomes harder in that situation!
 
Looks pretty bad on the surface of it but apparently doesn’t include £50m worth of player sales

Neil Blake said much the same last year when we posted a £32m loss:
Neil Blake said:
Shortly after the year end, the club sold three players for a profit of £22.6million. Clearly, if these sales had been made before 30th June 2019, this would have removed a large portion of the loss for the year.”
 
On the plus side, this whole COVID malarky will ensure that we are not the only club operating in the red. See, I knew I could find a positive in there somewhere !

But seriously, Max seems happy enough with the debt/asset ratio right now so no reason why we shouldn't be. We've known for a long time that Max is bankrolling everything because he sees AFCB as a hobby. As long as that doesn't change and his personal circumstances do not change dramatically, I would imagine that we will jog along as we are. The wage bill is gradually being reduced and maybe soon the match day income will return. He has reason to believe that the losses are likely to become less in the future I would have thought and can afford to ride it out.
 
Player Sales..Gawd that's a laugh....we will be lucky to get many offers this side of Bristol Rovers or Gillingham....they really arnt that good...
.. the players I mean...they really are not !

The club is in a right old mess.....
 
Not a lot of new info there tbh. Huge level of debt but owed virtually all to the owner. I don’t think that’s too much of a worry tbh. We obviously can’t pay that back unless we get to the PL. If he decides one day that he wants his money back then what can we do? Doesn’t grow on trees. He can asset strip us and let the club die to recoup a bit I suppose but wouldn’t come close to covering the entire figure, he’d lose money if that were the case. The only way he recoups his money is if we are successful on the pitch.

And presumably have a wages-to-turnover ratio nearer to 0% than 112%.
 
Get promoted to the Prem, build a top class training facility and I think Denim could recover most of that through a sale if he really wanted.

How does building a training facility help him recover his money? It would add more to the debt but I'm not sure how it helps repay it.
 
The summer's sales bought the club breathing space, both in terms of fees in and also wages off the book. We said as much at the time and it's still holds true. Al may not like people relying on that for comfort, and we can't forever, because you can't sell the same player twice. But fact is a sell-off was always going to be part of the club's ability to recover cash in the event of relegation.

The more troubling bit for me is - I imagine the working assumption from Max was that any failure to get promoted this year, could be followed by a similar round of sales to get another round of fees in and wages down, to further recover the situation.

Then you think about the assets (as Max will see them) we have to facilitate that, and suddenly it's not as obvious that we'll manage it.

Lewis Cook - perhaps our most saleable player on good form - injured long term.
David Brooks - had a shocking season
Jeff Lerma - hit and miss
Lloyd Kelly - hit and miss
Diego Rico - more miss than hit

Danjuma is probably the most likely.

Covid will obviously hit the fees we can command from buying clubs also.

Potential failure to get promoted followed by a failure to secure the kind of fees we'd have hoped from a second round of sales, would compound the situation and mean that debt isn't coming down any. Then chunks of money Max thought were tied up in the club via saleable assets then evaporate before his eyes.

What is his view/attitude to that issue? Will be the question.

Max (Blake/Hughes) is playing with his own money, and for as long as 100% or near enough of all debt is owing to Max, then whatever that amount is, at least we know where we stand. I said it the other day - whether that amount is £16m or £160m, it near as makes no difference to AFCB's ability to pay it back organically. It all comes back to Max's attitude towards the club.

That's my 2 pennies worth. Long story short none of us really know :)
 

;