Do the numbers stack up???? | Vital Football

Do the numbers stack up????

DeanoVilla

One Bloody Number
I've just been going through the full list of players signed and sold by Xia since he took over to try and put some kind of explanation round why things have gone so wrong.

The line we keep being spun is that Xia 'invested heavily' and 'gambled'.... yet did he really?

He's a full list of players signed and sold.... the fee's I believe are fairly accurate. The wages, I've guessed at a lot of them, but I'd be surprised if most of them were far off the truth.

Ins

Name Fee Wage
Elphick 3000000 30000
Gollini 4000000 20000
Tshibola 5000000 20000
McCormack 12000000 40000
Chester 8000000 30000
Jedinak 4000000 50000
De Laet 2000000 25000
Kodjia 15000000 35000
Adomah 0 30000
Lansbury 2750000 40000
Bree 3000000 23000
Bjarnasson 2500000 25000
Hourihane 2000000 35000
Taylor 2000000 30000
Hogan 11000000 30000
Terry 0 60000
Elmohamady 1000000 30000
Samba 0 15000
Whelen 2000000 30000



Total 79250000 598000



Outs

Name Fee Wage
Richardson 0 50000
N'Zogbia 0 65000
Crespo 1000000 20000
Guzan 0 40000
Gueye 7100000 40000
Clark 5000000 25000
Sinclair 3500000 35000
Bennett 0 20000
Okore 1000000 35000
Lescott 0 50000
Traore 0 40000
Gestede 2000000 30000
Westwood 5000000 25000
Ayew 7000000 35000
Kozak 0 25000
Sanchez 3000000 30000
Veretout 7000000 35000
Baker 2000000 25000
Bacuna 1000000 20000
Amavi 6000000 30000
Gollini 3700000 20000
Gil 2000000 20000
Gabby 0 45000
Terry 0 60000


Total 24700000 820000


So that's roughly £80 million spent and £25 million recouped, so a net spend of £55 million or £27.5m per year.

The wages (I've not included the loan signings as they've now all left) have actually gone DOWN, reducing the wage bill by about £220,000 per week or £11 million per year!!!

Now my figures may be slightly off as like I say I've estimated a lot of the wages, but i can't be off by £11 million surely, so the crux of the matter is wages will have gone down.


Now it's my understanding that we have so far recieved approx £70-£75 million in parachute payment (with one further payment of £15 million to come).

So... if the NET spend is £55 million, and the wages have gone DOWN, and we've received £70-75 million in parachute money, plus TV deals and all the other income.... then how the hell are we losing so much money each month? Has Tony actually put any of his own money in at all?!?

Something just doesn't add up for me.
 
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People keep assuring us he's put a fortune in. I've not been able to figure that one. What you show above is what I thought, it has been parachute payments.

However, unlike the old days (!) I've not been all over the accounts looking.
 
I've been saying for weeks he's not put a penny into this , just taken what was available and now the cupboard is bare.
We are due £4.5m in gate receipts from Wembley , where will that go !?!
Plus the sky tv money - we were on the box a lot last season.
 
I've just been going through the full list of players signed and sold by Xia since he took over to try and put some kind of explanation round why things have gone so wrong.

The line we keep being spun is that Xia 'invested heavily' and 'gambled'.... yet did he really?

He's a full list of players signed and sold.... the fee's I believe are fairly accurate. The wages, I've guessed at a lot of them, but I'd be surprised if most of them were far off the truth.

Ins

Name Fee Wage
Elphick 3000000 30000
Gollini 4000000 20000
Tshibola 5000000 20000
McCormack 12000000 40000
Chester 8000000 30000
Jedinak 4000000 50000
De Laet 2000000 25000
Kodjia 15000000 35000
Adomah 0 30000
Lansbury 2750000 40000
Bree 3000000 23000
Bjarnasson 2500000 25000
Hourihane 2000000 35000
Taylor 2000000 30000
Hogan 11000000 30000
Terry 0 60000
Elmohamady 1000000 30000
Samba 0 15000
Whelen 2000000 30000



Total 79250000 598000



Outs

Name Fee Wage
Richardson 0 50000
N'Zogbia 0 65000
Crespo 1000000 20000
Guzan 0 40000
Gueye 7100000 40000
Clark 5000000 25000
Sinclair 3500000 35000
Bennett 0 20000
Okore 1000000 35000
Lescott 0 50000
Traore 0 40000
Gestede 2000000 30000
Westwood 5000000 25000
Ayew 7000000 35000
Kozak 0 25000
Sanchez 3000000 30000
Veretout 7000000 35000
Baker 2000000 25000
Bacuna 1000000 20000
Amavi 6000000 30000
Gollini 3700000 20000
Gil 2000000 20000
Gabby 0 45000
Terry 0 60000


Total 24700000 820000


So that's roughly £80 million spent and £25 million recouped, so a net spend of £55 million or £27.5m per year.

The wages (I've not included the loan signings as they've now all left) have actually gone DOWN, reducing the wage bill by about £220,000 per week or £11 million per year!!!

Now my figures may be slightly off as like I say I've estimated a lot of the wages, but i can't be off by £11 million surely, so the crux of the matter is wages will have gone down.


Now it's my understanding that we have so far recieved approx £70-£75 million in parachute payment (with one further payment of £15 million to come).

So... if the NET spend is £55 million, and the wages have gone DOWN, and we've received £70-75 million in parachute money, plus TV deals and all the other income.... then how the hell are we losing so much money each month? Has Tony actually put any of his own money in at all?!?

Something just doesn't add up for me.


I would ping this over to the Birmingham Mail etc, get it out in the open
 
I think money has been being put in. If not the cash flow wouldn't have dried up that quickly. All seems very odd.
 
Good one. I’d put the Terry and Gabby wages in “spent” as they have only just left. It does seem some money was coming from China unless the stories of it drying up and causing the cash flow problems are untrue. Maybe the question is how much.
 
There will be an 8 figure sum for agent fee's as well I would think due to the amount of transfers we have made. It's debatable how much he has put in and we will probably never know the truth, but I cant see how he has been taking money out - I'm sure that would have been the long term plan had we got promoted, that's why there are so many foreign investors. If Xia had been robbing us blind for 2 years I'm sure someone would have called him out on it before now
 
It could be argued that it is irrelevant how much Xia has put in. The current plight of Villa May have been avoided by a supporters director on the board. We need that now! I never understood for example why Agbonlahor’s contract was renewed and I think most fans thought the same
 
Think my point is that a net spend of £27.5 million per year isn't THAT much.

Not enough to bankrupt a club, especially a club of our size and stature, with a 'Billionaire' owner, a reducing wage bill, and vast parachute payments coming in.
 
Yes the last accounts reflected a big reduction in the wage bill and the accounts overall weren't that bad comparitively , I think from memory they showed a loss of £15 million.

Something isn't right though.
 
Wage figures for the last three years, which I think are about right, are £93m, £61m and £39m. So wages have come down a massive amount; the notion that we've splurged out a lot on wages is wrong.

However... £39m million is still too large for the Championship; more cuts needed. Those already leaving account for a further £14m of cuts, which will help, but maybe still not enough. My guess; wages need to be under £20m

Losing so much money per month? £5m per month? We aren't, we can't be. If we were we wouldn't have had a chance of sticking within FFP, which we have. Why we're getting an injection of that amount per month I wouldn't know for certain, but see below.

What complicates the financial side of things is that Aston Villa is a wholly owned subsidiary of a company which in turn is owned by another company. This isn't unusual or new; it was the same under Lerner and Xia simply changed the names. My guess; the £5m pm goes from the first of those companies to Villa, and any income (eg player sales) goes the other way; it's a means of smoothing cash flow as far as Villa is concerned. If that's right, the problem is that at this moment there's no income flowing the one way and the flow of money from company B to company A has dried up, hence cash flow problems.

The arrangement also complicates the profit/loss side. Aston Villa lost about £7.5m for 2016-2017. However, company A seems to have lost more like £14m. Which is the figure which counts? Don't know.
 
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Anybody know when parachute payments are actually payed?

Doesn't make sense being the start of a season, because it would mean a newly relegated club receiving the first payment on top of its final PL payment. Is it payed in installements?

To put it differently, have we received all of the second year parachute payment? Could make quite a difference.
 
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It's getting to the state where you need to be an accountant to understand football. I've only just got to the point where I understand the new interpretation of the off-side rule. All this financial wizardry is baffling me. It looks like it's baffling our owner and the board as well.
 
Our revenue has fallen massively. Parachute payments aren’t a free bonus, they are instead of premier league tv money which is twice or 3 times the amount of the parachute payments. You can’t say we have gained £75m from parachute payments, it’s more like we have lost around £100m in tv / prize money income

When you are paying premier league wages on a championship budget the money runs out, why aren’t any other championship clubs signing so many players on 30-40k p/w... because the revenue in the championship doesn’t sustain it!
 
When you pay flabby, Richards, mcormack, lands Bury, elphick, de let and Terry a combined sum of probably £250,000 a week and only one of them plays you have a massive problem in the championship.
 
Wage figures for the last three years, which I think are about right, are £93m, £61m and £39m. So wages have come down a massive amount; the notion that we've splurged out a lot on wages is wrong.

However... £39m million is still too large for the Championship; more cuts needed. Those already leaving account for a further £14m of cuts, which will help, but maybe still not enough. My guess; wages need to be under £20m

Losing so much money per month? £5m per month? We aren't, we can't be. If we were we wouldn't have had a chance of sticking within FFP, which we have. Why we're getting an injection of that amount per month I wouldn't know for certain, but see below.

What complicates the financial side of things is that Aston Villa is a wholly owned subsidiary of a company which in turn is owned by another company. This isn't unusual or new; it was the same under Lerner and Xia simply changed the names. My guess; the £5m pm goes from the first of those companies to Villa, and any income (eg player sales) goes the other way; it's a means of smoothing cash flow as far as Villa is concerned. If that's right, the problem is that at this moment there's no income flowing the one way and the flow of money from company B to company A has dried up, hence cash flow problems.

The arrangement also complicates the profit/loss side. Aston Villa lost about £7.5m for 2016-2017. However, company A seems to have lost more like £14m. Which is the figure which counts? Don't know.

And just to add another thought; I'm told that one of their biggest trading arms - the smart city stuff, suspended trading in their shares due to having to deal with a margin call after a share decline in their value - which probably means that the source of free cash has dried up with it as they look to conserve cash to meet their stated public share buy-back plan.

If this as I understand it and on top of the Chinese governments dictate that lending for overseas purchases/assets should only be for strategic advantage and local political influence, then the Chinese banks that are currently dealing with their own form of credit crunch, are probably close to cutting them off/lending wise - which would explain why the business has been drip fed cash, and now can't be extended.

If accurate, the the only chance Xia will have is to off-load his holding to someone else - very quickly - or as seems more likely to hold a near fire sale of player assets to prop up cashflow through the summer months.

Once again it looks to me as if Villa have gone from the one bad situation to another.

I wish it wasn't so.

edit, I should have added that if they've had a margin call it will probably be because they pledged share assets again borrowings - although I haven't done the work to ascertain if that is the case this time around, but either way it will mean that a lender wants more cover/cash back to protect themselves - for a trading business that is always a dangerous position to be in.
 
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