Bullitt wrote:

On the subject of the wage bill.
https://footballleaguefc.com/wigan-athletic-2019-20-player-wages/amp/
Thoughts? <noscript></noscript>

If those figures are true, then the majority will need to be off the books quickly. The fire sale will start at full time a week on Wednesday. No one will buy us with those liabilities and projected Turnover. The only person that would is either insane or extremely rich. (Or abit of both)

cup winners wrote:

@R_P_McMurphy
Quote: “The Football League has learned a lot from previous foreign investments and takeovers, with thorough testing and examining if diligence”. You spout off out ppl been so inaccurate on here what’s more fcukin inaccurate than that load of bollox you wrote?. If they were we wouldnt be in the shit we are !!! Guy buys club with 8% loan rising to 20% in the middle of a pandemic and little to no income. Then some unknown Choi now claims he didn’t know jumps in with probably more Cayman isle stinking money takes over and folds the club ?. EFL Diligence!?? seriously? ffs m8 I think you need call it a day with crap like that

I will expect a full apology once you realise that VAT69 said that. Not me.

Can you make the apology in a new thread on the messageboard? Just so it doesn’t get lost within this thread. Thanks.

R_P_McMurphy wrote:

The new owners would have been fully aware of these potential losses when taking over the football club. So i don’t expect any kneejerk reactions from the owners.

I obviously didn’t factor in the fact that our owners were crooks all along.

Just thought i would bump this back to the top due to the clubs current financial results being released for 18/19 season. The losses of 9million will not come as a shock to anyone with even a basic understanding of finances. These were wholly predictable.

I underestimeted the losses slightly, mainly due to the expenditure (Mostly salaries) being 3million more than my estimate of 17m.

The new owners would have been fully aware of these potential losses when taking over the football club. So i don’t expect any kneejerk reactions from the owners.

I would expect losses for for the foreseable furture.[/quote]

On another point – There seems to be the belief that the losses would have been 16million if we hadn’t sold Burn and Grigg. This is misleading.

We made a loss of 100k on trading players. So this actually contributed to the overall loss.

Would we have spent 7.1m on bringing players in if we hadn’t brought in 7million on selling players? The answer is probably no.

I did say second half of the season.

He started the season well. The whole team did. But I really can’t get on board with the “without Powell we would have been relegated” line.

I wanted him off the pitch at times. Games were passing him by. Maybe it’s because I know what he’s capable of but just wasn’t showing it. Others contributed more to our survival.

I know the Nick Powell fan club will disagree but the truth is, he went missing when we needed him the most.

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.

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.

Good to see Cook throw the young lads in. Hopefully they’ll get more minutes on Sunday. If not a start.

For those of us that didn’t go to Birmingham, what position did Gelhardt and Weir take up?