mrjc

14 hours ago, CVByrne said:

You are still thinking in the concept of net spend. We are a club for whom cashflows aren't important as we have large financial backers. Our limitations are the FFP rules. So if Jack appears as a one off +100m in this years accounts as is debated above then we need to put as much of the amortised cost of new players in the next 3 years as possible. Ings for example is 30m of the 100m from Jack as his contract is for 3 years, the period Jacks +100m is part of our FFP calculations. 

Buendia, Leon Bailey and Ashley Young were singings made within FFP if Jack had stayed and signed his new contract. So the additional headroom Jacks transfer gives us has only had 30m of that "spent" as you could say. If we get Ward Prowse in for 40m on a 4 year deal with an option for 1 more, we are then "spending" 30m of the 100m Jack money. Wages would be marginal difference between Jacks 200k per week new contract and JWP and Ings combined. So our available remaining room in next 3 years account would be 40m of the Jack money. 

It's why we will need to overpay for singings this summer or next to really utilise this Jack money. At a minimum we need one new signing this summer along with Ings.

We've plenty more to do with squad to create headroom. Emi Martinez new 5 year deal this season would spread his remaining 2 year 10m amortisation over 5 years. Moving Wesley on for a fee of 8m next summer after a Loan spell would offset his remaining amortisation. We've Trezeguet and El Ghazi to move on next summer who selling will give us a net positive to our accounts vs their small remaining amortisation. 

It's this type of thinking around the squad development we need to have. "self sustaining" clubs need to worry about cashflows as much or more than FFP. We just get a new equity injection from our owners when we have those type of issues.

Fair enough, agree with some parts, definitely disagree with others...but it's one approach!

5 minutes ago, Lions&Dragons said:

Just had this through

The online sales window for Members is open at 5pm tomorrow (9th August) for the below fixtures:

*_Aston Villa V Newcastle_*
*Saturday 21st August 2021*
*Kick off 15:00*

*_Aston Villa V Brentford_*
*Saturday 28th August 2021*
*Kick off 15:00*

 

I had the same - despite the email saying the 9th, it looks like it is actually tomorrow (Tuesday 10th) at 5pm

6 minutes ago, MaVilla said:

Yeah I wonder if we have effectively spent all the grealiah money already?

Factoring in all transfers we are currently 18m in the green, if we include wages I assume we are close to a net zero??

So anything else we spend is as per normal / what we could have spent before this grealish money? (Ie: 80m or so?)

Out of interest, what makes you think we are £18m in the green on transfers?  I'm not sure it will be as positive as that, although I guess it depends what you assume on Buendia / Ings / Engels.

But also - I don't think £80m per window is normal / sustainable - it gets a lot more complex, but basically we wouldn't be able to keep doing what we have been the last two summers forever.  There's some good analysis from Czarnikjak on the previous page which sets out our various options - essentially it depends on whether we want to go very aggressive this year (which almost certainly WILL cause us problems down the line), or take a more (sensible) longer term view.

Very difficult to know though, ultimately - I could maybe see how we'd just about get one more big-ish signing done at most, but would seem odd if it's more than that.

2 hours ago, CVByrne said:

Which means if we don't sign anymore players this summer we essentially "lose" some of the Jack money. This makes the rapid Ings signing with a "large" transfer fee and a 3 year contract (with option for 1 more) make total sense. It's also why other clubs will now want higher asking prices for their players knowing the Jack money will essentially amortise over 3 years.

One would imagine we'll likely try get some January business done too. Also is it possible to sign someone onto this years accounts before next summers transfer window opens? 

We've effectively already 'spent' the Grealish money though.  In transfer fees: Buendia + Bailey + Ings is reportedly £95m / £100m.  In wages, you would think those three + Young, in total, are earning more than Jack was. 

So unless we have any underlying headroom (previous analysis from Czarnikjak suggests there is some, but not loads) or get some sales in, I don't think we can be overloading the P&L with lots of big signings this summer / January.

2 minutes ago, blandy said:

Paid over 3 years (if reports are correct) rather than a one off in terms of income calcs and FFP, so the last payment in 2 years time will still be part of calcs  in 5 years.

I don't think this is right - the FFP calc is on profit, not cash.  So even if the cash is paid over 3 years, the profit is all recognised now, both in accounting and FFP terms

21 hours ago, Czarnikjak said:

In this post I will try to show how the departure of JG for £100m changes our FFP position and what's possible with this kind of money.

For some background, you can look at one of my previous posts (linked below), where I explained our situation before JG departure. I also showed some numbers in that post explaining why I think that Buendia and Bailey came in regardless of JG money, but Ings and any further incomings will be funded by his departure:

 

Important thing to remember is that the £100m sale profit is a one-off injection and it will disappear from our FFP balance after 3 years. For this reason one would always prefer a long term revenue increase instead of a player sale, but I digress.

With this in mind, the sale of JG frees up ~£106.5m (including his £6.5m per season wages) from our FFP allowance this year and ~£120m (including £20m 3 years wages) over the next 3 years. Past the 3rd year, its just his wages that are freed up.

Obviously there is an unlimited number of ways how you can spend this £100m, below I will show 3 illustrative examples how we can do that from the FFP standpoint. I am not suggesting that any of these options are what we will or should do. Its just to show what's possible.

 

Option 1 - Lets go mental (aka Dr Tony's method)

Lets just spend all this money straight away, ok...we freed up £106.5m for this season and used £16m on Danny Ings (£10m amortisation and £6m wages). Still have £90m allowance left this season.

Technically, we could still buy players for about £250m to fill that allowance (£50m amortisation if signed on 5 year contracts and £40m to cover their wages) and not breach FFP this season.

Possible, but nobody in their right mind would do that as it leaves us massively exposed next year. We would need to either win the Champions League to bring in £100m extra revenue or sell players again for close to £100m just to balance the FFP books.

Option 2 - Full on but sustainable

As I mentioned before this £100m is time boxed to 3 years. Including freed up wages we have £120m allowance to play with over the next 3 years. This gives us £40m per year if divided equally.

With that in mind, we can increase our wages and amortisation by £40m this summer and it will be covered from FFP standpoint for next 3 years. In 3 years time, hopefully our revenue will be sufficiently higher to cover that, or we can simply sell a player or two.

The table below shows how that could look in terms of incomings (number of players is irrelevant as long as total wages and amortisation don't exceed £40m per season):

 

 

Option 3 - Cautious approach

Maybe we don't want to bring in too many players at once to destabilise the squad? Maybe we want to leave some money in reserve for next year?

We could just simply only add one more cheap CB cover (£2m amortisation + £2m wages) and only use £20m of our newly freed up FFP allowance this year. That would leave us with sizeable budget for next summer spending.

Personally I think we will end up doing something in between Option 2 and 3.

 

 

 

Good stuff, and interesting.

One big opportunity has to be have more players in the squad with a decent resale value, even once they are surplus to our first team / squad requirements.  This was the big problem when we came up - we had the extreme position of loans ending - players retiring - needing to keep some bodies - one outlier with a huge value.  So basically no £ inflows and lots of £ outflows needed (wages and fees).  If we've been buying well, but continue to improve the squad....the players who drop down the pecking order can hopefully maintain some value to help balance things up.

This is all part of the long term problem we've been having to correct over the last few years, but should ultimately help balance between options 2 and 3.

10 minutes ago, briny_ear said:

Genuinely don’t understand how anyone can wish Jack anything but all the best for the future, after all he has done for us over the past 4 years. 
 

As the absolutely dominant player in the team he got us out of the championship, kept us in the premier league against the odds and got us to 11th last season. Who knows where we could have ended if he hadn’t got injured.

He now has about 4-5 years left at most at the peak of his abilities and he obviously will want to challenge at the highest level.

Sorry if this upsets some but there is no way Villa could provide that level of football over the next four years. Even if the wild talk of us challenging for the “next level” and getting to the Champions league is true, it would take 4-5 years to get there by which time his career is starting to wind down. Why shouldn’t he take the opportunity to go higher now?

The challenge for the Villa owners, scouting and coaching teams is to show they are capable of continuing the progress of recent seasons without over-relying on one exceptionally talented player.

All the negative, petulant, spiteful energy in this thread seems a waste of time - what’s it going to achieve?

Time to give the head a wobble and get on with supporting Villa next season rather than hating a former player?

Agree with this - it hurts, of course it does.  But it's also understandable from where he is as a truly elite footballer.  For what it's worth, while I'm gutted, I'll have pride as a Villa fan if he goes on to really big things.

On 02/08/2021 at 08:47, blandy said:

If you extend a players contract that also extends the amortisation, which is a positive impact. For example (hypothetical), we buy a defender for 20 million quid, on a 4 year contract and 100 k wages.

he costs us 5 mill a year in wages and 5 mill a year amortisation of his fee (20 mill /4).

now, after 2 years we give a new contract for 4 years with wages of 120 k. His value at the time = 20 - (2 x 5) = 10 mill. That now gets amortised at 2.5 mill a year ( a saving of 2.5 mill a year). His wage increase of 20 grand a week costs around 1 mill a year extra. In FFP terms that’s a win.

Fair point, I hadn't taken account of that (although understand how it works).  That's probably only really offsetting wages for Mings though.  For McGinn - his annual amortisation would have been pretty low anyway (not more than £0.5m / £0.6m I would think)....adding a year to his contract, which I think is what was done, will only reduce that fairly marginally, so I suspect it's not offsetting his wage increase (£10k per week would effectively be worth his whole amortisation charge, for example).  I guess these things are relatively marginal though, so difficult to assess with too much accuracy given the uncertainty over the overall 2020/21 position.

On 27/07/2021 at 20:43, Czarnikjak said:

@MrBlack

I am making 2 assumptions here:

1. We didn't break FFP in 20/21

2. We have no intention on breaking it in 21/22

I think these are pretty safe assumptions as Purslow many times publicly  reiterated his commitment to the rules. We also went as far as "selling" our stadium to stay within the rules, which I think indicates we are serious about sticking to them.

So, with that in mind, this was our FFP situation as of May this year (looking back at last 3 FPP monitoring periods):

 

Right near the limit, since then we have released about £23m from FFP balance as per the transactions below:

And added about £13m, as below:

That still leaves us about £10m spare (without any more outgoings and no major revenue increase), which basically allows you £30m player on £80k wage (£30m amortised over 5 years = £6m plus £4m wages),  Bailey for example.

However if you look closely, our 17/18 season will drop off from the calculations next year, and as it was a particulary bad year, it gives us another £10m or so to play with this summer.

Selling Hourihane for example for £5m, frees up another £7m (£5m profit on the sale as he has hardly any value left on our books and £2m wages). That allows you a £20m player on £60k wage.

So overall, it's not looking too bad, assuming we didn't go over last year.

 

 

Haven't visited this thread for a while, and thanks for this, looks good.  Only thoughts which might make this a bit less positive (admittedly without having fully thought this through....):

• I think using the average of 19/20 and 20/21 as the 'start point' for 21/22 maybe ends up too optimistic for a couple of things
• For example, even if we are saving £11m year-on-year for Barkley....because that's going into a two-year average, I think we'll only save half of that compared to the average, if that makes sense?
• On the 'ins', wouldn't we also need to include the fairly significant contract increases that we handed out last season to Jack, Mings, McGinn etc, which will also be diluted as being part of a 2-year average, but we will have a full year of next year?
• A full year of Sanson wages vs effectively a 1/4 year in a 2-yr average calc.

As I say, not fully thought through, but wouldn't this eat into the ~£10m surplus?

That said, this also ignores any increase in income (hopefully a bit through league position + gates + commercial), and also is pretty difficult given the uncertainty over the 20/21 numbers.

Also, clearly all before any change in Jack status!

2 minutes ago, villalad21 said:

Guy is just desperate for CL football.

That's how I see it.

Yeah I get that impression too.  Feels like he knows he's good enough (he clearly is), and the exposure to real elite football / players over the summer may have whetted the appetite even more 

2 minutes ago, The_Steve said:

That’s what it feels like. 
 

City know this and are trying to use this transfer to leverage Spurs 

This might be right...but if so...is that such a good thing?  Doesn't scream 'loyalty'!

Just now, dont_do_it_doug. said:

I'm fairly confident he will have said that with a wry smile on his face. The idea of Jack being moody or sullen about it is an absurd one. 

In any case, he's telling the truth. 

Guardian article suggested exactly that, it was with a bit of a smile.  I think he comes across very well with media actually - quite genuine and honest (including in this case!)

First touch was phenomenal last night, pretty much every time.  He stands out so highly, against virtually everyone he plays against.

Interestingly he said there was interest, Smith said (I think, as it was quick) that no bids were received (both of which are probably true).  Either way, as some of those have said above, I don't think you can blame him for considering his options, but he seems genuinely excited to stay - here's to a massive season ahead! 

17 minutes ago, Adam2003 said:

Fascinated by this oddly specific part of Gabby’s comments.

Haha, very random but made me laugh for some reason.  Maybe getting him confused with Paul Warhurst?!

For the second CB (assuming #5 is a given), are people more #4 or #6?

I've always thought of #4 as a defensive midfielder, #6 as a CB.

Good chat 

6 hours ago, colhint said:

But why. I mean just why what's in it for you. If it comes out you are the one spreading this stuff, So your mate spreads it and the papers get to know, Here's 50 grand for your story pal who was it? All this just after the team probably got a reminder on how to behave, and the 2 clubs involved put out statements pretty much saying our player has been a clearing in the woods.

Helpful for players to have a few mates in the press....I'll dish out the odd bit of gossip / team news...you then treat me well, decent write-ups, more importantly don't sell me out if there's anything negative going on.  

10 minutes ago, OutByEaster? said:

With the CV adjustment, last season and the coming season are grouped together to a single reporting period. I'm not sure exactly how that will work, but the timeframes are adjusted so that it'll be looked at over a four year period to allow teams to counter CV losses.

Does the Championship figure include the stadium sale?

I suspect our incomes for last season were around the £160m mark as opposed to about £60m in the Championship - plus the owners are allowed a level of investment above and beyond the money the club generates - I think so long as we don't get relegated we're fine and dandy.

It's very difficult to figure out though - the rules are complicated to start with and we pay a whole lot of accountants to make them even more cloudy.

 

Yes, the Championship figure includes the stadium sale.  Basically our exceptionals virtually netted out that year for accounting purposes (+£36m stadium, +£14m from land (BMH?), -£30m Xia payment, -£16m promotion bonuses), but I am presuming that all were included in the FFP calc apart from the Xia payment.  Don't know for sure though.

Totally agree on the cloudiness (although it's definitely helped us!).   

PL income - sounds about right, although I'm not sure on our share of the repayments to Sky et al for disruption, which I think are spread over 2 / 3 years.

I think, from an initial look:

- From the PL rules, it looks like we aren't allowed to lose more than £105m over a rolling three-year period.

- For this coming season, that will therefore cover the last year in the Championship, and 2 x years in the PL.

- In that last year in the Championship, we had a loss of -£69m...but I'm pretty sure from that you can exclude the £30m we paid off the Doc with, and £9m of youth development expenditure. So maybe a £30m loss for the test.

- That leaves £75m of losses allowed for the two years in the PL...and here it's just really hard (impossible) to know.  Clearly revenue's gone up massively (although this is maybe partly repayable I think, due to Covid disruption)....unconfirmed rumours of a reduced wage bill....and a lot of transfer fees paid without (so far) many meaningful ones in.

I suspect we're okay as the club seem to know what they're doing on this, but there's not really enough public information to conclude.

I wouldn't be at all surprised if he's left out.  Two main reasons - firstly, the lockdown incident.  Yes, it was a while ago now, but it was still really really bad imo.  Secondly - for most of the period post lockdown, he wasn't anywhere near his best.  He grabbed the headlines on the last day, but was otherwise below par for the month or so below that.

I hope he is picked as I think he is clearly good enough (despite recent form), but it feels like Southgate has doubts, and the above could be easy reasons he uses to leave him out.

I thought he'd come back from the break raring to go, effectively having had a decent rest (from looking drained / losing heart with some pretty average performances pre-lockdown), and basically having got away with the lockdown issue as cleanly as he could have done (obviously speculating, but I imagine that could have been a whole lot worse had the circumstances behind the car crash fully come out, rather than being quietly managed away).  But he's looked laboured, like he knows the game is up, like he has no faith in his teammates any more (maybe fair!), and like he's conceded we've gone.  Which sadly, we now probably have.

I don't think he doesn't care at all....but that is how it's panned out.

There was a short spell towards the end of the Newcastle game where he looked unplayable, but other than that it's been a really disappointing return - and with short term sentiment weirdly meaning a lot, it's probably cost us a few £m and him potentially an England call up soon.

Happy with that at £8m (swayed by reading Burnley post above!)

10 minutes ago, OutByEaster? said:

Since I found out that we saved £45m from our losses by revaluing Villa Park in the year we came down, I'm more convinced that there are spaces in FFP for accountancy chicanery to prevent unwanted player sales. I'm not convinced that the rules will still be the same when the current accounting period is erm...accounted for, and I have no idea how we'll make it through this financial year and pass FFP, but I won't be too surprised if we find a way that doesn't involve having to sell Grealish.

 

Let's hope so.

I guess the difference with that £45m is that (a) you could tell from the accounts that something had happened, as it showed up as a huge exceptional item, which we haven't had since and (b) it made our losses bigger before we could 'save' it, if that makes sense, so didn't really help the underlying position. 

There is obviously stuff we don't know though, so I hope you're right

6 hours ago, terrytini said:

I just keep coming back to Purslow.

He was there when they wrote the rules. He says we are ok.

In my simple mind, if we aren’t ok, that makes him a liar, or a fool.

It would also - presumably - mean the Owners happily invested in a sinking ship.

Call me naive, and I know we’ve all been “ bitten” before, but I can’t see it.

I just wonder why, if we ARE ok, why they can’t say how come.

I agree, I think he's credible and he knows what he's doing.  I doubt they are lying about it, or just hoping we'll be okay.

But...other than signing a new contract (which we know can be done to help manage a selling price), I don't think there's been any guarantee of not selling JG this summer, although I could easily have missed this.

So the most feasible outcome I know of...based on the publicly available information, what seems like the size of the gap, and being able to avoid a breach...is that we do have to sell him this summer.  That would be consistent with Purslow saying we are okay, would have made sense last summer when we could turn Spurs down, and would make more sense of our continued spending, knowing we had a £25m+ pure profit up our sleeve that we are technically allowed to put towards this season's losses.

Obviously I hope it's not, and that Purslow has some better way up his sleeve - I just have no idea, and have seen no real suggestion, of what that might be.

3 minutes ago, mikeyp102 said:

Not singularing you out (so hopefully someone knows the answer), but why do people rely on Swissramble? Who are they? How do we know they are right? 

 

From what i read, we are fine with FFP. We recently purchased a £7m keeper, we purchased a highly sought after French RB (and loaned him back to the club), we seemingly have an option to but Hause and for me  (I’m not ITK, just my feeling on him), it looks like Mings will sign. Our manager has made Jack captain and says he is the long term future of the club. Our CEO (who was part of the ffp committee), says we don’t have to go up his year and that we need to go up correctly. None of this screams to me are we have any concerns over ffp and they we now for once have a plan in place (which includes not selling jack,  unless a ridiculous offer, or he submits a transfer request). Now of course we’ve been fooled before bybthose in charge, but personally  not worried. 

No probs.

Honestly, he might be wrong.  But I've read up on the rules a fair bit myself (not to the same level of detail as him), and have a finance background, and what he says / writes makes a lot of sense to my understanding of how it works.  That said, it's only based on publicly available information, so don't have the full picture - and in fairness, he doesn't claim to be ITK, he just analyses what is available to us all, including reading FFP small print!

Re the rest of it....I had struggled to understand why we didn't need to sell Jack last summer, to be compliant for this season....and then was even more confused when we signed Bolasie and Tammy in particular, given the wages.  I don't actually think the January moves will make that much difference to this season's numbers...the £7m transfer fee doesn't totally hit our profit this year, and while we have Mings / Hause, we have sent some more out on loan and returned some loans.  The only thing that has made sense to me, as to how we can avoid a breach this season, is the theory about having to sell Jack post-season, and put it towards this season's losses.  Obviously I hope this is wrong and there's something big we're missing...but sadly not sure what that is...

1 hour ago, leighavfc said:

Yeah i guessed i was wrong right i get it now! 

So its up or bye bye Jack then really... tbf we have all known this was probably the most likely scenario. I read a figure of 29 million failure somewhere.. guessing we will get 30 mil + for him and that will be that. And to be fair it would work in all parties favour. God i hope we get up now lol

Certainly ramps the pressure up a notch going into these last 8 games! 

 

Yep, agreed.

Although...not to put more bad news on it...but even if we get promoted, we will still have maybe failed the test for our time in the Championship (if we don't sell Jack).  Previous clubs have done that, got promoted and it's been ignored (not close to the detail, but I think Bournemouth, Brighton, Leicester maybe).  But I think now the PL has said it will work with the EFL to put sanctions on clubs...so it may even be that we need to sell him even if we get promoted.  I guess they'd basically be saying that you can't gain an unfair advantage by spending loads to get promoted, without there being some punishment.  That's a bit of an unknown though, so hopefully I'm wrong!