Stoke have just published their Accounts (very late) to May 31 2020.
Under Financial Fair Play Rules they should be relegated, their losses have been cynically magnified to declare a loss so big in the year of Covid that it will be excused, enabling them to appear to be FFP compliant thereafter.
They had Parachute Payments that helped them to a trading loss of what appears to be "just" £19m.
They chose then to manipulate "Player Trading" by accelerating amortisation and taking massive impairment charges which effectively devalues or writes off a large number of their squad.
The nett effect is that Stoke CHOSE TO LOSE a total of £88m pre Tax (£86m post Tax)
Their owners are extremely wealthy (Bet 365) and can easily cover this additional loss of £73m with Group Undertakings (loans) from parent Group (as Gibson O'Neill do with Boro).
The owners injected zero equity to offset any of this loss.
They lost £15m the previous year to 2019.
They lost £32m in the year to 2018.
In the last three seasons Stoke have lost £135m and injected zero equity.
PL allowances are bigger than in the Championship, but FFP is a rolling 3 year assessment. 2 most recent seasons and an estimate for current season.
A Championship club can lose £39m across these 3 seasons, only if the owners inject £24m in equity.
If they don't then the loss can be just a combined £15m.
Stoke City have lost £103m in the last 2 seasons whilst in the Championship and will have lost heavily again in this current season to May 2021.
There is absolutely no way they can claim to have done anything other than obscenely flout FFP rules. The books of the year to 2020 are a disgraceful breach of FFP.
They are absolutely banking on nobody having the balls to call them out because of Covid, because there will be so many other clubs in a position of being outside the rules through losses made.
They are cynically burying all their dead in a year they hope will get written off.
All of their disastrous recruitment will have been just written off in a year they effectively don't have to account for.
That will then leave them with written down/off player values and more than manageable remaining amortisation to face, taking the burden of their poor decisions away from them.
From a business perspective their owners can fund this easily, but in Financial Fair Play world it is simply illegal and immoral.
Stoke City have had a competitive advantage by recruiting players they simply can't afford and now face no consequence.
The Club owe their Group a nett £158m due within a year.
They have a nett value of -£152m.
On the one hand, Stoke have richer owners than us who will protect the club every bit as much as Gibson.
On the other hand they have made even worse decisions on recruitment than us leading to relegation and hideous losses.
They owe their owner considerable more and they have a significantly larger nett negative value than Boro.
They are an even bigger financial basket case than Boro, but have owners to whom it is a drop. FFP is meant to prevent this, BUT FFP IS A JOKE.
www.stokesentinel.co.uk
