Wfc Finances

But he wasn’t on 100k/week, was sold for €2m not £1m (which is natural depreciation for a player of his age) and played in every game. Also his valuation was reasonable at the time given his pedigree. Don’t get me wrong he wasn’t great but this doesn’t really fall into the paying over the odds for a Bayat client bucket.

 

What was he on then?

 

Regardless of what we sold him for, Spurs signed him for £31m. That’s actually cheered me up

 

No idea. But don’t see why we’d have smashed our wage structure (Sarr who I believe is the next highest earner is believed to be on around £70k) for an older player like Sissoko and then paid him more than what he earned (reportedly £80-90k) when he was a better player at his peak at Spurs. There were also some sources if I recall correctly that claimed that Spurs were subsidising his wages to facilitate the move.

If I had to guess, we’d have been paying him £40-60k/week making him one of the club’s highest earners.

 

No worries about the finances but can't pay £5m for a homegrown centre back. £5m magically appears for the agent who definitely doesn't have exclusivity though.

 

That last sentence of the second paragraph still doesn’t explain the relationship with Mogi then.

 

Why is the loan charged to parachute payments and not to receivables from Cucho transfer in that case? Was Duxbury asked about the wrong loan?

 

French was asked the same question, and replied;

https://twitter.com/androofrench/status/1552738391359459330?s=20&t=BZxthsgjDqfRWGYxItbGZw

The one I showed SD didn’t reference parachute payments. I’ll attempt to ask about that one next. It takes some keeping up with

 

Which is fine, but now he has reported it the Twitter/Pod bells will run with it as fact, and lecture everyone that everything Dux/Pozzo does is fine and enlightened.

 

Seems like an honest mistake from Andrew French who asked him about the wrong loan. But Duxbury's response seems quite disingenuous, focusing solely on the advancing of a transfer fee but not taking the opportunity to mention the more recent loan against the parachute payments and the whole thing has been reported in a patronising 'silly fans getting worked up over nothing' kind of way.

 

He’s likely telling the truth in this instance - but I’ve learnt through life that when someone literally has a ‘don’t worry, it’s fine’ excuse every single time they are put on the spot…that it’s not always fine.

 

Can't we just wait 'til we go bust before inflicting this speculative misery on ourselves?

 

"Everything will be alright in the end and if it's not alright it's not the end." John Lennon

 

Scot's comments are all smoke and mirrors and pure deception. This is what worries me as much as our astronomical debt, loan against the stadium, lack of assets in the squad and our income falling off a cliff in 2 years. If the Pozzbury strategy on the club's vast debt is to lie to and deceive the fans over what they are/have been doing and try to pull the wool over our eyes rather than be honest about the situation, it suggests the situation is extremely dire and their intentions are even worse. For anyone who loves WFC what they are doing to our club is terrifying. What kind of millionaire Italian families do regular multi million pound transactions with suspected money launderers? The answer does seem rather obvious, unfortunately.....

 

Silently edited to they.

 

Duxbury saying we're not skint ,suggests to me ...... we're skint!

 

Just doing some number crunching. These are all ballpark figures, but I think indicate what we should be generating this season.

Revenue
55% parachute payment = £55m
Player sales to date = £67m
Player salary saving = £14m

This is not including gate receipts, sponsorship deals, TV revenues from the EFL etc. Which will obviously bump up the figure.

Expenditure
Player purchases = £5m
I've not included loan fees, as there may not be any. I'm assuming Watford are paying the full salary for the loan players Choudhury, Davis & Hause. I've factored that in to the 'player salary saving' figure.

So, we should net a revenue of £131m plus whatever we get from gate receipts, sponsorship deals, TV revenues from the EFL etc

We should be able to operate very well this season. We have reduced our senior playing staff by a net of 9, plus outgoings expected for Rose??, Penaranda and Pussetto. Maybe one or two others also (Kalu, Ngakia?).

So even keeping Sarr and Pedro, we should be able to significantly reduce debt and should be able to sign one or two more key players.

 

Good analysis. To complete the cashflow snapshot I think you need to factor in whatever instalments we had to pay this summer from previous transfers. Oddly Duxbury seems to discount these when he talks about debt. There is no offset with instalments owed to us from previous years as we have already borrowed against them all.

I guess you also need to factor in on player sales we aren’t getting all of it up front so not there to spend unless we borrow against it again.

 

I look at it a different way.
Operating losses:
We lost money at an operating level last season before player trading based on prem income ? Presume, haven't bothered checking....
This season we have a £45m (?) reduction in income against which we have saved £14m of player salary so everything else being equal, that loss (which effectively will add to net debt one way or another) would increase by c£30m.

Debt/player assets:
Then we have the current £50m debt which will need to be serviced but also repaid at some point whether or not we get back to the prem. It's secured against TV monies which will be slashed if we don't get promoted. Against that we have saleable assets, primarily Pedro and Sarr at uncertain values which could be cashed in at some point to clear or part clear the debt. Retaining Sarr & Pedro help with the promotion objective but is a risk if their values decline based on poor form, injury, a year less on contracts. The income from selling Cucho and Kamara (ahem...) will help reduce this of course.

I'm sure we can add other players but all will add to debt/losses so would be a gamble to improve our chances of promotion but create a greater financial headache if we remain in the champ.

 

Yes, I think that's the crux of Watford's problem right now. It's not the bottom line figure as I can see we're probably in a healthy position now, but it's more to do with cash-flow. Having the funds to make payments in the here and now, hence why we need bridging loans etc. We have the money (promised to us in the future), but we don't have it all right now sitting in the bank.

 

I might be making it up but have we borrowed against the parachute payments and TV money?

 

Yes. We set up a revolving credit facility secured against the next two years of broadcast money (which will be the parachute payments this year). But no actual underlying figure borrowed thus far, at least not as publicised yet.

 

The accounts for last season ending 30/6/22 will not be out until H1 2023 so we don't know. Appreciating this is all guesswork I agree with you that you cannot just look at the income from player sales, parachute money etc without deducting cash going out in wages and operating expenses (!!) to see what is a guess at our operating profit (cash generated). Our last published accounts to June'21 are potentially a better guide as to income and outgoings for the current season as they included parachute money (£50m) but minimal match day income and less commercial income as all Covid impacted.

So I think you are right that our operating loss/cash outflow this year is c£30m even with the parachute money/wages saved.

Then as @Jumbolina says we have the transfer instalments to pay-these were £62m at June 21 so likely reduced during last season/financial year but still these are commitments we have to make, so very little if any free cash from the player sales of £67m emerges. All this assumes Macquarie don't take any of the parachute money this year as next year it will be a lot less and if we don't go up what have they got to secure their £50m loan -the ground?

 

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...rganic&utm_content=business&utm_medium=social

Seeking new investment apparently.

 

Great news

 

It's only great news if the Pozzos get an offer for the club they can't refuse. All a minority stake investor does is give Pozzo more funds to shove Bayat's way.

 

Let's face it. If any potential investor does due diligence in terms of how the club has been managed the last 5 years, combined with the fact a man being investigated for money laundering has been brought closer and closer in house, it will result in zero chance of minority investment.

 

Yeh doesn’t seem likely. They would have to have an enormous amount of belief in Gino that he’s gonna make a profit some time soon , whilst having very little say in the running of the club . Unless the investor is gonna be Mogi Bayat that is.

 

Wonder if that's Elton? Wishful thinking, perhaps, but given what he said at the Vic concerts...

 

Gino wants investment but wants to remain in control of the sporting side of things, yeah good luck with that.

 

Presumably Gino gets his money paid back in Euros - As the dollar is gaining in value against both that and the £ - This might be an optimum time to get someone with loads of dollars to commit to a substantial investment.

 

Wouldn’t invest though if he has zero say in how the club was run as a minority shareholder ? All or nothing. Would have to be an Elton-led consortium if he ever wanted to takeover. He’s said in the past he’s not wealthy enough to own a prem club anymore.

 

I have some good news for you then, Elton...

 

Watford have just taken out (29th Sept) a new loan with Macquarie Bank for over £4.6m. Maybe Mogi needs some additional agent fees after buying all those great players this season.