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RoverCanada

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Everything posted by RoverCanada

  1. At least going by my guesstimates (and depending on how the apparent 4-year FFP window was applied due to Covid + Covid-related allowed exemptions...), the answer is apparently both. Yes, added to 2020-21 under the 'player sales + STC sale' column. I assumed an £8m profit for that sale as that's same profit Reading recorded for selling their own training centre. Otherwise, I think our only real player trading profit last year would've been whatever we got for the Josh King sell-on, which would've been about £500k. Come to think of it, I overlooked potentially getting another £500k or so due to Raya getting promoted with Brentford, so maybe add another £0.5k of player trading profit to my 2020-21 guess.
  2. Thought I'd briefly revisit these calculations I did about a month ago. White cells are actuals, yellow are my guesses. Compared to last time: - I've shifted the STC sale profit to 2020-21 rather than 2021-22, as looks like that was squeezed in at the end of the 2020-21 fiscal year due to changing EFL rules (and I've lowered the assumed profit to £8m). This changes how our FFP 'windows' look going forward. - I've raised our assumed wage budget to £23m, as £20m before was probably too low. - Lowered my matchday revenue assumptions a touch, inched up broadcast assuming a growing EFL TV deal/shares from the PL, made commercial a bit more optimistic, and raised amortisation costs a bit (haven't bothered to try to guess the exact amortisation calcs for Gallagher, Brereton, Armstrong, Pickering, Kaminski, Edun, etc.) Suggests we were definitely in breach of FFP last year, but the leniancy to expand it to 4 years means we'll just shave under a 4-year FFP limit. The estimated (FFP) £6m loss this year then means we roughly have £5-6m of room to play with over the next few years, but worth noting these projections have us back on the edge of £13m losses per year, ie, on the edge of FFP. Possibly suggests we'd be in breach of the 4-year FFP if we decided to spend a bunch in January, but a) I'd guess the EFL deemed our long-term 'sustainability' okay given we're roughly within £13m/year going forward (and presumably we had to admit to the EFL we were selling Armstrong), hence why we're apparently under no transfer restrictions now; b) any new transfers would be amortised, so, say, a ~£4m purchase would only count for ~1m this year (plus wages). All of course subject to any player sales we resort to in January (Nyambe, Rothwell, Lenihan...)
  3. I've said it before, but I think the sheer unluckiest bit about last season was Wharton's achilles injury. Completely freak play too. Sadly, Dack getting re-injured wasn't too surprising... I think Ayala's injury history gets a bit overplayed if you check his historical games played (a bit), but also not too surprising he was out so much (and just seemed a step behind when he did play, or at least clearly not suited to our overly possession-based approach last year). That meant relying on a combination of Lenihan (solid), Williams (halfway out the door), Branthwaite (ok for a couple games, then lost it), THB (he was decent, but hard to ignore that our record was quite poor even when he took over for Branthwaite), and Johnson having to deputise a few times, while Carter was off on a good loan with Burton. Having a combination of Lenihan, van Hecke, Wharton, and/or Ayala as our 3-at-the-back is looking invincible. van Hecke also starting to look like one we should look to buy at the end of his loan, if possible...
  4. 'twas a joke. He got credited for an assist for blocking a clearance with his ass 🙂
  5. For all the (justified!) uproar about the current out-of-contract players (I'm keeping some optimism that they'll be more keen to sign as this season rolls along. Clearly some good spirit in this team), there have been some good extensions of late among our younger players: Buckley, Dolan, Edun, Wharton, and Carter are all signed up to 2024 + an option year, a year to forget so far for JRC but he's signed up to 2024, Pickering and Garrett up to 2025. A minor point, but note that surviving one year in the PL is important as immediate relegation means only 2 years of parachute payments. A key fact for Huddersfield (their mid-table first year was an absolute miracle after being a pretty mediocre playoff winner...) and Sheffield United. However, those are both cases where the state of your ownership is also a key factor, as apparently neither are in a position to fully train their parachute payments to (Huddersfield having to guarantee some payback for their old owners, SHU dealing with ownership turmoil...) Anyway, let's not get ahead of ourselves 🙂
  6. Understates it a bit... They're essentially under a transfer embargo for two years and they only avoid that further 6 point deduction if they follow a business plan set out by the EFL, which limits them to a wage bill of £21m this year and £16m next year. That's a pretty hefty drop from a £38m wage bill in 2019-20. And that plans already includes having sold Olise for £8.4m this summer. Reading may have avoided a relegation-guaranteeing points deduction, but this will do some pretty substantial medium-term damage. That wage bill pretty much guarantees they can't ensure a "ensure a good quality squad of contracted players". Swift, Yiadom, Cabral, and others all expected to leave on frees this summer. (Note the above also already includes Reading having engaged in both stadium and training ground selling chicanery) (btw, I obviously don't disagree about trying to get Rothwell, Nyambe, etc. tied down to new deals. The Armstrong and training ground sales should give us some decent headroom now. And for all our fucking up, we certainly aren't at Reading's level of financial bumfuckery in recent years. It's all endless speculation at this point so we'll see how that ends up...)
  7. Your game summaries are always worth a look! I appreciate them for sure. Couple suggestions for working out averages: - Why not just divide all the totals by total minutes played and then conver to a 'points/90' style statistic? Should control for starts/subs. (Next step is controlling for game situation haha...) - One concern is normalising for position, as players in different positions are bound to have different 'exposure' to risky play, and thus notches on your scorecards. I suspect it'll be more fair to compare within position. Would be interesting to test my suspicion against a distribution of events per position... But I guess we'll see what numbers come up first!
  8. Were you comfortable with how Khedra and Edun looked defensively on the left? I certainly wasn't. Poveda too... And that was against a pretty poor Sheffield U performance. Perhaps Pickering could solidify that a bit better, but it had me worried. Anyway, yeah, fair enough if you're not keen on Gallagher slotting back in. I wasn't advocating to put him back on the wing, more highlighting what Brereton provides there. And I agree that Poveda+Khadra deserve another start, I'm just cautious. ('Play the loans!' is a funny change of sentiment, but I suppose things can change fast in football!)
  9. At least for me, Khedra and Edun's defensive troubles were a reminder that Brereton's defensive work rate is one of the main reasons we should generally keep him out wide, unless Gallagher is out. He clearly has the lung capacity to run up and down for 90min, plus exceptional straightahead speed. I think his athleticism gets a bit underrated because he can occasionally look rather uncoordinated/gangly out there haha
  10. Sam Burns scored again. I think that's 2 goals in 4 games? It's production at quite a low level, but he is now doing it against 'men'. I wonder if he can secure a higher loan in January... Jack Vale with an assist in this ridiculous 7-4 game: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/av/football/59083037 Solid cross for his one assist. Hilton started again for Hamilton in a 1-1 draw. 3 starts in a row now... but their 1st choice keepr is still out, so we'll see. No game for Annesley with Woking yesterday, although he did start again earlier this week. Chapman again left on the bench for Burton. I'll draw the line at chasing down non-league loans haha (outside of Burns!), but Dowling and G. Pratt do appear to be getting starts with their NPL loans; Lonsdale apparently not. (tempted to start a separate 'Loan report' thread!)
  11. I told myself I'd give Poveda one more chance after seeing the starting lineup... I recall him looking good for about 5-10 min in one of his early starts, and he must have something about him with his pedigree, but then crap ever since... what a rebound performance from him. Was less down on Khadra, although his recent appearances had been pretty poor, so quite pleased for him today too. Clear case of a couple young attackers just needing a few successful dribbles to give them the confidence to keep at it. Of course still questionable to have them over, say, Chapman, but he's currently sitting on the bench for Burton, so... (It would be nice to maybe turn one of these loans into a loan-to-buy, as some had recently mooted about van Hecke before his, ahem, creative tackle against Fulham. One of the benefits of a loan can be 'try before you buy'... certainly not suggesting that for Khadra or Poveda just yet!) A couple shaky moments from Lenihan and Wharton, but I suppose that can be excused for Wharton's first game back. Was a nice reminder of Wharton's dominance in the air today. Big head CBs, fuck yeah. Otherwise, pretty great performance all around. Edun makes me nervous at times, but it's nice to think we've got two young LBs competing for the spot. How long since we could feel optimistic at that position?! edit: I should also mention a resurgent performance from Davenport, who I had started to finally write off. What an odd player he's been...
  12. Yeah ,media quotes were something like £1.2-1.5m. Who knows in the end, but the speculation that we only got a few hundred thousand was nonsense. So, we're in agreement: a great bit of negotiating by Venky's and co. 🙂 (I kid, I kid 🙂)
  13. No, Marshall said there was a decent contract offer on the table (and no less than he ended up signing for at Wolves), but he was (rightfully) worried we were going to get relegated (and have his contract halved with the relegation clause) and refused to sign (despite Coyle's pleas... haha) My favourite part of that story is Coyle then froze him out of the squad, he went on the lash in Dublin for 3 weeks and Wolves couldn't believe his physical after they signed him haha... I thought it was interesting that he also confirmed in that interview we did get up to £2m from Wolves. There was a fair amount of noise on here that we'd be lucky to get £200k given he only had 6 months left...
  14. I won't claim any clairvoyance as I didn't watch Barnsley much last year, but I was sceptical they could keep it up after last year's Cinderella playoff run. Their wages are probably half our wages (and our wages are below-average for this division!). All other things being equal (big caveat 🙂), wages are going to be the best first order indicator of where you'll place in the league. Whatever they managed last year was likely quite sensitive. Lose Mowatt and a couple others, perhaps there's some injury issues, Schopp's messaging suddenly stopped getting through... edit: agh, had a brainfart and forgot that Ismael left Barnsley in the summer, so Schopp was new (and may have simply been out of his depth!) xGs table has them 19th instead of 23rd: https://experimental361.com/2021/10/31/expected-goals-table-championship-29-30-oct-2021/ Maybe unlucky scoring goals, but their defense has been as bad (or worse) as advertised. A major swing from last year when their xGs were as good their record suggests (and we should've been 5th according to xG of course 😋)
  15. A goal for Burns in the FA Trophy for FC United (albeit against the venerable Runcorn Linnets in the FA Trophy). Apparently deserved a pen too. BBC report seems to suggest Annesley started at LM for Woking to start his loan there. Vale started again for Halifax. Seems to be getting a run of starts after scoring in the FA Cup, but seems to get pulled off after 60-70min. Hilton has finally started a couple league matches in a row for Hamilton after sitting on the bench for a while (otherwise, he started in their Scottish Cup games at least). Seems their usual starter is injured, but they had a pretty poor GA record up to this point, so could be a chance for him. 1 goal against today after a clean sheet on Tuesday. Side note: no idea how he's actually playing but Chapman was left on the bench in Burton's 2-0 loss today. 0 goals and 0 assists in 9 games so far and apparently not an automatic starter...
  16. Poveda has been an unused sub plenty of times this year (along with the rest of the loans) (Not to defend Poveda's actual performances. Looks like we can only hope he is sent back in January so far)
  17. haha, really? (They also booked a £17m profit from selling their stadium a couple years ago)
  18. Hopefully that shows up ok. I was curious about medium-term FFP implications, so threw some guesstimates together. 2018-20 are actuals, while 2020 onwards are guesses in light yellow. Obviously assuming we're stuck in the Championship 🙂 Main takeaway: We likely well exceeded the 3-year £39m FFP losses allowance last year, but the Armstrong+STC sales likely bring us within a 4-year £52m FFP loss limit. Without the STC sale, we'd still be in trouble after the Armstrong sale. I would guess this was a big reason for the accounts delay/temporary 'soft' transfer embargo. Going forward, a profitable 2021-22 gives us a fair bit of leeway under the 3-year FFP cycles (and this all assumes surviving in the Championship at a below-average wage and low-ish transfer spend!), particularly if we have cut wages like I've assumed. How the player contract renewals feed into this... I dunno! These are all obviously assumptions to be shot at, but: - Matchday only gradually recovers to below 2018-19 levels (which was a slight bounceback after relegation/Coyle/L1). Was up to £4m in the early Bowyer days, or up to £6m in the PL days... I'm probably being optimistic here, but it's ultimately a marginal factor. - Broadcast goes up to £8m (I think there's a slightly larger EFL TV deal on the horizon?). This is also subject to cup runs. Commercial recovers to £4.5m, but that's below our 'usual' £5m+. - Our new wage structure is £20m/year after peaking at £27m last year (a guess!) - Assuming £12m profit on Armstrong and £12m profit on the STC (any idea of its accounting value? Possibly well-depreciated by now) - Other opex is an odd one as it bounces around. Tends to be on the high side for the Championship. I've assumed £9m (with a fall last year) - Player trading profits after this year (which could be higher if Rothwell/Nyambe sold in Jan...) is a big guess. We've barely had any profits before the Armstrong/Raya sales. Lots of Championship clubs report the occasional £10m+ profit, like we did with Armstrong. Play with that variable as you like. - Amortisation+depreciation is hard to say. Last year's £5.6m reflects Armstrong+Brereton+Gallagher+etc. Armstrong done, haven't bothered to work out how long Brereton/Gallagher fees are incurred. Maybe there will be new biggish transfers at some point, but if it's only the likes of Kaminski/Edun/Pickering-like spend going forward, it may fall to ~£2m-ish levels - ~£4m worth of Academy, community, ladies football, etc. FFP exemptions, plus exemptions for Covid-related losses of £0.5m and £2.5m in 2019-20 and 2020-21. TL;DR: My gf would probably be right to leave me.
  19. Seems clearly to be FFP-related accounting trickery. Or at least that's what it is on the face of it. Conspire away 🙂 The statement given to the LT pretty much says as much: "taking into account the imminent change in FFP rules precluding the inclusion of profit on sale of assets with effect from July 1 2021 onwards, in June 2021 the club implemented a restructure of certain club properties, whilst ensuring all affected assets remain under the ownership and held within the Venky’s group." Payment went through on 24 June, so just before the EFL closed that loophole. So, we've resorted to the same chicanery as Derby, Sheffield Wed, Reading, Aston Villa, etc. I'm pretty sure others have also done the selling the training ground route. I can't remember who. I suppose it's at least a bit less drastic/symbolically sad than selling Ewood Park to a Venky's holding company. One-time profit (which thus helps for the 3-year rolling FFP windows), but then higher operating costs year-to-year thereafter due to the lease back arrangement (which presumably needs to be done on commercial terms!). I suppose the question will be what the accounting value of the STC was and thus how much of a 'profit' the club has made off the £16.6m sale. Perhaps another £10m+ to the P&L account...? The EFL has been trying to show its fangs of late, so don't be surprised if they sniff around this, but precedent suggests this is above board. They tried to get Derby for overvaluing Pride Park but failed, cleared Villa, and Sheffield Wed got caught cause they mucked up the timing.
  20. re: Burns, while it'd be nice to assume we can find a loan for him in the National League (or NLN...) post-transfer window, I imagine part of the issue is finding a club willing and able to give him starts. Maybe others on here better know the everyday striker needs of the NL, but I suspect they're not necessarily keen to hand starts to an unproven 19-year-old. Just look at Jack Vale, who has only managed 1 start and 4 subs with Halifax Town in the NL so far this year. He has/had more pedigree than Burns, which probably helped secure the loan, but it hasn't guaranteed him starts. He also struggled for time with Rochdale in L1 last year (although I gather he continued to have injury issues). Seems he scrambled a goal for Halifax in the FA Cup last week and finally got a start yesterday, so hope that continues for him. Burns' pedigree is growing, but I don't recall much noise about loaning him out in August. I suspect the original hope was to loan McBride out to a L2 club and have Burns continue as the 1st choice u23 striker, but McBride's loan fell through for whatever reason and then Burns started outshining him. McBride was even on the bench in favour of Burns a couple weeks ago, so this helps ensure game time for McBride FWIW, in the brief bits I've seen, I struggle to see Burns taking the step up to the Championship level, but I certainly hope he proves me wrong! Good to see him continue to produce at the PL2 level. He's gotten a start and a sub so far with FC United, a month or two playing against 'men' can't hurt, maybe he can earn a higher loan in Jan, and their Twitter feed suggest he's impressed, including his contribution to this "beautiful" goal yesterday haha:
  21. Great article in the The Athletic today looking back on Tugay: https://theathletic.com/2811523/2021/09/08/tugay-at-blackburn-it-was-like-he-was-playing-with-a-cigar-in-his-mouth-it-was-that-easy-for-him/ (As always, apologies if you can't get around the paywall!)
  22. My assumption is we extended a contract offer for the sake of protecting the asset and giving it one last kick of the can (if it wasn't for his mini-resurgence at Shrews, I'd bet we'd have let him walk) as we were still due compensation at his age if he left on a 'free', but that offer essentially tied him to us. I doubt there were too many L1 clubs this window willing to spend the (low) 6-figure fee we probably could command at a tribunal (plus probably above-average L1 wages), and I doubt Chapman attracted much Championship interest either. (I don't recall many, if any, rumours of clubs making cash offers for him?). Works out to him being like a borderline valuable 'restricted free agent' (RFA), if you take a North American sports perspective... From Chapman's POV, he was also probably looking at another year here at ~£4-5k/week here vs £2-3k/week for some L1 club, so a no brainer to sign on and hope for the best. Clearly he didn't impress enough to nail down a starting spot, so he was probably looking at a year of at most 5 starts + 15-20 subs, and he'll be pushing for starting time at this stage of his career, so fair enough to loan him out and maybe try to sell for a nominal fee in Jan (and presumably Burton are covering some wages too). I suppose the question going forward is how Proveda/Khedra turn out in comparison. I've only seen his outing at Millwall so far this year (poor, albeit he didn't have much help on the left flank), so maybe I missed positive flashes in the other games. His quick burst is just gone with injuries and poor fitness. His Shrews loan was a welcome surprise, but, as mentioned above, more smoke that he apparently still had some sulky moments and seemingly wasn't an automatic starter despite some goals (16+7). Didn't help that he apparently got sick to start the year too (for all we know that was Mowbray covering for more poor behaviour from Chappers...). Obviously an odd one, and I can see the case for just cutting our losses instead, but I can't see it as one to get too up in arms about.
  23. Nice to be back in a stadium. Some random notes: - 1st half was some generally terrible football viewing all around. Millwall really do play some unattractive stuff. I'm pretty sure they don't have a single "artist" in the squad (Afobe seems to have really fallen off over the years) - that's not an outright "criticism" btw, as they have managed alright in the Championship at their wage level! - Plenty already said, but clearly not a game for Dolan to be pressing upfront like Swansea. Maybe his worst performance as a Rover... Buckley anonymous, but not really 'bad'. Game bypassed the whole midfield 1st half - see Rothwell below too - only Trav seemed to thrive (and a welcome pain in the ass performance from him!). Not following the Pickering criticism, thought he was ok (but not 'good'), but maybe wasn't watching him closely enough. Gallagher couldn't get anything going offensively, but put in a hell of a shift in the air. - The switch to the back 5 was merciful, and Carter impressed. Can see the logic in keeping him around if we use the back 5 plenty, plus as injury cover for Ayala, and then re-evaluate when Wharton is back. A player with Magloire's physical gifts may be worth waiting on, so another season loan for him and bringing in a short-term loan to wait on Wharton sounds sensible to me, but I wouldn't flinch if we sold him. - Millwall goal came out of nowhere. Watching the replay now (was hard to see wth happened from the other end!), kind of a hard goal to get too mad at anyone about. - Generally great stuff by Ayala and Lenihan, although the latter drove me nuts messing around with the ball a couple times in midfield. No need to pick up a senseless yellow doing that when he's going to pick up plenty... - Let's hope Butterworth's back holds up as he could be something. - Chapman's poor cameo highlights the need for a winger loan (although he rightly yelled at this teammates during that bizarre play where he was just standing with the ball out wide begging for support!). Given he's seemingly lost his quick feet, playing him centrally is probably the only way to salvage his career here (where he impressed at Shrews). Although Butterworth may have usurped him in the middle already, a la Dolan last year out wide... - Typical Rothwell game in that he was anonymous for long periods, and then suddenly took over the game. Please get that contract worked out...
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