by azriahmad » Sun Jun 20, 2004 5:57 pm
Quote (XSD @ June 05 2004,21:12)
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Where did you get this idea from?
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I got it from a newspaper report quoting Taksin's chief negotiator who was commenting on the financial due dilligence conducted by the Thais on Liverpool. The guy did say that Liverpool has some 4 million cash and above 100 million assets (mostly the players, I presume and perhaps this was before a new revaluation of Anfield). I suppose the idea of the statement was to make it publicly known to the Thais that the Liverpool purchase deal is attractive.
XSD, much as I am a fan and love Liverpool, we should not get too carried away when we hear about the club's financial affairs. Over the past 6 years under Houllier, we only played in the Champions' League in 2001 and 2002. We got eliminated from the first group stage in 2002. The Champions' League has been structured with a view to maximise the tv revenue for the participants, and the further a club goes, the more money it gets. Manure got some 20 million revenue up to the quarter finals stage, as compared to only 5 million to reach the UEFA cup final by Celtic/Porto last year.
During this past 6 years, Houllier spent some 128 million on players and netting only 66 million recouped from the sales of players, meaning that Liverpool incurred a net deficit of 62 million (this is what Houllier himself said after he resigned). Now, we had little CL money and we had less domestic income than manure and Arsenal due to the lower finish we had most of the time. Liverpool is also behind manure when it comes to merchandising. Liverpool also makes less from gate receipts as Anfield can only fill up 46,000 compared to 66,000 at Old Trafford. According to Arsenal, they lose some 1 million per game in home game gate collection over manure due to this smaller capacity.
Where did the transfer deficit funding came from? Borrowings from banks or other lending instutions and also advances from the shareholders. It is reported that Moores personally sank in 10 million of his own fortune to part finance Houllier's spending spree. It is not clear if this 19 million included the 10 million from Moores. Houllier's transfer deficit also exclude the wage bill, which must be quite big as we have a large squad. Consider this - even a cr@p/average player like Smicer makes 25,000 a week. How many of them are there in the whole squad? Surely Diouf and Heskey were on similar, if not bigger pay. Gerrard, Owen and Kewell are surely on 50,000 tp 60,000 a week.
Believe it or not, Liverpool really need some fresh funds and I find it quite acceptable that Liverpool'd debt is only 19 million and not 40 million or 80 million like Leeds. It is still not too late, as the debt compared to the assets value is not that high, but new funds are needed to ensure that Liverpool can get on a stronger footing and the stadium project can get kicked started.
If I get to see Liverpool's annual report (not publicly available at it is not a public company), then we can ascertain for sure the size of the debt. The Delloite's (a public accountant firm) survey on the financial status of the football clubs in Europe reported that in 2002 only 2 clubs made a profit - Manure and Bayern Munich. Arsenal made a loss that year as they had to pay large bonuses to the players for their double success.
suggested that if the thai bid falls through Steve Morgan will try an 85m bid.
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