Deloitte money list

[Californian Villain]

2009-10 - 20th - €109.4
2010-11 - 24th - €99.3
2011-12 - 27th - €98.6

We deal in £s in this country.

This list applies to Europe

[lovejoy]

I agree that revenue gives you an indication of the size of a club, and this is what the Deloitte list is trying to do, but not how well managed or successful they are.
I think people are drawing inferences between size and success erroneously. The premier league teams are artificially high due to the TV rights.

[Billy Walker]

I agree that revenue gives you an indication of the size of a club, and this is what the Deloitte list is trying to do, but not how well managed or successful they are.
I think people are drawing inferences between size and success erroneously. The premier league teams are artificially high due to the TV rights.

People will certainly interpret the list as an indication of size of club but for me it is nothing more than a barometer of how ridiculous football currently is: basically, the richer the owner and backers you have, the "bigger" your club is.  If Bill Gates took over Bromsgrove Rovers and was prepared to plough in a billion or two, they'd be on the list within five years.  That's the way things are at the moment, alas. 

Lists like this do make me wonder how the major club of the UK's Second City doesn't attract more major investment, though. 

[Ad@m]

I agree that revenue gives you an indication of the size of a club, and this is what the Deloitte list is trying to do, but not how well managed or successful they are.
I think people are drawing inferences between size and success erroneously. The premier league teams are artificially high due to the TV rights.

People will certainly interpret the list as an indication of size of club but for me it is nothing more than a barometer of how ridiculous football currently is: basically, the richer the owner and backers you have, the "bigger" your club is.  If Bill Gates took over Bromsgrove Rovers and was prepared to plough in a billion or two, they'd be on the list within five years.  That's the way things are at the moment, alas. 

Lists like this do make me wonder how the major club of the UK's Second City doesn't attract more major investment, though. 

More than £300 million?

[Handsworth Wood Villa]

2012/13

Aston Villa - £81.7m
West Bromwich Albion - £69.7m

Yet we couldn't afford Lukaku's wages but they could...

[KevinGage]

It's not a huge bombshell.

But it does highlight once again the folly of the drastic cuts made over the past few years.   Self sustainable, spend only what we earn has been the mantra now since 2010.

The problem with that is you can't generate enough revenue to be competitive with such a dull, uninspiring side on the pitch. Because less people want to see it.

[AVH87]

I agree that revenue gives you an indication of the size of a club, and this is what the Deloitte list is trying to do, but not how well managed or successful they are.
I think people are drawing inferences between size and success erroneously. The premier league teams are artificially high due to the TV rights.

People will certainly interpret the list as an indication of size of club but for me it is nothing more than a barometer of how ridiculous football currently is: basically, the richer the owner and backers you have, the "bigger" your club is.  If Bill Gates took over Bromsgrove Rovers and was prepared to plough in a billion or two, they'd be on the list within five years.  That's the way things are at the moment, alas. 

Lists like this do make me wonder how the major club of the UK's Second City doesn't attract more major investment, though.

Unfortunately for us Bham just isn't really a football City.

Look at Man City for example, play in a smaller city than us and have the country's most successful club as their neighbours, weren't as successful as Villa before the Abu Dhabi takeover yet still got bigger crowds than us.

[ChicagoLion]

Whichever way you look at it, a decline in revenue is an extremely important feature. Because you can not apply normal analysis to football clubs, a fairly accurate assessment of performance is what is happening to total revenue.

It is hard to come up with a scenario where a fall in revenue can be seen as a positive thing because it isn't.

[ktvillan]

It's not a huge bombshell.

But it does highlight once again the folly of the drastic cuts made over the past few years.   Self sustainable, spend only what we earn has been the mantra now since 2010.

The problem with that is you can't generate enough revenue to be competitive with such a dull, uninspiring side on the pitch. Because less people want to see it.

Under Ellis it was often said you need to speculate at least a little to accumulate, but Lerner/Faulkner is worse.  There is little point in bringing down the wages to achieve a certain maximum percentage of turnover if your revenues are dropping even faster.  A downward spiral that will only end in tears.   To go from 109m to 82m in 4 years with all the TV revenue available would get most CEOs the sack itself, especially given his self professed priority of staying in the top 20 of this particular table. 

[Dante Lavelli]

If its 1m a place then those drops in income are probably exclusively league places so Faulkner will probably argue that he's kept his side of the bargain in maintaining commercial income. 

[eamonn]

How have our profits plummeted by 25 odd million in four years if crowds are only slightly below what they were (they've held up remarkably well given the team have served-up one of the worst home records in Europe to supporters since 2011), money on transfers has been curtailed and tv money is up? I'm guessing the real difference is the sale of a Milner, Young or Downing?

[TheSandman]

Theoretically, our commercial income should be higher than ever as the current sponsorship deals are our biggest ever.

I imagine player sales play a part? We had high value player sales at the start of 2010/11 and 2011/12.

[Somniloquism]

2012/13

Aston Villa - £81.7m
West Bromwich Albion - £69.7m

Yet we couldn't afford Lukaku's wages but they could...

We had just bought Benteke, why have Lukaku as well? But I also doubt WBA were also paying out £60 k to four players bought in the previous regime.

[Percy McCarthy]

It's not a huge bombshell.

But it does highlight once again the folly of the drastic cuts made over the past few years.   Self sustainable, spend only what we earn has been the mantra now since 2010.

The problem with that is you can't generate enough revenue to be competitive with such a dull, uninspiring side on the pitch. Because less people want to see it.

Under Ellis it was often said you need to speculate at least a little to accumulate, but Lerner/Faulkner is worse.  There is little point in bringing down the wages to achieve a certain maximum percentage of turnover if your revenues are dropping even faster.  A downward spiral that will only end in tears.   To go from 109m to 82m in 4 years with all the TV revenue available would get most CEOs the sack itself, especially given his self professed priority of staying in the top 20 of this particular table.

To be fair, it was 109m euros to 82m pounds, which is not such a big drop. 109m euros is only about 90m quid at the moment.

[Villa in Denmark]

How have our profits plummeted by 25 odd million in four years if crowds are only slightly below what they were (they've held up remarkably well given the team have served-up one of the worst home records in Europe to supporters since 2011), money on transfers has been curtailed and tv money is up? I'm guessing the real difference is the sale of a Milner, Young or Downing?

The numbers being quoted here are revenues, ie. cash in the door.  Profit can have very little to do with cash, as it is often based as much on value of either physical assets and intangible assets and the way these are treated in the accounts in terms of writing down their value.

For a manufacturing company, physical assets will be machinery and buildings for example, whilst intangibles will be things like patents and copyrights.

For football, the physical assets will mainly the stadium, training facilities and any land owned.
The intangibles are primarily the player's registrations. (although for a club like Man Utd the intrinsic value of the brand will also contribute.)

Depreciation is applied to physical assets and amortisation to intangibles.
The reason this can scew profit and loss in relation to cashflow, is that if you sign player X for £10M on a 4 year contract, the value of that contract will be written off (amortised) over 4 years at £2.5M per year.  If at some point player X signs a new contract the value of the player on the balance sheet increases, without there being any (or not significant, depending on signing on bonus) cash transaction.

This is what Ansell was on about all those years ago, when he said he wanted is to make a profit on transfers.  It had got nothing to do with selling for more than we'd paid, but managing the squad and contracts effectively, something we've been rather shite at under Randy, and the biggest reason why there's nothing to show for the thick end of £300M