The new rules only stop you getting into Europe right? not exactly a problem to address for Forest, Derby or Cardiff
The adoption of Uefa's 'financial fair play' rules is just going to be the first step. The football league seem to have finally accepted that the current situation is unacceptable, with the vast majority of debt in English football actually being in the CCC. League 2 already have a salary cap, League 1 is seriously considering bringing it in, and eventually the CCC will have to get serious themselves, either by self-governing financial prudence, a similar wage cap, or the introduction of penalties for failure to comply with the rules.
I have a hard time believing the Forest Wage bill was that high, that would of made more news headlines at least but no doubt we've spent a penny or two over the past 3 years. We only need to get promoted once with the parachute payments now
It's not quite that high. I didn't notice in the published accounts that the turnover figure stated excludes TV revenues. Your wagebill actually reflects 106% of your turnover for the 2009/2010 season. It certainly won't have improved last season, and most likely worsened still, but won't know that until the 2010/2011 accounts are released.
You owed Doughty in excess of £62m, again, a figure that will have since worsened. Whilst this doesn't represent an immediate problem, he's loading the interest on top (£9m of the £62m is interest), which means you come to owe him more and more, and eventually he will want that money back, that's why he knocks the repayment date forward by a year every season rather than just writing it off. Doughty's putting in c£7m each season, which you can probably add to the £62m that you already owed him to the end of the 2010 seasons, so it's probably c£70m now at least.
You also still owe Nottingham City Council over £1m, or at least did, at the time of publishing. No idea if this is still outstanding or repaid.
Even given Doughty's injection for the season you still ended up making a £12m loss.
It really is all or nothing next year as continued failure to get into the Premier League is going to lead to a Portsmouth-style implosion eventually. Your club's hemorrhaging money at an alarming rate, and Doughty's only way of getting that back is to get into the elite league. But that's being leveraged against the risk of not doing and worsening the position every time you don't. Soon not even promotion is going to be enough.
We were in a similar(ish) position a few years ago when the LoG took us over. Their good work coupled with a timely promotion helped us improve our finances dramatically, but it would have counted for nothing had GSE not continued that work and stemmed the flow of money out of the club.
Over the same period used above, Derby made a loss of £2m. Last season it was less than that, somewhere between £1m and £2m. We own Pride Park, we own Moor Farm, our wagebill is less than turnover, and we have owners who're putting money in but don't treat it as a loan, and thus don't load interest in any way, shape or form.
Just some of our owners;
W Brett Wilson - billionaire
Jeff Mallett (who put Yahoo on the map) - Not quite a billionaire, but close (think it's about $850m)
Tom Ricketts - Owner and Chairman of the Chicago Cubs (The Ricketts family are worth that much that they paid $900m for the Cubs out of their own family trust)
A lot of Derby fans have been frustrated over the past couple of years as clearly they could put a vast amount of money into the club if they really wanted to. Instead they stated their goal was to make the club self-sustaining. At times that's seemed incredibly frustrating, but as we see other clubs deep in the financial mire, the prudent approach is probably the best one to have taken.
Of course it would be interesting to see how their approach changed if we got into the Premier League again. I suspect that those vast amounts of money may be a little more forthcoming then!
