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True, but these days a £7m loss gets you out of the 3rd division and gives you the right to scrap with Reading and Rotherham to stay just above the relegation line. What will it cost to ensure mid-table mediocrity, a tilt at the playoffs, or automatic promotion?
Wolves haven’t published their annual accounts yet, but the year before saw them lose £23m with average support of 22,000 and a 15th place finish. I shudder to think how much they lost last FY after they bought their way to the title.
Wage bill won’t be ten million. Top earner at club is Nick Powell on 8K per week. Rest nowhere near that.You were right Bigroy. The wage bill wasn’t 10million last season. It was 11.7million!!
I’ve found a trend amongst a section of our supporters who flat out refuse to accept any negative financial comments about our club.
I had a debate/argument with a number of fans on twitter 12 months ago about this very subject. All because I had the nerve to suggest that our wage bill was 10million+ and it gave us a real advantage in League One.
I think they are trying to cling on to the Whelan years. Having a financial advantage over everyone in the division. Making them feel superior to all other clubs.
Those days are over.
Let’s look at Bolton’s position today.
No, we don’t like them, but no fans should have their club in this position.
And at the moment we are unlikely to fall into that position.Let’s look at Bolton’s position today.
No, we don’t like them, but no fans should have their club in this position.
And at the moment we are unlikely to fall into that position.Can’t understand why anyone would sign for them or work there.
Wolves haven’t published their annual accounts yet, but the year before saw them lose £23m with average support of 22,000 and a 15th place finish. I shudder to think how much they lost last FY after they bought their way to the title.And now we know – £57.1m
Which should once again reiterate to people why we don’t spend big in the transfer window and why we have to accept bids for our best players. And that’s before we get onto our friends across Aspull.
At the fans forum it was confirmed we made multiple seven figure bids in January. Not the sort of money the biggest clubs are spending. But decent money for us in our current financial position. It was also made clear multi-million bids for Grigg were turned down. It’s only when the bid reached £4m it was deemed too good to turn down. So, circumstances, and perhaps perceptions, could have been quite different.
At the AGM, and at recent fan consultations, it was also made clear there will be a number of quite significant infrastructure investments and fan initiatives.
I thought I would update this thread with some estimated figures for the coming season. Hopefully it will help manage people’s expectations who are expecting us to spend big.
Starting with Last seasons figures which were published in February. These figures cover the league one winning season and the FA Cup run to the quarter finals.
Turnover: £6.7m
Total Expenditure: £15.9m (Of which £11.7m was spent on Wages)
Transfer profit/loss: £1.0m profit
The above led to a loss of £7.7m loss for the year. Not good.
I will use the above figures as a basis for predicting our current financial position for the season just gone. (Official figures only expected Jan/Feb 2020)
Turnover: £9.0m (Based on the last time we were in the Championship)
Expenditure: £17m (total expenditure was 15.9m in league one. I’ve increased to cover expected wage increases. Could be considerably more)
Transfer profit/loss: £1.49m profit players in/out (based on transfermarkt.co.uk) + £1.0m promotion bonus on Yanic = £2.49m profit in player sales
I’m predicting a loss of 5/6 million for the season just gone.
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So how do the current owners deal with this loss making football club?Try and get more people through the gate? No. We averaged 11k in the 2017 championship season, we average 11k in this championship season. We will continue to average 11k for the foreseeable future if we stay a midtable championship club. The 5/6 million gap isn’t going to be plugged by matchday revenue.
The only way to plug this gap and to make the club sustainable is by reducing the wage bill from its current £12m to somewhere around the £7m mark.
But how do we do that and remain competitive?Improvement in the youth set-up and partnership with Benfica maybe?
Interesting times.
If the stadium and the football club are now operating as the same entity then there are multiple revenue streams available that previously weren’t.
Is that an assumption? Or have the new owners stated that any profit made by the stadium will now be reported in Wigan Athletics financial figures?
Just an assumption.
They were always kept totally seperate but if they are now one entity then the revenue from the stadium could be invaluable.
My gut feeling is the two will continue to operate independently.
Going back to the wage bill. With only 16 contracted professionals at the club at this moment in time, I suspect the wage bill is at its lowest since point since 2005 (pre premier league).
We’ve shed some high earners off the wage bill recently, Powell, Grigg, Burn, MacDonald.
We need at least 7/8 players before the start of the season. The majority of those 7/8 could be filled by loans (Benfica & Everton links) and youth promotion. With 2/3 decent cash signings to keep the masses happy.
If the club do adopt a transfer policy as above, then we could see our wage bill reduced below 10million for the first time in 14 years.
I hope the club do go down this route. We can’t lose 7 million every year.
Agreed. We need to try and stay in the Championship at the very least though so it’s a tough call to make.
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