13 minutes ago, BankEnd Rover said:

I’d love both but economically we won’t be able to afford the two…Styles roughly 1.5m & Bowler 3m+

Transfer fees is not the issue, transfer budget is £6-9m plus can be increased if a special case comes along.

The issue is can we get them all in our wage budget. So far we are going after players who are on comfortably less than £5k a week at present club so are more than likely going to be ok on £10k or so here.

3 minutes ago, bluebruce said:

Wasn't the claim last week that it was close to done? That doesn't seem to have been the case.

Looking at things from yesterday, Brittain was close for 2 weeks, so it may well be the same case with Bowler.

It seems GB is being very careful how we spend the cash and getting the maximum out of the budget

11 minutes ago, Galgaterover10 said:

I was just going on rich sharpes view that we will only sign 1 centre mid to replace rothwell, so assume this is the 1 centre mid. 

I am pretty sure Sharpe is just guessing based on rumours. So far we are keeping everything we are doing under wraps, so he has as much idea as we do.

2 minutes ago, RoverRB said:

Preston’s wage structure is more strict than ours so I’m with you. Highly doubt he’s on that much.

It wouldn't surprise me if he was. Below average wage and they were in a bind when they signed him.

It's just a shock to us with being out of the premier League for 12 years

15 minutes ago, Exiled_Rover said:

The stadium is falling apart and the pitch is a disgrace.

Those are both FFP exempt.

Yep can't argue with the lack of stadium maintenance. 

I am not sure why they don't spend on this, perhaps they are not asked, only want to spend on players or maybe they don't see point in maintenance and want to replace with new. I have no idea

17 minutes ago, Exiled_Rover said:

If the club is such a financial burden to them, maybe they should just sell?

I don't think it is. All Championship clubs have agreed to new FfP rules, owners can fund club losses with cash to £60m over 3 years. Clubs can spend a maximum of 90% of turnover on wages next season, falling by 5% a season to the new uefa guidelines of 70%.

Unless we substantially increase our turnover there is not much wriggle room. Last set of accounts we were at 130% or something similar. After all departures this summer and last we are probably now at 90%.

15 minutes ago, Miller11 said:

Waggott has publicly stated that we won’t entertain gambling companies as sponsors for moral reasons, even though they offer far better financial incentive. So we’ve gone with a vaping company for less money.

I know gambling can destroy lives, but it is also enjoyed by millions moderately and recreationally. I use vaping products because I have been addicted to nicotine for over 20 years and it presents a much cheaper alternative to strongly regulated heavily taxed cigarettes. I don’t know anyone who vapes for a bit of recreation.

The moral stance is inconsistent at best. The commercial decision is costly.

Supposedly we rejected a £1m+ offer from Bet365, so the decision to go with our shirt sponsor is probably costing us £15k a week in lost wage budget

1 minute ago, Mattyblue said:

Maybe don’t charge £430/£530 for any new or returning fan then…

Yep which is why I struggle to figure out our pricing policy

9 minutes ago, Dreams of 1995 said:

At the moment Mellor this is true. FFP is literally stopping the Venkys from spending any more on wages and transfers

The argument would be that, if FFP was scrapped tomorrow, would the Venkys then suddenly turn the taps on and spend?

You would have to imagine not, given that the typical day to day running costs of the Club not under the influence of FFP, ie: ground, are typically under funded

In this respect Venkys lose their credibility

Crowd really is insignificant. Other opportunities for increased revenue are there.

For example, they could spend £10/20 million on fixing the Riverside into a nice stand, hospitality, hotel or conference suite. They would need to spend that on a striker "if they could" and by doing this it would increase turnover. They won't because they don't want to.

But at the moment FFP is giving them an excuse not to invest on the pitch.

Crowd numbers is very important to attract better sponsors and advertising prospects.

6 minutes ago, Gavrover said:

It is indeed losses over 3 years are increasing to 60m (as long as cash is injected into club) the biggest issue is that wages and salaries will have to be 70% of income by 2025 (90 percent this year). Ours on last accounts were 13.5 million so we would only be able to spend 12.15 million on wages and transfers this year (although that doesn't account for any transfer money in) So you really need an Armstrong type sale every year..to top most of that up. As a a rough calculation if we only had 20 players and paid them equally it would be 11.5k a week each. 

So we need to potentially cut up to half our wage bill this year as presently 130% of turnover down to 90%. That is going to be some ask and our available wage budget is probably 10-20k a week following the departures to comply with this.

7 minutes ago, Exiled_Rover said:

Transfermarkt reckons he's worth £3.15m, so they've been ripped off if they've paid £10m. 

Weren't they in massive financial trouble a few years ago? Where have they found £10m from?

Administration cleared all of their debts, new 26 year old billionaire owner as well as the ffp rules in league 1 means they can spend quite a bit this season and have no issues.

8 minutes ago, unleaded said:

I don’t claim to be a ITK  .. all I do is pass on info or names I hear from people in the business  related to Rovers .. please don’t hold it against me if I get something wrong … Recruting lists usually have 5/ 6 players for each position .. some they just enquirer about then move on 

Thought it adds fun to a window to know names now & again which land or even if they don’t end up here …. I don’t make names up as that would be unfair on all here and I respect all members here ……

From what you are seeing, is this summer a lot more difficult for all clubs to bring in new players?

Spending certainly seems to be way down on previous years. Assume clubs are working more on retaining their best talent this year?

9 minutes ago, booth said:

FFP is nonsensical.

We're going to stop you from spending money, in a business that relies on spending a shedload of money. And that way, because you can't spend money your club will progressively suffer from a lack of investment.

We're protecting you from quickly destroying your club by slowly destroying your club.

Platini may have been aquitted of fraud but he's still a World class dickhead.

Also to comply, pretty much no club now owns their stadium or training grounds. All sold to comply with FFP to a club owners or other property companies and making the clubs weaker.

2 minutes ago, Exiled_Rover said:

FFP was brought in to pull up the drawbridge behind the established teams.

Man City just about got over the moat into the castle before the drawbridge was raised. They don't want another Jack Walker upsetting the apple cart.

Pretty much.

If a fan was to buy Rovers today, there is not a lot they could do to invest without significantly increasing turnover.

I think I would bring catering, bars etc back under our control and reverse all outsourcing. Then reduce ticket prices to increase footfall and benefit from what fans spend in the ground. But it would be some time before you could make changes on wages etc sadly.

5 minutes ago, islander200 said:

We don't know how much we have to spend to be fair .

If that was true about us bidding for Anel then if that money is available could pick up Brittain from Barnsley for £1.5- 2 million to replace Nyambe.

We got Van Hecke on a loan deal last summer who imo is a better player than Lenihen.

There will be players available within our price range or on loan that won't be too far away from Nyambe and Lenihen in terms of quality.

 

Although with Nyambe and Lenihan now both on £20k+ neither are in our price range.

For centre back, Charlie Goode is probably ideal for us and I am sure Brentford would be interested in selling. The only issue is he has a young family and they have stayed based in Northampton, so not sure he would join base on that. I expect a loan to buy offer

The Barnsley lad may be more difficult to get on the cheap but probably in the £2m - £3m range. 

10 minutes ago, bluebruce said:

If your estimate is correct, that averages to between 5.6k and 7.5k per recruit.

I hope you're wrong.

I might be or 1-2k out but it is around that figure.

What worries me is if we have to implement the can't spend more than 70% of turnover on wages rule. Unless we could drastically increase turnover, we'd have a total wage budget of £7.8m. 

7 minutes ago, Mercer said:

No provocation at all.

Shown around Brockhall AFTER JDT appointed so not a discard from Park's list.  He chose Derby when almost certainly he could have come here.

Not a surprise though, he would likely have been a squad player here so chose guaranteed first team football at Derby which at his age I can understand.

I think from all bits of information we have a transfer budget of something around £6-8m so reasonable. Our issue is our wage budget, we have the same as last year, so with all the players that have left we have around £45k a week to fund 6-8 players.

19 minutes ago, OsloRover said:

Long post warning..

I feel that many posters are not aware of the actual financial reality of the club.

The club must survive first and foremost, hence the focus on being a sustainable operation. In the short term, as long as Venkys are willing to fund the club's losses, being sustainable means to comply with the championship's profitability and sustainability rules, often called FFP.

To comply with said rules, clubs must run at a loss of no more than £45 million over any 3-year period. As an aside, be aware that a season or two in the PL during this period will dramatically increase this figure, giving clubs relegated from the PL another huge advantage ON TOP OF their parachute payments (which are counted as income) if they have owners with big wallets.

Looking at Rovers' accounts from the 20/21 season we had at the time a loss of approx £46.750.000 over 3 years, which is over the FFP limit. We can deduct spending for the academy, ladies team etc from this figure, which means we were within our £45m limit by some margin. There was also probably a significant covid-related deduction for which I don't know the details, maybe enough to make us compliant for 2020 but seemingly not for 2021. Hence we sold the training centre, which raised a £13m profit which is included in the losses mentioned. Obviously we can only sell the training centre once, so it's not really sustainable.

Season ended     2021           2020            2019

Losses                 6.6m           22m            18.2m

3Y FFP losses      46.75m        57m            38.8m 

When the 2022 accounts are filed the 2019 numbers are no longer relevant for FFP, so those 18.2m losses are wiped clean and replaced with whatever loss we have for 2022. The maximum loss for 2022 we can live with within FFP would be (45-22-6.6) = 16.4m. The Armstrong sale, the return of matchday crowds, and the siginficant cull of senior players on big wages last summer should all help the 2022 accounts so I don't expect any problems there.

Now this is where it gets interesting. 2022 accounting is done (although not published), so we have to focus on 2023 where we can wipe the terrible 2020 loss of 22m away, to be replaced with the 2023 accounts. What we know is that we have cleared around 70k/week off the wage budget with the players that have left this summer. We also expect a big sale with Brereton going. Unless we sign a lot of expensive players we could potentially be looking at actually turning a profit this year (we won't, because we'll sign players). Keep in mind that one good financial year helps the club comply with FFP for 3 years, not just one, and that money paid towards transfers are spread out over the length of the signed player's contract. As long as Venkys are happy to provide the maximum amount of financial backing that they can (and they have until now, make no mistake about it), we should indeed be looking at, in GB's words, "a healthy budget".

This is surely one reason to be optimistic. But the signings need to be right, we can not afford to take big losses on players. So I'd rather the club takes its sweet time getting recruitment right. We might not have an Armstrong or a Brereton to sell next year and we could easily be in the brown stuff again in a couple of years since our baseline operations are far from sustainable.

Note that if Venkys should withdraw their funding entirely, FFP requirements would go from a £45mill loss to a £15mill loss, and we would have to make drastic cuts across the board and probably not be able to sustain a championship level operation. I can't see this happening though as they would need to achieve PL status to have any hope of recouping their expenses.

It's one of the reasons Championship clubs are not that interesting to investors, you can't actually spend any money once you take a club over.

The clubs of interest and likely to be sold are league one clubs such as MK Dons. Get them into the championship you can spend £45m in 2 seasons trying to gamble to get promoted to the premier League, if fail sell some players.

As pretty much all Championship clubs are owned by Billionaires, I am not sure why they haven't got together to scrap FfP, and allow them to go and sign players they want, build up interest and improve the TV deal. Just think of the interest in the Championship if we signed Ronaldo and Stoke signed Messi, the TV deals would be through the roof and all of the Football League would benefit.

As it is now no one can, the step up to premiership is to high and we get yoyo clubs as well as a 2tier championship.

7 minutes ago, roversfan99 said:

My point is about where I perceive gaps to be in the squad, I think personally I outlined genuine areas whereby I feel that we are short, before considering the budget.

Obviously you then have to look at how best to utilise whatever budget we have, which none of us know, and how far that budget can stretch. The "9 Akpan's" line was hyperbole and in theory, that 7th and 8th signing could be loanees with the 9th being the sub keeper we need as an experienced freebie, so not much more on top.

We have also signed plenty of crap loans, plenty of crap big money signings and plenty of crap frees over the years, we can't rule out experienced players based on that basis. I stand by the fact that we need experience, whether that is a 28 year old or a 30/31 year old like Hourihane would have been, which is IMO definitely not too old. Obviously we don't want another Danny Murphy who is 35 and disinterested, but each player must be analysed on his individual merits.

I am also totally against the idea of writing off seasons, for all of the Brentford comparisons, do they have seasons whereby they don't actively intend to challenge? The process of turning over profits on assets and continuously improving needs to be constant, albeit it relies on the owners who have let us down on this basis in the past. We want a new manager to push us on and if we do have a reasonable budget then there is no reason not to hope for improvement on last season, not regression.

Why is it a "rather" situation? We need at least 2 midfielders with 3 going out, I suggested a more experienced option like Hourihane AND potentially someone of the age range of the players you mention whereby you bring in a potential asset AND get some much needed experience into the club.

What a statement that is, especially with such assertiveness.

I am very skeptical of our ability to sign equal or better replacements for the outgoings, but I would say that Nyambe is probably the easiest of the departees to replace.

I don't think Nyambe will be that easy. We've spent 5 seasons trying to sign a competent left back and still haven't, I am not sure right back will be so easy.

14 minutes ago, chaddyrovers said:

We don't know what Nyambe and Lenihan wanted wage wise. 

We know that we got the same wage bill as last season but more room for wages, So Cantwell could be affordable. 

At the moment Cantwell is on around the same weekly wage as Lenihan, Rothwell and Nyambe combined, so we'll need a lot of leeway from Norwich to look at signing him.

It would be far cheaper to have just increased the 3 salaries than try and sign 3 new players of equal or better ability.

3 minutes ago, 1864roverite said:

As I understand it we don’t owe anyone any money certainly not Mr Taxman

That may well be the case as this year's accounts are not out, but we certainly did owe HMRC according to last year's accounts.

Just now, islander200 said:

Which doesn't look like happening any time soon if ever.As our external debt isn't big enough for the Indians to cut and run.

Not directed at you but being put into admin is mentioned nearly every summer on here. 

Hopefully some day soon they will have had enough and look to move the club on ,one good thing about the wage bill being cut and becoming a little more sustainable we will be more attractive to prospective buyers If the club is ever put on the market.

I just don't think administration Is the way it will end .

 

 

Administration is very unlikely. It will be sold to one of their friends with Venky's getting some of their cash back.

I always wonder how they get a £15m overdraft every year without fail and what collateral they require for it. 

The amount of hoops I have had to go through to extend my business one this year is horrifying, never mind what we must go through.

2 minutes ago, islander200 said:

So then our position is nothing like Derby's in the main our debt is owed to the owners.

In reality, we wouldn't know until administration

4 minutes ago, roversfan99 said:

Why is it quality OR speed in your eyes?

Of course we need quality and that goes without saying really, but it is a genuine point to want at least a large proportion of the summer business to be done well in advance of the first games. It is not one or the other.

It is important to start well and key to that is getting players integrated in pre season together. WHEN the players are signed isn't the irrelevance you make out, for example it would be no good getting all of the players on the last day of the window, 7 games in!

Signings need to be done as soon as possible, otherwise the new players are always playing catch-up on fitness and how you want to play.

A good preseason normally dictates a good season. When you have issues in preseason yourl normally know the season is going to be a struggle.