How on earth will we ever get our finances in order?

N

Nosmo-King

Well-known member
Or will we? For years - with the exception of our season in the Prem which yielded a modest £5 million profit, we have posted losses - some pretty meaty ones too.

Why after all these years do we still operate like this? The season currently it can be expected- and support from Gibbo has never been more gratefully received.

I read somewhere Gibbo’s investment is over £200 million. Surely he should expect better results. We need to be more professional and better run as a club across the board. Can you see this day? Without a radical overhaul on player recruitment, wages that are sustainable and a club run to a budget how much longer can we expect undying support?

Really is time to sort out the club from top to bottom. We can’t continue to live way beyond our means
 
NK, interesting that Steve Gibson said himself earlier this week that the end product on the pitch has to produce a more profitable business financially speaking.
 
I know it is unpopular to say it but this is the massive scaling back on wages that started under Tony Pulis - and like Warnock, Pulis was actually working directly on this with Gibson and Neil Bausor. It was a massive shunt into reverse but we had to wait to see out contract after contract from the Premier and Monk seasons.
Imagine the losses written off this season and then next as well with season cards rolling over and then Boro's percentage of the £10 season card streaming waived.
I know the last time I spoke at length with Neil Bausor they felt they had the strategy correct going forward - but so much depends on Gibson.
We can now well understand just how livid they were with clubs like Sheff Wed and Derby bending the spirit of FFP. We were struggling against the end of parachute payments and they were creatively spend, spend, spending money they weren't allowed to.
 
Nosmo-King said:
Or will we? For years - with the exception of our season in the Prem which yielded a modest £5 million profit, we have posted losses - some pretty meaty ones too.

Why after all these years do we still operate like this? The season currently it can be expected- and support from Gibbo has never been more gratefully received.

I read somewhere Gibbo’s investment is over £200 million. Surely he should expect better results. We need to be more professional and better run as a club across the board. Can you see this day? Without a radical overhaul on player recruitment, wages that are sustainable and a club run to a budget how much longer can we expect undying support?

Really is time to sort out the club from top to bottom. We can’t continue to live way beyond our means
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I agree that the club needs to start trading profitably - or break even at worst. How that will be accomplished is anyone's guess though. If every club spends beyond its means then Boro will just slip down the leagues until the budget is enough to arrest the slide. I don't know where that is - fourth tier perhaps?

As far as the indebtedness is concerned, it'll sit on the books without any hope of repayment until HMRC says 'collect it or lose it', and at that point it'll be written off and the cycle starts over. I think it's happened three times so far.

If Boro manage promotion to the Prem League again then Steve Gibson ought to consider selling up. Selling a Prem League club will at least allow him to recoup some of his money. As things are today he'd have to pay someone to take the club off his hands.

My own opinion is that football in England is only viable at Prem League level. Owners below that level should accept that they can only spend the club's income and no more, and players should accept they'll only be paid a small fraction of their current salaries, and they may need to get part time jobs if they carry on wasting their money on tattoos and cars.
 
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Prior to the period of stupidity heralded in by the introduction of the Premier League, footballers were well paid. They didn't need part time jobs and it was a lot cheaper to watch them play.

Steady away second tier players were on enough to set themselves up in business afterwards, you didn't have to be a top flight star.

A step back into reality wouldn't be a bad move for the game.
 
For a club in our circumstances we must surely have a backbone of home grown players and this is easier said than done, but with Neil Warnock's knowledge in this league perhaps progress is not too far away. But after our next promotion Boro must stay up for more than a season.
 
Corcaigh_the_Cat said:
Prior to the period of stupidity heralded in by the introduction of the Premier League, footballers were well paid. They didn't need part time jobs and it was a lot cheaper to watch them play.

Steady away second tier players were on enough to set themselves up in business afterwards, you didn't have to be a top flight star.

A step back into reality wouldn't be a bad move for the game.
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How far do you want to wind back? I am not sure that the players of the great Leeds team or Liverpool didn't achieve enough to not have to open hardware stores or try and find a pub etc. Shouldn't Stuart Boam after a football lifetime at Boro have been comfortable enough not to need to start again with a shop business? They were all top, top players.
There are plenty of others creaming off the wealth that is sloshing around the top end of the game.
For all those that didn't have a good business head on their shoulders the end of a football could be a spiral into drink, mental health battles and staving off hard times.
It must be very difficult to retire at 35 and have to find a new career competing against people of 25.
 
We need to be - and this isn’t new- a lot more shrewd in our transfer dealings both in fees and wages. Some on here think Bolasie and Kebano are within reach- I doubt this very much unless they accept a massive nosedive in salary.
To put matters in perspective, Barnsley lost a bit over £3 million in the last accounts I could access. Who would say they are a club not well run?
 
There are plenty of examples of players who bought into businesses they didn't understand and lost loads of money. Plenty more examples of players who just went off the rails and ended up as penniless drunks.

Some of the smarter players went into businesses where they could use their celebrity status to make a good living.

One of my pals used to play for Huddersfield and became a financial advisor when he quit. He's doing well. He's selling to people who watched him play - easy to get appointments.
 
Soutra said:
I agree that the club needs to start trading profitably - or break even at worst. How that will be accomplished is anyone's guess though. If every club spends beyond its means then Boro will just slip down the leagues until the budget is enough to arrest the slide. I don't know where that is - fourth tier perhaps?

As far as the indebtedness is concerned, it'll sit on the books without any hope of repayment until HMRC says 'collect it or lose it', and at that point it'll be written off and the cycle starts over. I think it's happened three times so far.

If Boro manage promotion to the Prem League again then Steve Gibson ought to consider selling up. Selling a Prem League club will at least allow him to recoup some of his money. As things are today he'd have to pay someone to take the club off his hands.

My own opinion is that football in England is only viable at Prem League level. Owners below that level should accept that they can only spend the club's income and no more, and players should accept they'll only be paid a small fraction of their current salaries, and they may need to get part time jobs if they carry on wasting their money on tattoos and cars.
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Steve Gibson will have had huge hidden business benefits from being owner of the Boro, it’s not a straightforward equation.
 
Stop signing average players on big wages and long contracts who are approaching the end of their careers would be a start
 
fmttmadmin said:
How far do you want to wind back? I am not sure that the players of the great Leeds team or Liverpool didn't achieve enough to not have to open hardware stores or try and find a pub etc. Shouldn't Stuart Boam after a football lifetime at Boro have been comfortable enough not to need to start again with a shop business? They were all top, top players.
There are plenty of others creaming off the wealth that is sloshing around the top end of the game.
For all those that didn't have a good business head on their shoulders the end of a football could be a spiral into drink, mental health battles and staving off hard times.
It must be very difficult to retire at 35 and have to find a new career competing against people of 25.
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Whilst I take on board what you're saying with regards to the length of playing career, their free time, and there's a lot of it during their footballing careers, could be spent learning a trade or profession, or football set up an institution that helps the move into society outside the game.

What you appear to be suggesting is that their retirement from football is an end to their contribution to society. I'm sorry but that's not on, it's unfair to the rest of society.

Stuart Boam, Gordon Jones, Eric McMordie etc did earn enough, not all having played at the top level, to kick off a business and I'm not knocking that, my argument is that they managed to set themselves up without being paid an equivalent of the ridiculous sums paid today, without the fans having to dig so deep and before immense amounts of money came into the game via the TV companies.

As for mental health, problems are going to arise in some regardless of their financial position as they find themselves adjusting to life outside the limelight.
 
Sky money and the potential to earn more of it fuels many, many clubs on their ascents of Mount Debt.

The enormous risk for so many clubs is that the Sky money dries up if their subscriptions and dominance of the broadcast market is dramatically affected by online platforms and piracy. There is no other show in town and if you've seen how Amazon treat employees you wouldn't bet on them offering better settlements.
 
HolgateCorner said:
Steve Gibson will have had huge hidden business benefits from being owner of the Boro, it’s not a straightforward equation.
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Free seats to watch football, and plenty of kudos in the area. I'm not sure what else though. It's like being an NHS employee - everyone thinks you are doing a great job, and thanks you every day, but clapping and gratitude don't pay the bills.
 
Blimey I clicked onto this thread expecting it to be about the Covid lockdown , furlough issue ! A complete mega debate in itself 🤔
 
Soutra said:
Free seats to watch football, and plenty of kudos in the area. I'm not sure what else though. It's like being an NHS employee - everyone thinks you are doing a great job, and thanks you every day, but clapping and gratitude don't pay the bills.
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He is an international businessman, and is known throughout the country as the owner of the Boro, that will have opened doors for him, none of these people do this sort of thing just to lose money. You can‘t put a price on the personal profile it will have given him. There’s a much much bigger picture.
 
You really think being the owner of Boro opens doors? Not sure of that. The days of Rav, The Little Fella, perhaps.
For years we’ve been largely a run of the mill Championship club. And our recognition in today’s game is a pale shadow of what it was.
 
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