The Villa accounts came out today (weird timing) and from what I can see no real surprises and summarised them below.
The figures are out today for the holding company of Villa – Reform Acquisitions Ltd. This has not been reported elsewhere yet so this is the fans first look at them. (I have them if anyone wants them, please get in touch via the feedback option).
Please read all figures, some very interesting figures contained below
The headline figure is that up until May 2010 we made an operational loss of £37.6m down from £46.2m the year before.
These figures include none of the transfer activity over the summer and winter.
I am no accountant so bear with me !!
Key stats are
Turnover increased from £84m to £90m which is very healthy increase but well below the teams we need to compete with
Operating expenses increased from £105m to £111m so we are relying totally on Randy
We had £30m loss due to player transactions
Total operating expenses including transfers increased from £128m to £141m
Bank loans increased from £9m to £20m – Worrying !!!
Long term loans (payable in later years) increased from £85m to £90m, total debt increased from £93m to £110m
Property worth £7.3m was transferred to a ‘parent undertaking’ to wipe out some credit notes, what was this ?
Total wage costs, something we all worry about was £79m (including pension and social security costs) a rise of £9m from the previous year and this is clearly the reason for wage cuts. Wage costs to turnover % was 87% which is not sustainable !
the number of full time employees at villa despite the times increased from 445 to 515, this was due to 15 more football staff, from 134 to 149 and a massive 52 in the non football operation from 212 to 264
Profit on players since the report was completed (ie. Milner) was £18,284,719
Increase of turnover was due to
Match receipts, £2m higher
Media – £2,5m higher
Commercial £2.4m higher
To prove how much we relied on Randy an extra £20m was put in by Randy into Shareholders funds and another £12.5m from Randy’s family trust in loan notes.
Aston Villa News 24/7
back home in london after 2 trains and 2 tube journeys, all fired up after watching a great villa performance, switch on my mac ready to soak it all up and the first thing i see is this…… cheers for trying to burst my bubble!!!
i wont let you though ian… but good effort!
these are the facts of our situation
on another note, i just saw on your earlier post you may close your blog.
i disagree with alot of what you say but i respect your opinions and love of the villa. i hope you do keep your blog going. its a good forum and i rate it. if you chose to post less thats your choice but dont disappear altogether. you do a very good job and its appreciated.
Agree with you mate, keep it going Ian !
Close it down
yeah close it down!!! log on to read this negative shit, yes its true, yes its not ideal, but at the end of the day, just dont like you!
Dont close your blog Ian, just try and be a bit more positive. Things could be alot worse u know, u should be grateful for a chairman that plows so much of his own money into our club, i reckon you’d be happy with Ellis back! I know your not directly having a pop at Randy but reading between the lines it’s obvious u dont like him or the way he runs the club.
quite the opposite, I think he is cracking owner and has put money in. What I have an issue with is the spin from the club, they are not being as open as they used to be. This did start with the MON affair but now it seems they are happy to leak things out rather than tell us straight
Take the issue with FXPRO now it seems in the pay per view forum on H&V they knew about this 2 months ago. Why not the fans who do not pay to enter this secret world ?
clearly the local press boys are being fed a lot which we are not. Even this annual report was kept quite and issued on a Saturday and only because I have an alert for this on companies house did I find out.
clearly the whole MON affair from around this point last year stung and hurt the club and it has changed.
One thing that is totally underestimated is that Villa could go completely b*lls up, be forced to sell all our players, and the very worst that could happen is we turn into a decent championship side, given the amazing output of our youth levels. Just think, if forced too we could have a squad now of Myhill, Ridgewell, Clark, Cahill, Baker, Two Gardners, Osborne, Agbon, L Moore, Bannan, Albrighton, Weimann, etc etc etc. That 15 year old lad in the first team too. Easily good enough to salvage a respectable standing, even if we have to sell all our top players and reduce the wagebill. The fact that a lot of our stars are English also prevents a firesale, as English means expensive, no matter what the trouble of the team selling them. Think we should try to work within our means again though, but does that mean we have to lower our expectations, or simply require and expect more from the youths?
both mate
or Randy keeps funding us
Interesting read Ian.
Close your blog? If you do, you’ll need a spanking.
not now !!
Not seen the a/c’s in detail myself yet, but from the figures above the first thing that strikes me is the “£30m loss due to player transactions” – bear in mind this was in the 12m to May 2010:
Somebody remind me just who did MON buy the last time he spent Lerner’s money?
It seems that a lot of the extra borrowing has simply gone to fund MON’s ‘pay top whack, sell for almost nothing’ approach, quite apart from the ridiculous wages that were being paid to players who rarely played.
As for going belly-up – well we’re in the same boat as Chelsea, Citeh, and every other PL club that relies on a rich owner to fund it. The only alternative would be a club owned by it’s fans – but we’ve been there before [plc days..] and if we were still shareholders the club would be asking us to reach deep into our pockets again and again through rights issues and the like, to keep funding the same losses.
well just to say in summary they said as a club that
the directors consider that the following significant investments in new players and infrastructure, the group has exciting growth prospects, both in existing and new markets.
Don’t be suprised if the question of naming-rights is raised again the near future, especially if the shirt sponsor situation is left hanging in the air.
Nobody would want to see the stadium name changed for any sponsor – but we may have to let one of the stands go for grabs anytime soon…
at turnover of just £90m for me the wages have to lose around £20m, probably around 10m so far
and for us to afford players without selling we certainly need extra revenue, those figures from last season are not going to be any better this season
Agreed – our chances of increasing revenue at the moment appear to be zilch, and with attendances down it’ll probably be lower this season.
On top of that, although there’s the £18m from Milner last summer, since then GH’s buys [Bent...etc.] have totalled some £25m the other way.
All in all, the current season’s figures are very, very likely to look a whole lot worse in a year’s time.
wages will be lower, bringing the total loss down by quite a bit, some extra money from FxPro but league money going to be a mill or so down and less TV appearances this season
probably be slightly better, next year
Lat season included the Wembley LC final, as well as the FAC semis, as well as a slightly longer run in Europe [all on TV, if I remember correctly?], and 6th place finish in the prem. Unless we do something spectacular in the FAC the next few weeks, I don’t see any way that this season’s revenue will come near to last year’s – and I’m not sure that the wage cuts so far will be quite as deep as most fans have speculated on these pages, and others, over the last couple of months.
Don’t want to be negative – but I AM an accountant!!
have you seen the company report yet any thoughts ?
I can email it to you if you want
the wage cuts we can speculate on but a £10m reduction is the min and we can total it up now and those likely to go in the summer
Not seen them – I take the odd day off at weekends! By all means email them if you have the time, but realistically they do usually take some time to read-through-the figures [most a/c's are designed to conceal more than they reveal].
PS – Ian, bear in mind that the current year also stops in May – so any further transfers out/wages cuts in the coming summer, won’t appear until May 2012!
of course and that is what I am interested in, will e-mail them to you
see what you find over the next two days, can see nothing strange except for the £7m disposal of lnd to Randy
doug ellis stand i would forgo for a decent wad…
And yet still people question randy!! Agree Ian. People may be critical of your blog but it doesn’t stop people reading it! Hope you can keep it going.
just shows how far there is to go despite great strides forward under randy but the fact of the matter is MON spent big and we gambled and failed. Got to push up the table (each place is 500k more) and keep cup runs going rather especially europe if we want to grow on a more global scale and increase the available sponsors and ‘fans’. We’re not a million miles away and given the tough times our turnover increasing andless of a loss than many is encouraging, but we are still not secure
Some of the rubbish on High Wages (Thanks O’Neil) that will be gone by the summer:
Heskey = 60,000k a week
Petrov = 55k a Week
Fridel = 55k a Week
Warnock = 50+k a week
Either Collins / Diunne or Cueller = 50+k a week
Ireland = 65k week
Beye = 40k a week
Total saving if including bonuses of over 20 million a year, so hopefully some of the damage O’Neil did you the club will be repiared.
& the shte Reo-Coker 45,000
Too much bad business to go into detail, so I’ll just start with 2 recent signings.
August 2009, Warnock cost £8m, Beye cost £3m. And so far they’ve picked up a combined wage packet in excess of £7m.
In 18 months we’ve spent £18m (plus) on these 2 very mediocre full-backs. And with no one ever likely to be stupid enough to make a decent offer for either of them; they will continue to cost the club about £100k a week.
On top of that we’ve already this season made a £10m loss on the transfer fees of Shorey and Davies (in addition to the millions we paid in wages to them for making zero contribution in the last 2 seasons)
Villa fans don’t need accounts to tell them that in the last 4 years Randy Lerner has been ripped off big time by some of these clubs and their rejects.
UTV
I’d love a copy of the accounts as well thanks Ian…
i have no doubt that in the summer we will sell
carew
warnock
young
beye
ireland
heskey
maybe dunne/collins
nrc?
petrov?
gabby?
this will massively reduce the wage bill and with gh looking abroad to younger players i.e gomis,fofana,mbokani,spahic (20k-40k wage) this could have the wage bill looking alot prettier and therefore the overall figures having a brighter outlook next year
we will see just how much next year for sure and the key question is whether the foreign players bound to come in are actually any good, thats the problem GH’s record in that area at Liverpool was very patchy
Good job Randy loves villa and is worth £1.34 billion then isn’t it ?
Randy owns all the companies involved in Villa, so he owes himself money and is in debt to himself basically.
The bank loans are from his banks surely to keep things above board and legitimate.
Randy is worth around £750m, the family trust from which he borrows money around £3.5bn
not sure on the bank loans, there is another credit facility for another £11m and not sure why we have borrowed from them.
Randy’s divorce would have cost him a few bob
Hi, I’d be very interested to read through the financials if you are kind enough to send a copy to he email address provided? Thanks!
glensider rob perez pricks dont slag ian robbo off he does a good job on the blog fuck off
How the fuck is this an exclusive? Not hard to get hold of if required. This Blog is unfortunately the Villa Cyber World equivalent of The Sunday Sport. Edited badly and full of shit.
Ignore this twot Robbo.
I always look for your blog before the other Villa bloggers. At least you give everyone an opportunity to make a comment. More than can be said of the others who are all like the BBC 606 with its awful censorship
As for negativity about Villa. I don’t think that comes across as much as your passion and comitment to this great club that we have supported for so many years.
you wait until what I say about arsenal
That post sums this readership up Chop….. ie, you. This site is a joke a drags the good and gracious name of Aston Villa in the gutter. I’m glad there are more like me that live in the Real world.
Ian Pal you do a graet job keep it up, much better than that tosser damian that claims to be an expert on all things Aston Villa yet is updating his blog during games because doesn’t actually go to the games…….
Jinksy….
Damian if I recall correctly, lives in Sweden.
There you go then i rest my case Murph!!!!!!
Hi Ian – would love a copy of the accounts too if possible (to email provided).
Given the number of players sold / released recently I’d like to think the wage bill will be starting to drop towards acceptable levels soon – I’m still amazed when I see our wage bill compared to Spurs (who have much more quality at this moment).