The Banter Thread

[Stag]

By all means regenerate White Hart Lane, but there's a cheaper option I think available and that's the most important thing above anything else.

You see that is the root pitfall of our society, money above all else.

I don't for one second think Levy would even take a risk on redeveloping White Hart Lane if he thought a new stadium would cripple us (though we do have Joe Lewis to finance anything ateotd), he probably has the most business acumen of any other Premier League chairman and for the Northumberland Development Project to have come this far I cannot see him walking away from it.

I have made my mind up, even if we have to tighten the strings slightly we have to stay at White Hart Lane. It is our home FFS! Respect for history if nothing more, for if we uproot our club, we'll be no better than the Woolwich Wanderers down the road.

 

[DanH84]

Manchester City face a major battle to be allowed to compete in UEFA competitions from 2013.


• City to end lavish spending

City made a £121.3 million loss in 2009-10 and can expect to make a further loss of at least £130 million for 2010-11 and, according to The Independent, UEFA has warned that their heavy transfer spending "cannot be written off as a loss on next year's accounts alone".

When UEFA's Financial Fair Play (FFP) regulations are fully enforced, clubs will be forced to break even, although benefactors - such as the City owners - are allowed to contribute up to £39.54 million for the 2013-14 and 2014-15 seasons and £26.36 million for the period covering 2015-16, 2016-17 and 2017-18.

City will have to spread the losses of their recent heavy spending over the length of the corresponding players' contracts, though, meaning they will have to cope with a £50 million loss at the start of each season, over and above any other spending on transfers and wages. The club made an operating loss of £55.1 million in 2009-10, largely due to wages, which is set to rise.

City's chief football administrator, Brian Marwood, recently said the big spending at the club was over and that the focus would now be on developing youngsters through the academy, but it appears that will not be enough to secure a place in the Champions League when the new rules are introduced.

UEFA's head of club licensing, Andrea Traverso, told The Independent that any attempt to wipe out the spending before the rules come into play would "be seen as a way to circumvent the rules, and that is not allowed".

 

[Yas786]

Good news and about time these high spending teams that are owned by rich sugar daddies are curbed...if it costs teams like City and Chelski places in europe then im all for it.

 

[AGD]

Teams shouldn't spend beyond their means but I don't see the problem if a wealthy owner wants to invest in them - it does not add debt so what is the problem? Also it can allow for much greater mobility and competition between teams in the league.

 

[jakeke]

http://www.mufplc.com/pdf/2009-10 Statutory Accounts.pdf

Man Utd post £84m losses

 

[Weebull]

Over a £100m spent on interest payments alone. Jesus.

The Glazers are an odd bunch. They don't seem interested in selling on the club, or making a quick buck like Liverpool's yanks do, yet their loans are sucking so much money out of the club, its not far off crippling them. They must have some plan for getting United into profit somehow, but I'll be damned if I can see what it is.

 

[Gribs]

http://www.mufplc.com/pdf/2009-10 Statutory Accounts.pdf

Man Utd post £84m losses

It's just mad when you consider that the Glazers takeover has cost them nearly £130m in the last year alone.

 

[Gribs]

Over a £100m spent on interest payments alone. Jesus.

The Glazers are an odd bunch. They don't seem interested in selling on the club, or making a quick buck like Liverpool's yanks do, yet their loans are sucking so much money out of the club, its not far off crippling them. They must have some plan for getting United into profit somehow, but I'll be damned if I can see what it is.

They're pulling out £10m a year themselves so as long as they've got enough money to service the debt, which costs £40m or so a year, why bother leaving. The normal operating profits would normally more than cover this.

 

[jakeke]

Over a £100m spent on interest payments alone. Jesus.

The Glazers are an odd bunch. They don't seem interested in selling on the club, or making a quick buck like Liverpool's yanks do, yet their loans are sucking so much money out of the club, its not far off crippling them. They must have some plan for getting United into profit somehow, but I'll be damned if I can see what it is.

It is bizarre. Hard to work out their plan, some very important playing staff at Man Utd are going to need replacing soon, Ferguson doesn't take anything other than the best, so there needs to be a lot of money spent soon or face sliding a few places down the league which will lower the value of the club. With the interest mounting you'd expect them to be looking to sell asap, but they seem to have no intentions to do so

 

[DanH84]

Erm, you could try breaking down the losses then you'll see if they're in trouble or not. Here's a clue ebitda and cash reserves increased. I'll be back home later but look up non cash losses, goodwill and exceptional one off costs.

 

[jakeke]

Break it down as far as you want, it's still bad. It may be marginally less bad than '£84m loss' sounds, but it's still bad.

 

[DanH84]

Really? So your explanation as to why the Glazers have been able to resist bids in excess of 1billion is?

 

[jakeke]

I don't know, has anybody ever asked them? Your explanation as to why the Liverpool owners resisted a £600m offer is? Business men are greedy would be a good start.

 

[4p]

Tough game for Liverpool next week.

Football.

 

[DanH84]

see i don't think you can see past the big number here, however in brief.

£35.4million Goodwill amortization = ignore not a real cost to the business.

£19.2million unrealised foreign exchange loss = not a real cost simply an accounting process which will be irrelevant until 2017

6.7% Amortisation of issue discount is relating to the 2% discount of face value that bonds were issued at but again this does not currently need repaying and is an accounting loss not a cash loss.

There is an exceptional one off cost in refinancing to the bonds and this can be taken into account although it will never reoccur and that was on an order of £40million. (similar to Arsenal's property sales).

It really should be quite simple for you to see that these are accounting losses simply by looking at our cash pot. how would you explain us having 15million more cash at hand if we'd made a real loss?


The Glazers have not drawn down on the 70million they can take to pay off the PIKS (though as I have stated earlier it has been revealed that the Glazers own at least 20% of their own PIKS due to some financial magic they pulled in 2008) which indicates they have other plans in place but essentially we'll continue with amortisation of goodwill as long as possible as a tax write off and refinance on favourable terms in 2017.

We'll be unaffected by the uefa ffp rules coming in and as a business we'll continue to grow.

Some of you may know andersred who is very anti glazer and has done a lot of work for MUST. His comments on todays results:

Initial conclusions

Thankfully United is not Liverpool off the pitch or on it. This is (operationally as a business) the best run football club in England, it has been for nigh on twenty years. Manchester United are at no risk of going bust.

This nonsense about the loss is just absurd. Just to point out how absurd it is, in order to reverse this accounting ''loss'' back to break even next year all that would need to happen would be for the pound to strengthen against the dollar (it's 1.58 today) from 1.51 at the end of the last financial year to 1.62 at the end of the current financial year. Not that the c. £20m unreaslied gain on the dollar bonds would be any more relevant than the c. £20m loss on them last year. It's all completely irrelevant because the bonds don't mature until 2017.

That's break even without even deducting the utterly irrelevant £35m non-cash goodwill amortisation charge.

There's another little bit from another poster.

 

[CliffyBiro]

if it costs teams like City and Chelski places in europe then im all for it.

Pourquois?

 

[jakeke]

Yeah I read that guys summary, was quite interesting. Man Utd are obviously no where near bust but they are also not in an ideal situation

 

[Weebull]

What is the goodwill then? Reading the fine print doesn't make it particularly clear.

 

[Robbo]

Nice to see the Man Utd situation isn't a bad one, despite being far from ideal!

 

[DanH84]

it's the difference between what you pay for something and the value of it's assets. So say you buy a business for 700million but it's current assets only total 350million. You gain 350mill goodwill which can be amortised for tax purposes over a period of time. At the time of buying United for 700-800million even with playing staff the tangible assets would have been nowhere near that.

The ethics of what the Glazers are doing in terms of tax/cost avoidance is up for debate. The fact that they've got their sums pretty tight isn't.