Steve Bruce

[AvfcRigo82]

5 minutes ago, TRO said:

"Clear out the deadwood"....do you think other clubs are idiots....we couldn't give them away the wages they are on.

we can only sell players that are desired by other clubs.

its a drag, isn't it.

But when you do it on Football manager it works...   atleast it used to.  

Tom foolery aside, it was merely suggested that we should be looking at offloading the deadwood first or as much of it as we can in anyway we could then worry about selling the prized players.

Again, sell, loan, release. It's not that difficult other clubs manage it, so it does not have to be a drag as such.

[AvfcRigo82]

14 minutes ago, bobzy said:

1.  Apparently not, no.  It somehow makes FFP worse for us (something to do with spreading players costs over a length of time rather than one lump).

2.  There is not any team/manager/player/owner/fan in the World who would want to keep all the crap players before selling the good ones.  You can't seriously think that's our plan?

Not our plan as such bobzy no.

It's baffling how it makes FFP worse, let's say Micah Richards with 12 months left. 

a. If he stays put he collects a wage p/w.

b. If we release him we still will pay him the remaining 12 months now just in a lump sum.

So for me forgive me if I have missed something but I don't so what difference it makes to FFP.

I get that there won't be a queue of clubs waiting to sign Tshitbola and the likes, however Loaning out the deadwood and recouping anything possible financially would be ideal in one scenario.

To be honest I don't think there is even a plan in place at Villa Park right now but if there was it would be plan C as there was no plan B.

 

 

Edited July 12, 2018 by AvfcRigo82

[omariqy]

16 minutes ago, TRO said:

Yes.....Trent was right on Xia.

And on Bruce.

[Rob182]

1 hour ago, HanoiVillan said:

Bingo. The players are leaving; the alternatives are them leaving at knock-down rates on deadline day, when we have no time or money to replace them, or (however forlornly) hoping to start a minor bidding war, which is the only way we can try to keep prices up. 

Why would clubs offer us £20m, £10m and £8m for Grealish, Chester and Kodjia now, when they will know that they can probably offer us £12m, £7m and £5m on deadline day, which we’ll have to accept?

I think the chances of us making quick sales decreased as soon as Bruce laid our cards out on the table. 

[Rob182]

So we're at the point in the discussion where one side says 'Of course other clubs know the full extent of our finances', while the other side says 'Other clubs don't necessarily know the full extent of our finances'.

None of us will know the truth. 

To me, there is a fine line between talking up your own players whilst saying "We are open to acceptable offers for all of them", and simply coming out and saying "We HAVE to sell Jack".

[VILLAMARV]

The point isn't in what Bruce said though. That's not even the tip of the iceberg.

Anger comes before acceptance and all that.

[striker]

When you know someone has to sell something due to being in financial straights you don’t ever offer the going rate because you know they need money.

The club is currently being run by morons and I include Bruce in that for the content of his interview.

[TRO]

1 hour ago, Rob182 said:

Why would clubs offer us £20m, £10m and £8m for Grealish, Chester and Kodjia now, when they will know that they can probably offer us £12m, £7m and £5m on deadline day, which we’ll have to accept?

I think the chances of us making quick sales decreased as soon as Bruce laid our cards out on the table. 

I think our chances of doing anything was laid bare as soon as our financial position was made clear.....We have weakened our own position by chasing rainbows, there has never been any doubt in my mind its much easier to **** it up than put it right and we have been ****ing it up for c 10 years......so its going to take a bit more that 2 seasons to put it right.

This will be a long job guys......and only if we ever latch on to getting it right in the first place, which so far we have failed to do.

people at other clubs know far more than we do as fans about our plight, they make it their business to know whats going on in their industry. Folk come in and out of our Castle gates and go in and out of theirs too, walls have ears and folk have mouths. .....Steve Bruce was just stating the obvious.

Edited July 12, 2018 by TRO

[Hoof hearted]

I know it's a massive gamble (isn't everything Aston Villa recently?!), but why can't we hold on to the players mentioned until January? FFP doesn't kick in till March, Jack's stock is only going to rise between now and then and if we're going to sell them on the cheap (like everyone seems to think) we at least get half a season out of them. I may be way of mark with my idea though.

[pintpotvilla]

1 minute ago, Hoof hearted said:

I know it's a massive gamble (isn't everything Aston Villa recently?!), but why can't we hold on to the players mentioned until January? FFP doesn't kick in till March, Jack's stock is only going to rise between now and then and if we're going to sell them on the cheap (like everyone seems to think) we at least get half a season out of them. I may be way of mark with my idea though.

I think it would be a great plan, trouble is I think we need funds in a bit quicker than January

[VILLAMARV]

4 minutes ago, Hoof hearted said:

I know it's a massive gamble (isn't everything Aston Villa recently?!), but why can't we hold on to the players mentioned until January? FFP doesn't kick in till March, Jack's stock is only going to rise between now and then and if we're going to sell them on the cheap (like everyone seems to think) we at least get half a season out of them. I may be way of mark with my idea though.

words 3,4,5 and 6 mate

[bobzy]

2 hours ago, AvfcRigo82 said:

Not our plan as such bobzy no.

It's baffling how it makes FFP worse, let's say Micah Richards with 12 months left. 

a. If he stays put he collects a wage p/w.

b. If we release him we still will pay him the remaining 12 months now just in a lump sum.

So for me forgive me if I have missed something but I don't so what difference it makes to FFP.

I get that there won't be a queue of clubs waiting to sign Tshitbola and the likes, however Loaning out the deadwood and recouping anything possible financially would be ideal in one scenario.

To be honest I don't think there is even a plan in place at Villa Park right now but if there was it would be plan C as there was no plan B.

With Richards having 12 months left, I'm not sure.  With other players, you'd have to bring forward their wages (essentially) and also their transfer fee, which is typically spread out over the length of a contract.

So, let's say we release McCormack... he signed on a 4 year contract in August 2016 for £12m.  My understanding (accountants will correct me) is that the fee is spread out over the 4 years.  So we'd account for £3m at the time, £3m the next year, £3m the next year etc.  We've only had 2 years of him at the club, so £6m of the £12m accounted for to today.  If we released him, we'd have to add in the additional £6m as well as any wages that he'd be owed.  So you're just worsening the FFP situation.  Even if we sold him for £5m, we'd basically show that money as a £1m loss. 

At least that's what I thought happened...!

[HanoiVillan]

2 hours ago, Rob182 said:

Why would clubs offer us £20m, £10m and £8m for Grealish, Chester and Kodjia now, when they will know that they can probably offer us £12m, £7m and £5m on deadline day, which we’ll have to accept?

I think the chances of us making quick sales decreased as soon as Bruce laid our cards out on the table. 

. . . because other clubs are interested. Please note, I'm not saying that is the case, but that is the only way to keep the sale price up. If multiple clubs are interested, they will likely have to pay a higher price than if one club is interested. 

If it gets to deadline day, then our chances of a bidding war have likely gone, and then yes you're right prices will decline accordingly because we're desperate and everybody knows that (to be clear, they knew that before as well). 

So it makes a certain sense to clearly, publicly place players in the shop-window to drum up interest. 

[DaveAV1]

1 hour ago, Hoof hearted said:

I know it's a massive gamble (isn't everything Aston Villa recently?!), but why can't we hold on to the players mentioned until January? FFP doesn't kick in till March, Jack's stock is only going to rise between now and then and if we're going to sell them on the cheap (like everyone seems to think) we at least get half a season out of them. I may be way of mark with my idea though.

Because it’s not about ffp, Xia is skint he needs money now. We are so in trouble it beggars belief. 

[DaveAV1]

2 hours ago, TRO said:

I think our chances of doing anything was laid bare as soon as our financial position was made clear.....We have weakened our own position by chasing rainbows, there has never been any doubt in my mind its much easier to **** it up than put it right and we have been ****ing it up for c 10 years......so its going to take a bit more that 2 seasons to put it right.

This will be a long job guys......and only if we ever latch on to getting it right in the first place, which so far we have failed to do.

people at other clubs know far more than we do as fans about our plight, they make it their business to know whats going on in their industry. Folk come in and out of our Castle gates and go in and out of theirs too, walls have ears and folk have mouths. .....Steve Bruce was just stating the obvious.

I agree TRO it will take more than two years to get things right. But you said that as though we’d made the first steps on a long road to recovery, when in fact just the opposite is true. Xia and all those responsible for running the club have taken us massively backwards over the last two years. 

We are on the edge staring into the abyss. 

[VILLAMARV]

4 hours ago, TRO said:

Yes.....Trent was right on Xia.

 

4 hours ago, omariqy said:

And on Bruce.

[TheStagMan]

2 hours ago, bobzy said:

With Richards having 12 months left, I'm not sure.  With other players, you'd have to bring forward their wages (essentially) and also their transfer fee, which is typically spread out over the length of a contract.

So, let's say we release McCormack... he signed on a 4 year contract in August 2016 for £12m.  My understanding (accountants will correct me) is that the fee is spread out over the 4 years.  So we'd account for £3m at the time, £3m the next year, £3m the next year etc.  We've only had 2 years of him at the club, so £6m of the £12m accounted for to today.  If we released him, we'd have to add in the additional £6m as well as any wages that he'd be owed.  So you're just worsening the FFP situation.  Even if we sold him for £5m, we'd basically show that money as a £1m loss. 

At least that's what I thought happened...!

Correct, when we buy a player, that player becomes an asset of the club, so we converted £12m (or whatever it was - £12m makes the sums easy) of cash assets into a McCormack shaped asset valued at £12m, so no net change in the finances of the company - we had £12m of money, now we have £12m of assets (doesn't matter if we now consider Ross an asset or not). That asset would then depreciate over the lifetime of his contract, so a four year contract he depreciates at £3m/year. So after one year, we have £9m of asset and £3m of depreciation (loss) on the books. Net cost for the year of £3m in addition to the wages we pay him (so the £12m spent actually leaves the company (on paper) over the course of four years and hasn't finished doing so yet).

So as we are also contractually obliged to pay his wages for the duration of his contract, unless he is willing to leave (i.e. another club pays him the same or more) if we just tell him to go, we have to pay his wages for the remainder of his contract, plus we no longer have an asset of (in this case) £6m on the books, so it "costs" us £6m loss of asset plus wages.

If we can give him to another club on a free, and they pay his wages, we still have the loss of the asset -£6m on the books for FFP, rather than the -£3m of normal depreciation, but a saving of his wages in real money leaving the club.

So, its one of those annoying accountancy things - whereby getting rid of him for free would absolutely help with cashflow (less money leaving the club) it will make things worse from a FFP perspective, which is counter-intuitive, stop the money going out and improve our cashflow situation, but post a loss (in reality money already lost) which hits us from a FFP perspective. Catch 22 - improve cashflow, hurt FFP, improve FFP, hurt cashflow. 

I would think a player with only 12 months left (Richards) would fully depreciate this year anyway, so if we could give them away it should not hit FFP and would improve cashflow. Problem is no-one in their right mind wants them at the salary we pay them.

 

Its why I hate accounts......  

 

 

[kiltorken]

1 hour ago, TheStagMan said:

Correct, when we buy a player, that player becomes an asset of the club, so we converted £12m (or whatever it was - £12m makes the sums easy) of cash assets into a McCormack shaped asset valued at £12m, so no net change in the finances of the company - we had £12m of money, now we have £12m of assets (doesn't matter if we now consider Ross an asset or not). That asset would then depreciate over the lifetime of his contract, so a four year contract he depreciates at £3m/year. So after one year, we have £9m of asset and £3m of depreciation (loss) on the books. Net cost for the year of £3m in addition to the wages we pay him (so the £12m spent actually leaves the company (on paper) over the course of four years and hasn't finished doing so yet).

So as we are also contractually obliged to pay his wages for the duration of his contract, unless he is willing to leave (i.e. another club pays him the same or more) if we just tell him to go, we have to pay his wages for the remainder of his contract, plus we no longer have an asset of (in this case) £6m on the books, so it "costs" us £6m loss of asset plus wages.

If we can give him to another club on a free, and they pay his wages, we still have the loss of the asset -£6m on the books for FFP, rather than the -£3m of normal depreciation, but a saving of his wages in real money leaving the club.

So, its one of those annoying accountancy things - whereby getting rid of him for free would absolutely help with cashflow (less money leaving the club) it will make things worse from a FFP perspective, which is counter-intuitive, stop the money going out and improve our cashflow situation, but post a loss (in reality money already lost) which hits us from a FFP perspective. Catch 22 - improve cashflow, hurt FFP, improve FFP, hurt cashflow.  

I would think a player with only 12 months left (Richards) would fully depreciate this year anyway, so if we could give them away it should not hit FFP and would improve cashflow. Problem is no-one in their right mind wants them at the salary we pay them.

 

Yeah, that's all spot on.

Richards signed on a free though as far as I know so there would be nothing to depreciate at all over his contract and therefore no extra accountancy loss would be incurred anyway.

[terrytini]

Thanks @TheStagMan.

Im particularly intrigued to learn that “ Micah Richards will fully depreciate this year” as I was under the impression he’d undergone that particular process years ago 

[terrytini]

Aha !

@kiltorken suggests as regards Micah Richards that “there is nothing to depreciate at all “........that sounds more like it lol