The Takeover Thread - Recon Group - NOW WITH NEW POLL

[supertom]

I think we've been aware he's been getting the club ready for sell for 2-3 years now. I think before that announcement it seems speculation about potential buyers, and lots of ITK's out there giving names, and saying deals were done, meant he had to address the issue. Of course all he did confirm was that we're up for sale. No surprise, and nothing really more specific regarding interest.

We could look at it and think that a deal could be close because he decided to announce. That said we could look at it and say that the club has had no firm interest in the last 2 years, and similarly, looking at Newcastles situation, that this could take years.

My hope is that Randy realises that selling a Premiership club is easier than a Championship club, and will lift some of the restrictions he's placed on an already limited manager.

[Archbishop Herbert Cockthrottle]

I thought earlier that a greater power was trying to send me subliminal messages by the medium of morse code. I spent three hours trying to decode it before I realised that it was just a fat lass in flip flops walking down the corridor.

[Vic the Villian]

Right ladies and gentlemen that's it, after following every villa forum site and being told by every ITK blow hard they know everything, I can tell you this. we should all forget any idea of what is happening because we will not know till they are ready to tell us, we now have Lambert and HAVE to go with him (god help us) we are in for a relegation battle again so lets embrace it, we may be able to offload some players and bring a couple in and if by the grace of god we do sell the club then we can start dreaming, so from me It's off for our season tickets tomorrow, and we go again

[paul_e]

From Paulie's chart:

£105M averaged over 3 seasons so long as the owner adds it to the value of the club rather than as loans, simple enough.
The extra TV Money - £30M a year - a jump to 8th is worth £23M-ish we'd be aiming for at least that. - ignored for wage increases
Sponsorship - £18M-ish currently - £25-30M would be a fair target with ground sponsopship, bmh sponsor, enhanced shirt sponsor - that's well below the £100m over 6 years mentioned above.
Tickets/shirts/merch - £23M-ish currently - we'd be targeting getting that up to £30M with a stadium expansion (which is 'free' in FFP terms)

All those added means the £180m and £500k p/w is perfectly reasonable.  if we do better than expected in any of those areas it could quite easily be more than that.


Specific to the £500k p/w comment - that's £26m a year, £4m a year is allowed anyway and I'm talking over 2-3 seasons so lets say £10m - that means the new owner needs to 'find' £16m a year of sponsors, given that our sponsorship deals are significantly lower than the likes of Arsenal, Liverpool, etc it really wouldn't be impossible for, let's say, Anshultz to buy us and shove AEG logos on the stadium/ shirts and training ground for the difference.

[pauliewalnuts]

From Paulie's chart:

£105M averaged over 3 seasons so long as the owner adds it to the value of the club rather than as loans, simple enough.
The extra TV Money - £30M a year - a jump to 8th is worth £23M-ish we'd be aiming for at least that. - ignored for wage increases
Sponsorship - £18M-ish currently - £25-30M would be a fair target with ground sponsopship, bmh sponsor, enhanced shirt sponsor - that's well below the £100m over 6 years mentioned above.
Tickets/shirts/merch - £23M-ish currently - we'd be targeting getting that up to £30M with a stadium expansion (which is 'free' in FFP terms)

All those added means the £180m and £500k p/w is perfectly reasonable.  if we do better than expected in any of those areas it could quite easily be more than that.

There's a lot of hypotheticals in there, though - stadium expansion, and being able to fill it regularly, increased sponsorship revenues, lots of stuff which right now isn't there.

I also doubt that a ground sponsor, a training ground sponsor or enhanced shirt sponsor (no idea what that is) are going to add up to an extra £12m a year. If you add 500k a week to the wage bill, that's not very far of £30m a year once you factor in NI. That's on top of whatever the wage bill is now.

That money has to come from increased non television revenue - not just non TV revenue as it stands now, the increase. So, somehow we'd have to earn an extra £25m just to cover the increase in wages.

We're not going to fill a ground, or make it bigger, until we see evidence we can fill it on a regular basis. We're not going to do that until we see a better team playing in it, and that's not going to happen without better players, and that means lots of money spent on transfer fees, and lots of money added to the wage bill.

it is a chicken and egg situation, and anyone who can make that work whilst recording overall losses of less than £105m deserves a chunky salary.

It's also worth noting that it isn't losses of 105m averaged over three seasons, it is total over three seasons.

[silhillvilla]

14:33

3 minutes into the press conference

[Phil from the upper holte]

Is there a press conference?

[abc123cox]

Is there a press conference?

yes this afternoon, just put it on paul lambert thread.


 James Nursey ‏@JamesNursey 4m

Off to #avfc to see Lambert now club confirmed he's staying on under lerner.

[itbrvilla]

14:33

3 minutes into the press conference

?

[pauliewalnuts]

14:33

3 minutes into the press conference

?

There is something going on, but don't know about a press conference. Nursey is going to "hear from" Lambert, don't know if that's an informal chat or what, but it looks like - far from having being sacked - he's staying.

[paul_e]

From Paulie's chart:

£105M averaged over 3 seasons so long as the owner adds it to the value of the club rather than as loans, simple enough.
The extra TV Money - £30M a year - a jump to 8th is worth £23M-ish we'd be aiming for at least that. - ignored for wage increases
Sponsorship - £18M-ish currently - £25-30M would be a fair target with ground sponsopship, bmh sponsor, enhanced shirt sponsor - that's well below the £100m over 6 years mentioned above.
Tickets/shirts/merch - £23M-ish currently - we'd be targeting getting that up to £30M with a stadium expansion (which is 'free' in FFP terms)

All those added means the £180m and £500k p/w is perfectly reasonable.  if we do better than expected in any of those areas it could quite easily be more than that.

There's a lot of hypotheticals in there, though - stadium expansion, and being able to fill it regularly, increased sponsorship revenues, lots of stuff which right now isn't there.

I also doubt that a ground sponsor, a training ground sponsor or enhanced shirt sponsor (no idea what that is) are going to add up to an extra £12m a year. If you add 500k a week to the wage bill, that's not very far of £30m a year once you factor in NI. That's on top of whatever the wage bill is now.

That money has to come from increased non television revenue - not just non TV revenue as it stands now, the increase. So, somehow we'd have to earn an extra £25m just to cover the increase in wages.

We're not going to fill a ground, or make it bigger, until we see evidence we can fill it on a regular basis. We're not going to do that until we see a better team playing in it, and that's not going to happen without better players, and that means lots of money spent on transfer fees, and lots of money added to the wage bill.

it is a chicken and egg situation, and anyone who can make that work whilst recording overall losses of less than £105m deserves a chunky salary.

It's also worth noting that it isn't losses of 105m averaged over three seasons, it is total over three seasons.

They're hypotheticals based on the 'a multi-billionaire has bought the club and wants to buy his way into the big time' idea.  In that istuation none of those figures are alarmingly out of scope or unrealistic.

[Ron Manager]

14:33

3 minutes into the press conference

?

There is something going on, but don't know about a press conference. Nursey is going to "hear from" Lambert, don't know if that's an informal chat or what, but it looks like - far from having being sacked - he's staying.

TBAR will explode with venom. Admin will be ringing the Samaritians in about half an hour!

[mr underhill]

on the OS now isn't it? Debris of a white suit found floating in deep space

[silhillvilla]

Is there a press conference?

Didn't london boy announce it the other day 1430 presser to coincide with NYC Wall Street opening bell

[pauliewalnuts]

From Paulie's chart:

£105M averaged over 3 seasons so long as the owner adds it to the value of the club rather than as loans, simple enough.
The extra TV Money - £30M a year - a jump to 8th is worth £23M-ish we'd be aiming for at least that. - ignored for wage increases
Sponsorship - £18M-ish currently - £25-30M would be a fair target with ground sponsopship, bmh sponsor, enhanced shirt sponsor - that's well below the £100m over 6 years mentioned above.
Tickets/shirts/merch - £23M-ish currently - we'd be targeting getting that up to £30M with a stadium expansion (which is 'free' in FFP terms)

All those added means the £180m and £500k p/w is perfectly reasonable.  if we do better than expected in any of those areas it could quite easily be more than that.

There's a lot of hypotheticals in there, though - stadium expansion, and being able to fill it regularly, increased sponsorship revenues, lots of stuff which right now isn't there.

I also doubt that a ground sponsor, a training ground sponsor or enhanced shirt sponsor (no idea what that is) are going to add up to an extra £12m a year. If you add 500k a week to the wage bill, that's not very far of £30m a year once you factor in NI. That's on top of whatever the wage bill is now.

That money has to come from increased non television revenue - not just non TV revenue as it stands now, the increase. So, somehow we'd have to earn an extra £25m just to cover the increase in wages.

We're not going to fill a ground, or make it bigger, until we see evidence we can fill it on a regular basis. We're not going to do that until we see a better team playing in it, and that's not going to happen without better players, and that means lots of money spent on transfer fees, and lots of money added to the wage bill.

it is a chicken and egg situation, and anyone who can make that work whilst recording overall losses of less than £105m deserves a chunky salary.

It's also worth noting that it isn't losses of 105m averaged over three seasons, it is total over three seasons.

They're hypotheticals based on the 'a multi-billionaire has bought the club and wants to buy his way into the big time' idea.  In that istuation none of those figures are alarmingly out of scope or unrealistic.

Yes, but the thing is, you're talking about our ability to spend like that and remain FFP compliant once we've got to that situation - bigger, full ground every week, large increases in sponsorship money, spending to get us to 8th place or so.

That's all fine, but we have to actually achieve that first, and to get to a situation like that, we'd have to spend a huge amount of money which would trigger an excess on the maximum losses. Even on the basis of our spending the last few years we'd only just scrape FFP compliance.

That's the problem, the whole "pulling up the ladder" thing. Man City have the biggest wage bill in football, which means that, really, they have an immense amount of wiggle room re wages. They'll shift some of the shit, and still be able to pay huge wages because not only do they start from a base of a huge wage bill, thus rendering the maximum increase thing null and void, they've also got the squad full of top notch players who will get them 49k every week, and which will win titles and qualify for the CL.

I am not saying there are not ways around it, I am sure they will be, but it is going to be much harder to do than someone said earlier, flogging naming rights to a company owned by our new billionaire overlords for a massive inflated price as a way to inject income into the club.

Ironically, I suspect the FFP rules, if taken seriously, will actually make it more encouraging for some people to buy English clubs. For a start, there's a ready made excuse reason not to invest loads of money, rather to take the "bob along" route and coin it in through the increased television money.