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FSG are not shit


Dave D
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Baseball uses a tax system to control teams wage bills. The Dodgers and the Yankees are really the only teams that regularly incur this tax.

There is also a revenue sharing deal in MLB to help smaller market teams be competitive.

 

The biggest difference is teams control their own TV rights - so the Dodgers and Yankees print money there.

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On 23/07/2019 at 19:16, BeefStroganoff said:

I can't fucking stand them. never liked them, never been convinced by them. They are fortunate Klopp is good at squeezing everything out of what he has.

 

They didn't save us. they bought us on the cheap and saw an opportunity. Every penny we earn go to the stakeholders. I work for a similar company, profits go in the pocket and only occasionally, strategically go into moving the business forward.

 

This lot will be happy with top 4 this year and a good CL run, just to keep the coffers flowing.

 

I've said it many times in this thread I'm sure, but as of the last set of accounts, they had not taken a penny out of the club other than to repay some of what they had lent to the club.

 

Of course they are in it to make money, and at some stage they may decide to take out some dividends, but they will really make their money when the sell up, in whole or in part, and so taking cash out now will reduce the potential value of the club, and their profits, in the future.

 

They have, do, and will make mistakes, but no need to make things up.

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9 minutes ago, TheHowieLama said:

Baseball uses a tax system to control teams wage bills. The Dodgers and the Yankees are really the only teams that regularly incur this tax.

There is also a revenue sharing deal in MLB to help smaller market teams be competitive.

 

The biggest difference is teams control their own TV rights - so the Dodgers and Yankees print money there.

Yeah, forgot about the tax. But it's one of those stupid things where the richest teams don't care about paying it and it impedes nothing.

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10 minutes ago, 3 Stacks said:

Yeah, forgot about the tax. But it's one of those stupid things where the richest teams don't care about paying it and it impedes nothing.

I think only a couple other teams have ever crossed the tax threshold in baseball (the Red Sox being one), so the owners themselves effectively use a salary cap -- long history of suggestions of collusion on wages both in MLB and the NFL. These are basically closed fraternities and there is no chance of relegation. 

That said there is no pattern/history of any owner in those two leagues ever dropping large amounts of their own cash into players -- even if they wanted to, they really don't have to.

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On 24/07/2019 at 01:16, Jose Jones said:

I think there is definitely something to the argument that FSG having seen the value of their investment in the club increase massively could do a bit more in increasing the capacity of the stadium (Anny Road end) and having cheaper tickets available to fans.

 

However, we have seen that they are generally only willing to spend what the club earns, after an initial injection of funds.

 

When it comes to wages and transfers, we've again seen that they will only spend what the club earns.  This is also the rules under FFP, unless you want them to cook the books Man City style.

 

So there's the FFP thing, and also a lot of the complaining about FSG does not seem rooted in fact, which I find a little bit annoying. 

 

If you are going to criticise them I would like to see the facts of:  what our turnover is, what our profit and debt level is, what our wage bill is, what our turnover to wages ratio is, how that compares with other clubs, and therefore how much you think we have to spend.

 

Otherwise it's just shouting bollocks with nothing to back it up.

 

 

 

I like the cut of your jib Jose...

 

I put some turnover to wage ratio stuff on the MF yesterday!

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On 29/07/2019 at 19:50, Horus said:

I remember about them talking about raising our revenues so we could invest in the squad, well we're not raising them much more than last season. 

 

Approx £80m total net spend under Klopp, which is criminal when you look not only at the clubs we have to compete against, but the fact we're the 7th richest club in the world, and we're being outspent by Villa and Brighton.

 

We spent £88m in 2016/17 and 2017/18, probably a couple of millions when we bought Grujic in his first window, and we spent vastly more than what came in last season, so I think you are a bit out there with your £80m approximation.

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10 minutes ago, The Woolster said:

 

We spent £88m in 2016/17 and 2017/18, probably a couple of millions when we bought Grujic in his first window, and we spent vastly more than what came in last season, so I think you are a bit out there with your £80m approximation.

https://www.anfield-online.co.uk/stats/jurgen-klopp-lfc-transfer-signings.html

 

Not 100% accurate, as loan fees etc aren't on there. For example, I believe we got a 2m loan fee from palace before they signed him permanently, but I can't see any massive errors. 

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13 minutes ago, Horus said:

https://www.anfield-online.co.uk/stats/jurgen-klopp-lfc-transfer-signings.html

 

Not 100% accurate, as loan fees etc aren't on there. For example, I believe we got a 2m loan fee from palace before they signed him permanently, but I can't see any massive errors. 

 

Yeah, someone posted that list back in February...

 

As it stands we have not received in the region of £20m of the Coutinho fee that they state, and they don't compare apples with apples. I dunno, seems like a bit of an error to me.

 

On 11/02/2019 at 19:13, The Woolster said:

 

I'm on my phone, but  an instantly see 5 or 6 issues with their numbers

 

Coutinho - Full amount including all add-on

Alisson - add ons not included 

Fabinho - add ons not included

Sinclair - no fee

Teixeira - no fee

 

Should I trust the rest of them?

The top 3 massively skew the numbers

This does not include the costs of doing the transfer fees, like agent fees.

 

 

On 14/02/2019 at 09:22, The Woolster said:

I have some rules of thumb on transfers fees because they rarely actually get announced by the clubs. Never trust transfer fees given on the the internet unless you really trust the source, and never use those figures to make a point unless you have checked that they are in the ballpark of being right according to a number of sources that you trust, otherwise you end up losing credibility...

 

And even then, the generally agreed fees do not include the costs of doing transfers, so are most likely wrong anyway!

 

What Anfield Online do is up to them!

 

Whilst not broken out to an individual transfer level, the amount the we spend and receive on transfers is available in our annual accounts, the only issue is that they are always 1 to 2 summer transfer windows behind.

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5 minutes ago, The Woolster said:

 

Yeah, someone posted that list back in February...

 

As it stands we have not received in the region of £20m of the Coutinho fee that they state, and they don't compare apples with apples. I dunno, seems like a bit of an error to me.

 

 

 

Whilst not broken out to an individual transfer level, the amount the we spend and receive on transfers is available in our annual accounts, the only issue is that they are always 1 to 2 summer transfer windows behind.

 

If you've got some accurate figures, then I'd genuinely be interested in seeing them if at all possible.

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On 29/07/2019 at 20:03, Doctor Troy said:

They run the club with more financial sense and business practice than the last two sets of owners which isn't hard to be honest. I do like the way they have increased the club revenues and we aren't massively in debt. They had the sense to hire Klopp but he is a perfect fit for them as he is good at working to a budget and is interested in developing young players. We offered the job to Ancelotti but he turned it down because he believed that we needed to spend shitloads to get the spine of the team to a decent level. 

 

I do wonder what they will do once Klopp leaves because there won't be another manager out there like him who will match up to their ethos. There might be one that emerges in the next couple of years but at the moment I'd only say Pochettino would fit their model. He'll either still be at Spurs or in Italy or Spain by then. 

 

We are a million times better off now than when Hodgson was here and then Kenny Dalglish bought some poor players. I honestly never thought we'd be in a position to challenge for the league for a long time, never mind the European Cup. Thank god we have Jurgen Klopp.

 

What annoys me about them is that they are ridiculously over cautious about certain things and always try to downplay everything. The tiresome stories they feed to the Echo over transfers are annoying,  they like to lower the expectations of the fans but want to make money from being successful. We are still a selling club, it's just that we are European Champions and no one wants to leave.

 

They have done far too much arsing about over the stadium issues.  Charging people money to stay on the season ticket waiting list just seems a cynical way of making cash when they don't seem to have any proactive plan to redevelop Anfield and they were fully aware of how many people wanted to watch us. They are not interested in the people who sell their tickets on sites to make money, a lot still seem to go to Thomas Cook. Also taking tickets from away fans who have attended hundreds of aways to give them to corporates is shite. 

 

 

Just on the Ancelotti thing.  I don’t know why people just invent stuff like this and reel it off as fact.  There is just no way we would have picked a chequebook manager like Ancelotti over Klopp  regardless.  Klopp was the absolute perfect fit to the point it felt too good to be true.  Ancelotti even came out and said he was never offered the job but intimated he would have taken it if he was.

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12 minutes ago, Horus said:

 

If you've got some accurate figures, then I'd genuinely be interested in seeing them if at all possible.

Google companies house beta and then type in Liverpool football club and athletic grounds.  Click on their profile and the top PDF is the latest set of accounts which is up to the end of May.  There’s loads of interesting stuff on there if you know what to look for.

 

The player acquisitions total was 195m.

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12 minutes ago, Horus said:

 

If you've got some accurate figures, then I'd genuinely be interested in seeing them if at all possible.

 

Our annual accounts can be found here https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/00035668/filing-history

 

There's a couple of ways to calculate transfer spending, my preference is to you the cash flow figures as this will include what we spend on agent fees and other transfer related costs, as you are missing out a big part of the picture if you don't included them and it is how the club should look at it as well, but it is not quite the same as most view net spend.

 

If you open the accounts to May 2018 and go to Statement of Cash Flows on page 15, you can see see entries for "Proceeds from sale of player registrations" and "Acquisition of player registrations", we spent £49.2m in 2017/18 and £38.8m the season before that.

 

You could check the previous accounts for the earlier seasons, or you can believe me when I say it was £37.8m, £58.7m, £53.3m and £44.3m going each year going back (if you listened to my previous advice, you should realise that you should not trust me and you should check yourself to be sure...)

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7 minutes ago, The Guest said:

Google companies house beta and then type in Liverpool football club and athletic grounds.  Click on their profile and the top PDF is the latest set of accounts which is up to the end of May.  There’s loads of interesting stuff on there if you know what to look for.

 

The player acquisitions total was 195m.

 

And this is the other method of calculating the transfer spending, using the balance sheet.

 

The balance sheet disposals were £137.1m (you have to include profits of transfers to get to this number), giving Net transfer additions of £58.1m.

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It's quite hard to equate FSG's approach with the Red Sox to how they do things with Liverpool. The way the two sports and run and governed make that nearly impossible. One thing I like about American sports is the lengths they go to keep the sports competitive. You'll get teams every now and then who dominate on the field but you won't see a situation where a team can come along (like Chelsea, Man City and PSG) and ride roughshod over the financial rules others play by. You also don't get a situation where the sport is basically just a dick-waving contest between the two richest sides.

 

Talking about the years since FSG got involved in baseball, no side has managed to retain the World Series. Several sides have reached back-to-back World Series' since 2003 but there has been a new champion every year since then. The Red Sox (with 4 titles) have won it more than any other team since FSG took ownership. The last team to retain the World Series are the Yankees who won three in a row between 1998 and 2000. They last won the whole thing 10 years ago and haven't been to a World Series since.

 

If you equate the American League East Division (AL East for short) with the Champions League group stage, the AL Division Series (ALDS - the first play-off round) with the quarter finals, the AL Championship Series (ALCS - the penultimate play-off round) with the semi finals, and the World Series with the Champions League final, this is the Red Sox team record since 2003:

 

(new GM Theo Epstein; team manager still Grady Little)

2003 - 2nd in AL East; lost ALCS 4-3 against New York Yankees

 

(new team manager Terry Francona)

2004 - 2nd in AL East; won World Series 4-0 against St. Louis Cardinals

2005 - 2nd in AL East; lost ALDS 3-0 against Chicago White Sox

2006 - 3rd in AL East

2007 - 1st in AL East; won World Series 4-0 against Colorado Rockies

2008 - 2nd in AL East; lost ALCS 4-3 against Tampa Bay Rays

2009 - 2nd in AL East; lost ALDS 3-0 against LA Angels

2010 - 3rd in AL East

2011 - 3rd in AL East

 

(new GM Ben Cherington; new team manager Bobby Valentine)

2012 - 5th (bottom) in AL East

 

(new team manager John Farrell)

2013 - 1st in AL East; won World Series 4-2 against St. Louis Cardinals

2014 - 5th in AL East

 

(new GM Dave Dombrowski)

2015 - 5th in AL East

2016 - 1st in AL East; lost ALDS 3-0 against Cleveland Indians

2017 - 1st in AL East; lost ALDS 3-1 against Houston Astros

 

(new team manager Alex Cora)

2018 - 1st in AL East; won World Series 4-1 against LA Dodgers

2019 - currently 3rd in AL East, battling for 2nd with Tampa Bay Rays and a wild card slot but it looks unlikely that they'll reach the play-offs this year

 

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3 hours ago, TheHowieLama said:

Good point about the parity, it is definitely by design in both MLB and NFL -- San Francisco Giants are a prime example. A second market team won it three times in five years and a few seasons later are dead last.

 

AFL in Australia is designed for parity too. 

 

 

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Throwing money into sport with no plan or intention to maintain a level of parity invariably means the sport begins to alienate a lot of people because of the absence of the very things that got (and kept) them interested in the first place. Of course it will attract new people but they'll treated as consumers rather than supporters, and most of them won't care. It's funny how the Americans insist on competitive parity within sport when capitalism is rampant in practically every other sphere of American society.

 

Turning football into a commercial operation has seen clubs like Bury questioned this week over whether they have as little as £1.5m to keep on as a going concern for an entire season, while players like Gareth Bale are being offered not far short of that per week by Chinese clubs for taking part in a few hours of training and one game.

 

Nobody involved in the game is seriously concerned enough to want to introduce some sort of financial controls and effective parity because they don't want to leave the gravy train. FFP was a good idea in theory but its introduction has resulted in a glass ceiling for many clubs while others just take the piss and flout the rules openly, knowing that any forthcoming punishments will do little to hurt them.

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