RoverCanada

What on earth makes you think we're not capable of spending €25m+ and €75,000/week on Kalinic?

Thought I'd take a quick glance at Derby vs us out of curiosity... (I may have been beaten to the punch! Although Dreams of 1995's numbers appear to be from 15/16. not 16/17) Rovers are probably looking at a base revenue (i.e. before considering player trading) of £15-17m this year. Derby's base revenue is more like £30m+ (for 16/17, they had £8.7m in matchday revenue, £7.9m in broadcast revenue, and £12.4m in commercial revenue). Derby's revenue has grown pretty respectably to, from £15m back in 2013. Suppose Derby's owners are fine with £13m losses on average per year. That puts their spending at £43m in a year (before player trading, which has generally been low for Derby in recent years, but it spiked to a profit of £16m last year - the main reason they appear to be within FFP at the moment - which would theoretically increase that number to £59m). Now, suppose Venky's are only comfortable with.... £3m losses in a year (and this is a number you can debate endlessly - should they incur £13m losses because they're billionaires and they owe it to us after their misdeeds, etc etc., or is that last thing we need heaps of more debt? Is Venky's capable of adding so much more debt?). That puts our spending at £18-20m, which is £25-27m less than Derby's (before player trading...). Venky's could lower that gap to £15-17m if they decide to incur £13m of losses. (You can also exclude some infrastructure, academy, and charitable spend under FFP, so that increases those numbers by another few million depending on the club. It'd probably be a decently high number for Rovers given our category 1 academy) --- Another important consideration - at least for looking a single year's transfer expenditure - is that player trading profits can be booked immediately. Fee received minus a player's amortised book value. Suppose a player is bought for £10m and signs a 4-year contract. The amortisation cost is then £2.5m for each year of the contract, so a player signed today doesn't immediately cost £10m in accounting terms; they're added to the costs over a period of time. Suppose that player is sold at the start of year 4 of the contract for £10m - that's considered a £7.5m profit vs the remaining book value of £2.5m. Taking Derby's recent activity as an example, if they've bought Marriott for £2.5m on a 3-year contract, that's a £0.83m cost for this year and the next two years (Derby's amortisation costs have been steadily rising over the years)... While they bought Vydra for £8m in 2016, signed him to a 4-year contract, thus putting his book value at £4m this year. So, if they've just sold him for £10m, they can book a £6m profit this year. (Derby had player trading profits of £16m in 16/17) I find it odd some are ignoring some of the huge sales some of these Championship clubs are making in this same window. As was posted above, based on the estimates out there, few Championship clubs are actually net spenders so far this window. Something we don't have the luxury, or to put it more positively, we've decidedly not cashed in on the likes of Dack, Lenihan, etc. In sum, you can't look at reported transfer fees in any individual window in a vacuum... Amid all this are wages, of course... which deserve more attention than headline transfer fees.

Villa finding some new funding sources isn't directly connected to FFP... They've certainly been lucky to find some new owners/funders willing to cover likely losses of £10m+ every year. You make that sound easy! Good for them, but this doesn't change that their parachute payments are dropping from £33m last year to £15m this year. Villa had two separate problems: being on track to breach FFP after two seasons of high losses and their parachute payments running out, and Tony Xia apparently running into some difficulties in accessing his funds back in China to meet ongoing financial obligations (or so has been reported, who knows what exactly is going on with his finances...). This apparently solves the latter problem. Selling Grealish for £30m+ should pretty easily get them in line with FFP (that's a pretty major departure to sweep under the rug!), along with some other less dramatic cost-cutting (e.g. Terry). Parring losses down to £13m in a season, or £39m over three seasons, shouldn't be that difficult when you're able to book a £30m profit in player trading when needed. The issue is when you don't have such a selling windfall lifeline to bail you out and/or the investments you've made in the past don't turn into a highly valued player like Grealish... Now, if Villa end up not selling Grealish and somehow still stay within FFP... that would be interesting indeed!

My post was a bit tongue-in-cheek (that Travis has come up in the system as a RB who caught Mowbray's eye when deputising as a CM doesn't strike me as all that controversial!), but he does go on to mention Whittingham and Rothwell in the next couple sentences: "People will have to compete with Jacob for a place in the team, and the competition is going to be fierce. Corry, Richie, Lewis, Peter, they all have to compete. "Rothwell can play centrally too. We want as many good players as we can get at this club." I imagine if he was talking about our midfield options in-depth, he'd have gone on to mention Bennett can serve as a backup option, Tomlinson will be given a chance to impress in camp (although he's clearly the first candidate for a loan), hell, he might even mention Gladwin haha (who I imagine they're looking to offload if the opportunity arises), etc. (I've always found it a bit odd how literally some take manager quotes, although I do understand the interest in gleaning some insight from them for debate of course!)

http://www.lancashiretelegraph.co.uk/sport/16331825.jacob-davenport-got-guaranteed-a-rovers-starting-spot-says-boss/?ref=mac "Of Davenport, the Ewood boss added: “He’s got to compete with Smallwood, who was one of our better players last year; against Evans, who’s an international player; and against Travis, who we think extremely highly of." Ooo, the plot thickens as to Travis' natural position.

Haha... To take a more optimistic view, sounds like he can serve as backup to Dack in the no. 10 role whenever he's not in MF. Hence he sort of replaces Payne.

Or Nixon is full of !@$%

Our embargo lasted several years? Am I missing something? Venky's certainly turned off the taps on transfer expenditures for awhile, but that wasn't directly due to FFP... Wednesday was fine for FFP in 16/17, but they've been projected to breach it in 17/18, hence one to keep an eye on... and if they breach in 17/18, they get hit with an embargo that lasts until they're back under the threshold... no FFP transfer embargo is likely to last that long as a few significant player sales will probably be enough in most caess, but I don't see it as something to be blase about. We certainly could try spending £6m this year and spread it out, but you need to expand a bit on what kind of strategy you actually have in mind. Do we spend £6m every summer? Then our amortisation will eventually rise to £6m/year, which is a hefty expense when our turnover is only ~£15m. Or do we spend £6m this year and hope those purchases are clever enough to be all that we need to purchase for several years? You roughly know our turnover and operating expenses, and now know how transfer expenditures are amortised. It shouldn't be too hard for you to do some arithmetic and propose what kind of wage structure and transfer expenditure you're hoping for going forward. The short answer is yes, we could obviously spend a lot more than Waggott/Mowbray/Venky's have decided on and stay under FFP if they're only looking to spend maybe a couple million on transfers and keep our wage bill under £15m. But that would mean a lot more losses, which means potentially a lot more debt for Venky's (and we're ultimately at the whims of what they're willing/able to fund). I'm not saying you're wrong for proposing that but anyone arguing for that should also not then whine about how indebted we've become to Venky's (not suggesting you've been whining yourself, just in general)

I think you need to take a closer look at those clubs' accounts. Sheffield Wednesday and Wolves are certainly the current cases of teams that may be at the threshold of FFP sanctions and ones to keep an eye on, with Villa perhaps trailing after them. Forest, Leeds, and Derby, not so much. As I already pointed out, a few years of significant net sales by Forest have enabled them to just escape FFP sanctions last year and have given them significant headroom going forward. Also, as I said before, FFP is concerned about accounting losses, not cash losses. Hence, while Forest is set to spend £13m on Carvalho, supposehe signs a 4-year contract, that £13m is amortised so that it's a £3.25m expense this year and for the next three years. That appears to be part of how clubs gamble for promotion: spend a lot in 1-2 years and then amortise the costs over multiple years. That's part of why Sheffield Wednesday is getting close to FFP trouble now as they had £6m in amortisation expenses last year. as their years of net expenditure is now catching up to them. It's also an issue for Aston Villa, who had £24m in amortisation costs last year. The different treatment of sales and purchases is also what helps enable clubs to fairly quickly get out of FFP sanctions, as sales are booked in total when they occur. I assume that's part of how we got out of FFP sanctions fairly quickly despite losses of almost £80m over 13-15... You also brought up administration before, which is not what FFP is really about (at least sanctions-wise)... Administration is a potential result of significant, FFP-flouting losses over time, but FFP-sanctions don't mean administration (if anything, they may save a team from itself in avoiding administration!) Transfer embargoes are the main threat, and I don't think that should be dismissed so lightly (remember our transfer embargo window...?) Hence why I've repeatedly asked you to propose what amount of investment (and thus losses) do you want Venky's to incur now? Do you think they should look to lose £13m/year? Or even more so, and risk FFP sanctions? I think it's an entirely reasonable argument to propose we spend a lot now that our losses in the past few years have been fairly low, giving us a fair amount of headroom under the £39m max losses over 3 years threshold for a couple years. However, if that's the case, I'm also curious whether you're also comfortable with our debts to Venky's climbing ever further (perhaps a more relevant question is whether Venky's is comfortable with that!). It's a bit of a Catch 22... (This would be a rare case of a fan complaining that teams in the Championship aren't spending enough money!)

Villa's potentially making some pretty drastic cuts this year... yes, something to keep an eye on... But they appear to be a case of gambling for a couple years with parachute payments and losing. I'm not sure why you're so confidant they won't be making such cuts. I think our embargo was only the summer window, no? Missing out on any transfer window is a pretty significant penalty. I wouldn't be so dismissive of the possibility given it's happened here before and in multiple other cases. (You're right about Bolton, my mistake mentioning them) Yes, Forest did just make a significant transfer splash, but that's after net transfer spend of -~£7m in 15-16 and -£11m in 16-17, and they sold Assombalonga for £15m this past year. They've cushioned their post-14-15 losses with player sales. FFP is over 3 years - they just squeezed under the FFP limit in 16-17 and that was largely due to the large losses in 14/15 - they've built up a fair amount of headroom for the next couple years. Forest's underlying revenue is about £5m more than us. Suppose they're willing to average £13m losses a year and stay just under FFP. If we're looking to only lose, say, £3m this year, that roughly gives them a £15m advantage over us (and maybe even more than that for the next couple years as they only had a loss of £4m in 16/17). Also, transfer purchases aren't booked entirely within the year they're incurred. They are amortised over the length of the contract, giving them further flexibility this year. Hence, lessening my original number, I was curious if you were advocating losses of, say, £10m-£13m/year, just staying under FFP, rather than the the single digit losses Venky's appears to only be comfortable with now. We only had an accounting loss of £5m over 15-16 and 16-17 due to our significant player sales. Barring whatever our League One losses were, we theoretically could spend quite a bit this year and stay within FFP. (and potentially even more so due to FFP allowing for excluding academy expenditures). But it obviously wouldn't be sustainable for multiple years. However, those advocating for that (and it's a fair proposal!) shouldn't then afterwards complain about how further indebted we'd become under Venky's...

Setting aside what clubs have or haven't flouted FFP, out of curiosity, are you advocating for Venky's/Rovers to incur, say, £20m+ losses again, under the assumption that FFP is unenforceable/if we get promoted it doesn't matter/the resulting fines will be pithy? The latter may be true to an extent, but it is certainly a gamble... While the likes of QPR (still in the courts...), Bournemouth, maybe Wolves this past year, etc. have escaped with relatively light FFP sanctions, there have been quite a few transfer embargoes of varying severity (us, Bolton, Cardiff, Nottingham, Fulham). I think some can be a bit brazen in their hand-waving of FFP restrictions. (And the clubs you cite do have base turnovers of £25m+ compared to ~£15m for us, so even many non-parachute payment receiving clubs have a significant leg up on us)

LT reporting that the option is appearance-based: http://www.lancashiretelegraph.co.uk/sport/16283240.Danny_Graham_signs_new_deal_to_stay_at_Rovers/?ref=mac Very sensible. As great as Graham was the last half of last year, you have to be a bit wary of his fitness going forward. Certainly glad he's back for the coming year at least!

https://twitter.com/SwissRamble/status/1003542814293143552 Thought I'd share that the ever excellent Swiss Ramble posted a Twitter thread covering Rovers' latest accounts. He does an excellent job of distilling club accounts into easy to digest charts and figures. Enjoy the always rather grim reading! (If there being a slight glimmer of hope now!)

Well, even in our last year in the PL we weren't all that profitable, with a profit of £4m on the back of $14m profit in player sales. We actually lost £19m in 2010/11. As has been well-covered, we dropped out of the PL at the worst possible time. Our revenue then was only £54m compared to the lower PL clubs earning £120m these days. Parachute payments help, but they weren't as lucrative for us as they are now. (Off the top of my head, I think they were about £40m over 4 years for us, while the first year of parachute payments is currently £40m!) It all sounds like quite big money adding up the parachute money, player sales, etc., but you can easily tell the same story in the other direction adding up our outlays since 10/11. £245m in wages and salaries, £88m in other expenses. Intangible fixed asset trading has been a net loss of about £5m over those years. Accounting losses of about £115m. Perhaps there's a story to tell within those numbers and I'd of course be keen to read evidence of specific wrongdoing. I don't doubt there were overpayments to agents sprinkled throughout, Venky's stooges enjoying oversized salaries, etc. I'd have to listen to that BRFCS podcast again regarding the split between share capital Venky's has pumped in and debts, and how that adds up to over £200m... I recall the general story is that share capital is the most efficient way to cover ongoing expenses going forward rather than taking on further loans. Our interest payments have fallen accordingly recently. All I'm saying is given our specific circumstances and how common huge losses are across football, I'm personally not all that surprised by how much Venky's have ultimately had to pump into the club, whether in cash, share capital, or debt. While we're still a loss-maker, like pretty much every football club, all signs point to our cost structure finally being reset to a reasonable level (while still having relatively high expenses for a Championship/League One club due to Ewood, Brockhall, etc.). Hence, I suspect Venky's are perfectly happy to continue to hang on and incur losses that are manageable to them now (unlike the 12/13 - 13/14 £70m loss horrorshow), and maintain some perhaps vain hope that we'll scrape out a promotion some year.

You mentioned in a previous that the sums had been done before and there's ultimately some unexplained hole somewhere in the accounts. Could you point me to the analysis you're referring to?

It sounds like Wharton's been impressing with Lincoln City. He apparently went down with an injury at the end of the first leg of Lincoln's playoff, so hope he's okay. I'm struggling to find the link now, but I saw in an aggregation of ratings submitted by fans each game, Wharton was in their top 3 for the games he's played and it seems they're well aware he's a step above League 2. I suppose the question is do we keep him around as a backup CB or perhaps loan him to a League 1 club next year. The latter may make sense, particularly if we do sign another CB. Otherwise, he'll still likely be behind Mulgrew, Lenihan, and Downing, and Williams can serve as cover after that. edit: Found the player ratings link: https://lincoln.vitalfootball.co.uk/april-player-ratings-momentum-mid-rhondda-and-a-moment-in-time/ 3rd highest rating for April and 2nd highest for March.

Our losses by season according to the latest accounts: 12/13: -£36.5m 13/14: -£42.1m 14/15: -£17.3m 15/16: -£1.5m 16/17: -£3.8m Not sure where he's getting his numbers from... Losses by FFP's standards may differ if it's looking at profit/loss before trading or there's some issue with Venky's capital infusions or commercial revenue contributions. We were under an embargo for the start of 15/16 and then got out of it, so you'd think only 15/16 onward would be applicable... Very odd.

Even under the most pessimistic assumptions about our League One revenues, it's hard to imagine why we'd suddenly be heading to another transfer embargo if it's based on the max £39m losses over 3 years rule. I think we're pretty sure FFP isn't applicable to League One, so our losses this year shouldn't matter? Let's suppose they do. Assuming the most pessimistic numbers, our turnover this year was £2.5m matchday, £3m broadcast revenue, and £3m commercial: £8.5m. (I forget exactly, but I think it's mentioned in our accounts that £3.5m of our £5m commercial income is from Venky's, so I'd guess our commercial income can't have fallen that much). Let's assume Mowbray wasn't including staff wages in his £8.5m quote, so add £2m to that. High operating expenses of £11m. Net £1.5m spend on transfer fees: works out to a ~£15m loss at most. (Certainly gargantuan losses for League One!) 16/17 accounts had us at a loss of £3.8m, 15/16 a loss of £1.5m. So, shakily assuming our League One losses matter and being very pessimistic about our League One revenues, that's £20m of losses over three years. Well within the £39m limit... A few ways I could hazily imagine we're on our way to another transfer embargo: 1) Our losses before player trading in 15/16 and 16/17 were £15.5m and £13.6m. If FFP, for whatever reason, doesn't count transfer profits (I don't know the details), our underlying losses in the last three years have been more like £40-45m 2) Venky's have still had to regularly pump money into the club via share capital - perhaps some violation has arisen because of that? (No idea) 3) There's some way we've breached League One's rules. But it's well-established owner injections can be counted as turnover under the wage-to-turnover 60% restriction and there are other possible exemptions, so I can't imagine it's that... So I'd have to agree with other posters that this could only make sense if it was in a specific context of say "we can't spend £10m on transfer fees and £30m on wages next year or we'd be heading to a transfer embargo"...

Haha, very much agreed on Alex Song... However, as a slight counterpoint, it's worth remembering that there is a bit of relative 'prestige' to the Championship. I just took a quick look and the average revenue per club is roughly similar to the top leagues in Japan, Mexico, and the Netherlands. (Our own revenue will be more like an average top division Danish or Portuguese side...) It's not a blot on the resume like League One could be considered by some players. Now, we're not going to be one of the high-rollers looking to steamroll the league into the Premier League like a Newcastle, Aston Villa, etc. and we'll have to spend wisely (signing potentially over-the-hill former stars on pricey contracts is thus probably a terrible idea), but there is a bit more room for, let's call it 'fanciful imagination' when discussing potential player targets compared to last summer!

Our turnover will likely be about £15-£18m in the Championship versus maybe £10-£11m in League One. Burton only had revenue of £11m in the Championship last year. Mowbray might be excluding staff wages, which would add £1-£2m (I'm still quite surprised we're that low after £22m last year, but I guess League One was the final kick in reorienting our wage structure!). Also, our 'other expenses' tend to be fairly high, which is to be expected with our larger stadium, better training facilities, etc. (and maybe we're just inefficiently run too!) I think they were only something like £6.5m last year but that was a one-off exception and they've been more like £10m/year. Burton other expenses were only £2.3m last year. It'll be interesting to see how much we've actually lost this year... if turnover is £10m, wages £8.5-£10m, other expenses £8m, player trading netting out to -£1m... that suggests we've lost £7.5-£9m this year. I see Venky's having three 'choices', which is dependent on the losses they're willing to absorb/how they're able to weather the debt: 1) "Go for it" and incur a wage bill of £20m+. This would mean a wages-to-turnover ratio of ~110%-140%. This would put us in the top third of wages-to-turnover ratios in the Championship, but only roughly a median wage bill. (I doubt this will happen, and it's probably not all that prudent...) 2) "Reasonably competitive expenditure", incurring a wage bill of £14-£16m. This would be in line with the likes of Wigan, Ipswich, Brentford, PNE, maybe Millwall. So a wages-to-turnover ratio of 80%-105%, which is roughly median for the Championship, and wages that would be in the bottom third. (I think the most likely course) 3) "Scrape a profit": wage bill of £10m at most, which would be in line with Rotherham and Burton in both wage level and wages-to-turnover, and thus bottom of the Championship expenditure. We'd maybe break even or have a modest £1m proft. (There's been minimal indication of this occurring, but we are ultimately subject to Venky's whims...) I suppose there could be a "splurge and gamble on PL" option, where we spend like crazy and pray for promotion before our losses cripple us again or we get hit by FFP again (which is a fairly common Championship strategy...), but I doubt that'll happen (nor should it really...). All of the above would be altered by some player sales too, say Lenihan or, heaven forbid, Dack...

Commercial income should be about £7.5-£8m (non-parachute payment clubs get £7.6m by default), gates will probably be about £3.5m, commercial £5m. Hence I think our baseline turnover will be about £16m (£18m optimistically). £15m wage + £8m other expenses, that's a £7m loss, or £12m loss at £20m wages. Those are 'reasonable/typical' losses for a Championship club. I'd certainly guess we're looking at a £15m wage bill rather than £20m, but just a guess. The latter would more likely be needed if we have a reasonably serious promotion push in mind. It's hard to predict what kind of losses Venky's will 'allow'... they incurred £30m+ losses for a couple years, then seemingly needed to shut the taps off once parachute payments ran out. It probably depends on how they're able to hand the debt, which is anyone's guess, plus FFP considerations.

Interesting to hear Mowbray quote our current wage bill at £8.5m! Maybe he's not including backroom staff, etc., but that's much lower than the lower estimate I've bandied around of £12m! Also quite a drop from £22m last year. I'd guess we'll aim for a £15-£20m wage bill next year, so that gives us a fair bit more flexibility than I had thought.

I thought your snark was a bit much for a reasonable maths error, but I suppose my snark was uncalled for too. So never mind me. Apologies.

I didn't know arithmetic was a generational thing.

Graham's got an option for next year, so I'm assuming they'll pick that up if they can't figure out a contract extension. And I'd be hesitant to give him more than one more year anyway given fitness concerns. (but, yes, definitely keep Graham around for next year!)