So finally we have some details of the annual report
It appears the details have been linked as below, I await to se the final report.
David Conn @david_conn
Aston Villa lost £18m last year; income £12m down, gates 3,500 down, £27m made selling players, and they cut costs – presume wages. Unhappy.
David Conn @david_conn
Aston Villa say Randy Lerner waived £20m interest on £107m loans to the club in 2011-12. He must be delighted with how it’s all gone….
It does appear the top line figures are very poor and like the government now, you cut more you lose more. As you try and get the wages in order you lose position and lose money. You then need to cut further as revenues are down and it is an ever decreasing circle.
Without seeing the actual figures it is difficult to judge this and what has happened. Waiving the interest is fine but the capital needs to be paid off still. Also that money is from the family trust and not Lerner himself.
So some questions
- What is the total wage bill ?
- What did the loss of income incorporate ? (£12M is about a eight of total turnover)
EDIT —
Got the details on the wages
David Conn @david_conn
Aston Villa cut wage bill by £13.8m in 2011-12, also made £26m selling players. Cut losses from £54m to £18m, but it looks like downsizing.
Now this year that will be about the same, there is no need to cut wages now at all unless preparing to go down
This is a very sad story of a failed businessman who lost the club £12M by appointing the one manager designed to do that.
EDIT –
If you extrapolate these results to this season I think it is certain even if we stay up the club will have to sell BEnteke as the price of failure.
Ian in an earlier post you asked the question “Is the price of being sustainable worth relegation?”
Having seen what has happened to clubs like Leeds, Portsmouth and Coventry over the past few years, I would have to say that it is worth the price (although it pains me to say it). The main thing is to have a team there to support, which is something that fans of the latter two of the above clubs might not have next season. The future of the club has to be secured whatever measures it takes.
I personally think we could have achieved that without suffering relegation (I am still hopeful we can avoid it by the way), but the club has been terribly on all levels for the past few seasons.
That is the cost of ambition. And we’re experiencing the cost of failure now, but it happened and we have to accept we didn’t qualify for the champions league to sustain the kind of investment Lerner put in and we can’t go on with the kinds of losses we have had in the past. Don’t forget there was a global financial crisis in the middle of all this. So we’re in an austerity period and this season is a continuation of that revolution, which is going to take time. Lambert’s philosophy is not a quick fix at all, but in my opinion there is no quick fix. I believe in time, not even that long, we will be ok. Next season we’ll be ok if we stay up and if we go down, we’ll come back up immediately. We are still a big club.
The club seem to know this. Lambert’s here to stay whatever happens this season.
People cite Leeds and Portsmouth as examples of clubs that have dropped and dropped but the change in financial practice now is there to avoid exactly those scenarios. The squad is being changed but there will be investment in the summer. The january window is one where wages and fees are out of control – a market clearly for the desperate to be taken advantage of. If you listen to Lambert he makes it known that was a big problem in January in not getting targets. In the summer, whatever league we will be in that will not be the case.
I want the club to be sustainable. The money ridiculous money in football makes me uneasy. I see Everton made a loss of £9.1 million last year. It seems they are the model for us in terms of financial management. We had losses almost double that in the same period of £17 million, and the season before we were making losses of £50 odd million. That is insanity. UTV.
Not everyone sees it in as pragmatic a light.
Lerner is a tosspot for not spending another £25m in January to most.
He has been his own worst enemy though.