Jude Bellingham Welcome to Liverpool…

[No2]

7 hours ago, an tha said:

I feel they were genuinely afraid that they'd end up in a drawn out chase for him and miss out and then like last summer after missing out on top target also not being able to get alternatives.

 

That can be true but doesn't explain the public withdrawal. We could easily have let the player know privately that it's a non runner, the numbers don't work. The fans will know its not happening when Nunes and Caicedo are unveiled. If both Madrid and ourselves are genuinely out then the only club to benefit is City, another thing that makes no sense.

[Barrington Womble]

10 hours ago, TD_LFC said:

 

Social security and pensions have always been distinct lines in the accounts under the heading of wages, that's why I flagged them, it depends on whether people use just the figure from the wages line or the total wages.

 

For amortisation yeah it's just a legal framework but the reverse of that is that it all doesn't get loaded on a single year, read somewhere that transfer debt is around 95 million but can't remember where so don't hold me to it (and we'll obviously have incoming transfer money that will eventually offset it).

 

 

 

 

They are distinct lines, but they're within the headline number for wages of 360 whatever million? I haven't actually looked at this year's accounts outside of a few news stories as I'm doing enough hours shit like that in my working life at the moment and a fucking hate it! But they were certainly within the headline number in older accounts. 

 

The whole amortisation and player sales I find a bit strange..they keep player sales outside of the turnover number, I think all clubs do it. But then the amortisation is recognised, but doesn't account for player profits on sales on the other side of the balance sheet. Obviously the clubs have to account for both in HMRC terms, but it seems really weird how they account for it for published footballing figures. 

 

For me though the reality of all this is if we think of it as cashflow, we bring in nearly 600m and it's pretty hard to work out how it all gets back out of the door. We have a section of our turnover where we can exclude our entire wage bill, which is only about 60% of turnover, and it's more than the entire turnover of about 12 clubs in the league. It just makes no sense we have no money. 

[Bjornebye]

On 03/07/2022 at 19:49, TheHowieLama said:

 

On 03/07/2022 at 20:12, Stouffer said:

 

On 03/07/2022 at 20:21, Fugitive said:

 

On 03/07/2022 at 20:22, TheHowieLama said:

 

On 03/07/2022 at 20:30, Rushies tash said:

 

On 03/07/2022 at 21:09, Tony Moanero said:

 

On 03/07/2022 at 21:13, Tony Moanero said:

 

On 03/07/2022 at 21:16, Elite said:

 

On 03/07/2022 at 21:20, gkmacca said:

 

On 03/07/2022 at 21:32, TheHowieLama said:

 

On 03/07/2022 at 21:35, Bjornebye said:

 

 

 

 

 

On 03/07/2022 at 21:51, Bjornebye said:

 

 

 

On 03/07/2022 at 22:07, gkmacca said:

 

On 03/07/2022 at 23:07, Section_31 said:

Quite 

[navbasi]

Liverpool’s finances: No Champions League, no Bellingham and a £100m hit

 

In all the drama of Liverpool’s 2-2 draw with Arsenal last weekend, there was the realisation that even the faintest hopes of qualifying for the Champions League had abandoned Jurgen Klopp’s side.

 

The gap to the top four has been allowed to grow again and now even the most optimistic Liverpool supporters have been forced to accept a six-year unbroken run in Europe’s elite competition is over.

 

A dismal season, in truth, saw to that long ago.

 

Liverpool face a fight to secure any sort of European football in 2023-24 and for that, there will be a price to pay. For the first time since 2016-17, there will be no Champions League money coming to Anfield next season and Liverpool’s turnover cannot escape the hit that is coming.

 

Klopp’s side have also admitted defeat in their attempts to sign Jude Bellingham, the Borussia Dortmund and England midfielder who would cost around £130million ($162m) plus wages and agent fees.Liverpool have pulled out of the race to sign Bellingham this summer (Photo: Richard Heathcote/Getty Images)

The deal stopped making sense for Liverpool when the Champions League shortfall and the wider scale of this summer’s rebuild were taken into account.

 

Then there’s the question of how to attract one of the best young players in the world without the lure of playing in Europe’s elite club competition. Liverpool are also reluctant to pin all their hopes on one footballer — even if Dortmund could have been persuaded to sell — when numbers are needed in midfield as well as defence.

 

Don’t forget too that the club’s owner, Fenway Sports Group, is still exploring bringing in extra investment. Resources are finite.

 

The Athletic analyses where a disastrous season leaves Liverpool ahead of the summer transfer window.

---

How much do Liverpool make from being in the Champions League?

A good old chunk. More is taken annually from the Premier League pot (£152million last season, for example) but since 2017, Liverpool have made roughly half a billion pounds through Champions League distribution money alone.

 

UEFA’s annual financial reports are published every March and the last five seasons on record detail that Liverpool have earned £422million from their exploits in the Champions League.

 

Last season’s adventure to the final brought in €119,957,000 (£106m; $131m). Although this campaign’s figure will have dropped after Liverpool were eliminated in the last 16 by Real Madrid, the latest payout from UEFA is still expected to be around the £71million mark.

 

Liverpool’s recent successes in the Champions League also grant them a bigger slice of the pie. The higher a club’s coefficient ranking — the system that decides how both clubs and their associations are ranked for every season of European football — the greater the benefits. Tottenham Hotspur also exited in the round of 16 but Liverpool will bank as much as £8million more due to UEFA’s distribution being partially weighted in favour of recent achievements in the competition.

 

And that is not all. Matchday revenues have also been boosted by those Champions League nights at Anfield.

 

Last season’s accounts showed that £87million had been earned from the 30 home games played since 2017, suggesting that every fixture staged is worth somewhere between £2.5million and £3million. Liverpool have played at least four home games in the Champions League in each of their last six seasons, with sellout crowds as good as guaranteed.

 

Qualification to the Champions League never brings a specific lump sum but Liverpool’s habit of going far has come to make European football an important revenue stream.

Take last season’s numbers as an example. The £105million earned in prize money from UEFA alone amounted to 17 per cent of Liverpool’s record-breaking total turnover of £594million. Seeing that disappear leaves a significant hole in the balance sheets.

“The figure any club earns depends on how far they go in the competition but even if you just made the group stages and nothing else, that’s minimum £50million for an English club with the way the prize money is set out,” says Dr Dan Plumley, a sports finance expert and lecturer at Sheffield Hallam University. “That can then go up to £100m if you go a long way.

 

“Then you’ve got the other things that come with a Champions League season, like the additional matchday revenue and the commercial benefits. You’ve got to be looking around the £100m mark for a season in the Champions League.

 

“I don’t think missing one season of the Champions League is a disaster for a club like Liverpool but if you start to miss two or three seasons then it starts to put a real dent in things.”

A big summer ahead then, right?

Absolutely. FSG, Liverpool’s owners since 2010, has made no secret of its attempts to find outside investment and even went as far as considering an outright sale of the club in November.

 

Crucially, the need for someone to fund a summer rebuild is pressing.

 

Klopp has admitted that significant changes are required and failure to reach the Champions League on the back of a poor recent run will only have entrenched that belief. Naby Keita, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain and James Milner are all out of contract at the end of the season, while Arthur will return to Juventus following the end of his loan spell.

Liverpool had long courted Bellingham as a potential key piece in the jigsaw but hopes of a successful pursuit have receded. Other targets, such as Chelsea’s Mason Mount and Alexis Mac Allister of Brighton & Hove Albion, might be more achievable.

 

A clear indication of the funds Klopp will be given is yet to come, but principal owner John W Henry is not about to revise the funding strategy deployed throughout the reign of FSG. “We continue building in a responsible manner,” Henry told the Liverpool Echo last month. “We’ve seen many football clubs go down unsustainable paths.” Investments, he added, would have to be made “wisely”.

 

Recent history tells us that Liverpool are unlikely to be among the Premier League’s biggest spenders. This season and last both brought net spends of roughly £50million, and the campaign before it was only marginally higher. The season before that — 2019-20, when Liverpool ended their long wait to be champions of England — even saw a profit made in the transfer market.

 

Unlike Chelsea, who will also miss out on the 2023-24 Champions League (unless they win this season’s competition), it at least ensures financial fair play is not considered a worry.

 

A failure to back Klopp this summer, though, would make the task of returning to the Champions League for 2024-25 that little bit harder. The ‘Big Six’ is becoming the ‘Big Seven’ with Newcastle United’s transformed wealth but at least there will be the likely prospect of five English clubs featuring in a revised Champions League model from 2024.

Liverpool’s modern period of prosperity has owed much to their success in Europe and it is a revenue stream they can ill-afford to let run dry.

How could Liverpool go about making up the shortfall?

It might be an unpalatable option given the club’s recent glories in the Champions League, but qualification for the Europa League would be the easiest way to plug some gaps.

Not only would matchday revenues be protected with the guarantee of additional home games, but there is also money to be made from the competition where Liverpool finished as runners-up in 2015-16.

 

Last season’s winners, Eintracht Frankfurt, made €38million from going all the way, while progress to the semi-final stage also earned West Ham United €32million. Liverpool’s strong club co-efficient ranking, with only Bayern Munich, Manchester City and Chelsea higher, would also see them enjoying greater financial benefits given the structure of earnings.

 

Having to make do with the third-tier Europa Conference League, however, would bring the promise of far less income. Last season’s inaugural winners Roma, who beat Feyenoord in the final, earned €19million.

 

A fifth-place finish in the Premier League would guarantee qualification to the Europa League group stage next season, with sixth also likely to secure a spot depending on who wins the FA Cup. Unless Sheffield United win the FA Cup, or Brighton win it and finish outside the European places, seventh place would also mean busy Thursday nights next season, but in that instance, it would be in the Europa Conference League. Liverpool are eighth, three points behind Aston Villa in sixth and two behind Brighton in seventh.

 

“You can claw some of it back (via the other European competitions) but it’s nowhere near the Champions League level,” says Plumley. “You’re looking at something like half the value of the Champions League and that would be going all the way.

 

“You might make anywhere between £20m and £40m from the Europa League but it’s not at the level of the Champions League. That’s where they want to be.”

 

Liverpool do have other insulation if next season brings no European football at all. A redevelopment of the Anfield Road stand will boost the capacity of Anfield to 61,000, with an additional 7,000 seats creating the opportunity to significantly increase matchday revenues. Building work, which began last year, is set to be concluded in time for the start of next season.

 

Liverpool also have new and extended commercial deals with their two main sponsors, Standard Chartered Bank and Expedia, beginning in 2023-24.

One other saving to consider is the wages that Liverpool will need to pay out in 2023-24. Although no player will see a pay cut come directly from missing out on the Champions League, the majority of contracts are heavily incentivised.

 

Bonuses are typically paid on progression in the Champions League and that was a major factor in Liverpool’s wage bill for the 2021-22 season rocketing to £366million, an increase of nearly 17 per cent on the previous 12 months. No Champions League football in 2023-24, therefore, will inevitably see the club’s wage bill fall.

Where does this leave Liverpool?

Not where they want to be. The last six seasons have had bumps in the road but Champions League football has helped Liverpool become one of European football’s financial powerhouses.

 

Go back to the 2016-17 season (when Klopp guided the club back to the top four after missing out in six of the previous seven years) and Liverpool were lagging behind other elite clubs.

 

Deloitte’s Money League, a measure of European football’s most powerful, had Liverpool down in ninth place that season but gradual progression in the subsequent years has brought a climb up to third.

 

Only Manchester City and Real Madrid had greater revenues last season, with more earned by Liverpool than Manchester United, Paris Saint-Germain and Barcelona. By every metric — broadcast, commercial and matchday revenues — Liverpool have grown in the last six years.

 

This season will bring falls in revenue but nothing like a campaign without Champions League football. That has become the rock from which Liverpool have built, with a top-four finish assuring them of important financial help.

 

“That’s always our goal at the start of the season,” chief executive Billy Hogan told German newspaper Bild in Oct 2022. “Qualifying is important because of the turnover we can make in the Champions League but the way we run the club is to make sure we’re as sustainable as possible. You can’t automatically count on Champions League qualification.”

 

Hogan makes a point but Liverpool, even unwittingly, have grown used to Champions League football.

 

[coachpotato]

I’m no finance bunny, I had to look up what amortisation was on Google, but there appears to be a consistent thread running from comments being made by those who certainly know more than I do.

We turnover more money than 90% of clubs I’d guess, yet we consistently get outspent on the playing side by “smaller” clubs, some of who have maybe as little as 50% of our turnover.

If I’m right on those assumptions, and I’ll be corrected no doubt if I’m not, then I fail to comprehend how a Manager like Klopp wouldn’t see it also. 
Now maybe he’s not happy with the situation, but believes it’s not his place to react by calling out the owners in public regarding the importance of turning over staff (players) to maintain a challenge for all the things that make the money in the game, maybe he’s in total agreement with their strategy, I don’t know, but aren’t we supposed to have fan representation on the board these days? Someone who can question the figures and apparent lack of spend in players?
Why aren’t we, and the press, hearing from them, if they exist?

It’s too late by far to save this season, and I’m beginning to believe that FSG either have to fund the squad big time, or sell the club on, because their biggest interest, the value of the club, will start falling if they don’t.

Surely then, they have to have already made provision for that to happen either way, and the Bellingham saga has emphasised to me they might be lining up a sale, because any major investment in the playing squad should have included the one player Klopp really liked plus several others, but not limited to £150m plus sales.
 

[Barrington Womble]

15 minutes ago, coachpotato said:

I’m no finance bunny, I had to look up what amortisation was on Google, but there appears to be a consistent thread running from comments being made by those who certainly know more than I do.

We turnover more money than 90% of clubs I’d guess, yet we consistently get outspent on the playing side by “smaller” clubs, some of who have maybe as little as 50% of our turnover.

If I’m right on those assumptions, and I’ll be corrected no doubt if I’m not, then I fail to comprehend how a Manager like Klopp wouldn’t see it also. 
Now maybe he’s not happy with the situation, but believes it’s not his place to react by calling out the owners in public regarding the importance of turning over staff (players) to maintain a challenge for all the things that make the money in the game, maybe he’s in total agreement with their strategy, I don’t know, but aren’t we supposed to have fan representation on the board these days? Someone who can question the figures and apparent lack of spend in players?
Why aren’t we, and the press, hearing from them, if they exist?

It’s too late by far to save this season, and I’m beginning to believe that FSG either have to fund the squad big time, or sell the club on, because their biggest interest, the value of the club, will start falling if they don’t.

Surely then, they have to have already made provision for that to happen either way, and the Bellingham saga has emphasised to me they might be lining up a sale, because any major investment in the playing squad should have included the one player Klopp really liked plus several others, but not limited to £150m plus sales.
 

I don't think fan representation is about day to day business, just bigger things like the ESL, club colours, naming rights etc. The were consulted, but ignored on the ticket rises for next season. 

 

As for amortisation, those numbers are easy to understand. If say you commit 100m to Jude Bellingham and sign him on a 5 year deal, for tax purposes you get to spread the loss on that asset (as he's worth zero when his contract ends) over that 5 year period at 20m per year. If say after 3 years when you have written down 60m of that money, you sign him on a new 5 year contract, that remaining 40m will be spread over the 5 years to his next possible bosman - so amortisation reduces to 8m per year from the previous 20m per year. 

 

On the other side of that we have player sales. So if you buy Bellingham as per the example above but sold him for 100m instead of a new contract on 3 years, at that point because his book value is 40m, you get to record a 60m profit on the sale of that asset. This is why we see Chelsea supposedly wanting to sell players this summer that have low or zero book value (such as players who've come through the academy) as  chelsea  are likely outside ffp rules. It seems they need to make some sales before the end of their yearly accounting period at the end of June. 

 

[BeefStroganoff]

24 minutes ago, navbasi said:

Liverpool’s finances: No Champions League, no Bellingham and a £100m hit

 

In all the drama of Liverpool’s 2-2 draw with Arsenal last weekend, there was the realisation that even the faintest hopes of qualifying for the Champions League had abandoned Jurgen Klopp’s side.

 

The gap to the top four has been allowed to grow again and now even the most optimistic Liverpool supporters have been forced to accept a six-year unbroken run in Europe’s elite competition is over.

 

A dismal season, in truth, saw to that long ago.

 

Liverpool face a fight to secure any sort of European football in 2023-24 and for that, there will be a price to pay. For the first time since 2016-17, there will be no Champions League money coming to Anfield next season and Liverpool’s turnover cannot escape the hit that is coming.

 

Klopp’s side have also admitted defeat in their attempts to sign Jude Bellingham, the Borussia Dortmund and England midfielder who would cost around £130million ($162m) plus wages and agent fees.Liverpool have pulled out of the race to sign Bellingham this summer (Photo: Richard Heathcote/Getty Images)

The deal stopped making sense for Liverpool when the Champions League shortfall and the wider scale of this summer’s rebuild were taken into account.

 

Then there’s the question of how to attract one of the best young players in the world without the lure of playing in Europe’s elite club competition. Liverpool are also reluctant to pin all their hopes on one footballer — even if Dortmund could have been persuaded to sell — when numbers are needed in midfield as well as defence.

 

Don’t forget too that the club’s owner, Fenway Sports Group, is still exploring bringing in extra investment. Resources are finite.

 

The Athletic analyses where a disastrous season leaves Liverpool ahead of the summer transfer window.

---

How much do Liverpool make from being in the Champions League?

A good old chunk. More is taken annually from the Premier League pot (£152million last season, for example) but since 2017, Liverpool have made roughly half a billion pounds through Champions League distribution money alone.

 

UEFA’s annual financial reports are published every March and the last five seasons on record detail that Liverpool have earned £422million from their exploits in the Champions League.

 

Last season’s adventure to the final brought in €119,957,000 (£106m; $131m). Although this campaign’s figure will have dropped after Liverpool were eliminated in the last 16 by Real Madrid, the latest payout from UEFA is still expected to be around the £71million mark.

 

 

Liverpool’s recent successes in the Champions League also grant them a bigger slice of the pie. The higher a club’s coefficient ranking — the system that decides how both clubs and their associations are ranked for every season of European football — the greater the benefits. Tottenham Hotspur also exited in the round of 16 but Liverpool will bank as much as £8million more due to UEFA’s distribution being partially weighted in favour of recent achievements in the competition.

 

And that is not all. Matchday revenues have also been boosted by those Champions League nights at Anfield.

 

Last season’s accounts showed that £87million had been earned from the 30 home games played since 2017, suggesting that every fixture staged is worth somewhere between £2.5million and £3million. Liverpool have played at least four home games in the Champions League in each of their last six seasons, with sellout crowds as good as guaranteed.

 

Qualification to the Champions League never brings a specific lump sum but Liverpool’s habit of going far has come to make European football an important revenue stream.

Take last season’s numbers as an example. The £105million earned in prize money from UEFA alone amounted to 17 per cent of Liverpool’s record-breaking total turnover of £594million. Seeing that disappear leaves a significant hole in the balance sheets.

“The figure any club earns depends on how far they go in the competition but even if you just made the group stages and nothing else, that’s minimum £50million for an English club with the way the prize money is set out,” says Dr Dan Plumley, a sports finance expert and lecturer at Sheffield Hallam University. “That can then go up to £100m if you go a long way.

 

“Then you’ve got the other things that come with a Champions League season, like the additional matchday revenue and the commercial benefits. You’ve got to be looking around the £100m mark for a season in the Champions League.

 

“I don’t think missing one season of the Champions League is a disaster for a club like Liverpool but if you start to miss two or three seasons then it starts to put a real dent in things.”

A big summer ahead then, right?

Absolutely. FSG, Liverpool’s owners since 2010, has made no secret of its attempts to find outside investment and even went as far as considering an outright sale of the club in November.

 

Crucially, the need for someone to fund a summer rebuild is pressing.

 

Klopp has admitted that significant changes are required and failure to reach the Champions League on the back of a poor recent run will only have entrenched that belief. Naby Keita, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain and James Milner are all out of contract at the end of the season, while Arthur will return to Juventus following the end of his loan spell.

Liverpool had long courted Bellingham as a potential key piece in the jigsaw but hopes of a successful pursuit have receded. Other targets, such as Chelsea’s Mason Mount and Alexis Mac Allister of Brighton & Hove Albion, might be more achievable.

 

A clear indication of the funds Klopp will be given is yet to come, but principal owner John W Henry is not about to revise the funding strategy deployed throughout the reign of FSG. “We continue building in a responsible manner,” Henry told the Liverpool Echo last month. “We’ve seen many football clubs go down unsustainable paths.” Investments, he added, would have to be made “wisely”.

 

Recent history tells us that Liverpool are unlikely to be among the Premier League’s biggest spenders. This season and last both brought net spends of roughly £50million, and the campaign before it was only marginally higher. The season before that — 2019-20, when Liverpool ended their long wait to be champions of England — even saw a profit made in the transfer market.

 

Unlike Chelsea, who will also miss out on the 2023-24 Champions League (unless they win this season’s competition), it at least ensures financial fair play is not considered a worry.

 

A failure to back Klopp this summer, though, would make the task of returning to the Champions League for 2024-25 that little bit harder. The ‘Big Six’ is becoming the ‘Big Seven’ with Newcastle United’s transformed wealth but at least there will be the likely prospect of five English clubs featuring in a revised Champions League model from 2024.

Liverpool’s modern period of prosperity has owed much to their success in Europe and it is a revenue stream they can ill-afford to let run dry.

How could Liverpool go about making up the shortfall?

It might be an unpalatable option given the club’s recent glories in the Champions League, but qualification for the Europa League would be the easiest way to plug some gaps.

Not only would matchday revenues be protected with the guarantee of additional home games, but there is also money to be made from the competition where Liverpool finished as runners-up in 2015-16.

 

Last season’s winners, Eintracht Frankfurt, made €38million from going all the way, while progress to the semi-final stage also earned West Ham United €32million. Liverpool’s strong club co-efficient ranking, with only Bayern Munich, Manchester City and Chelsea higher, would also see them enjoying greater financial benefits given the structure of earnings.

 

Having to make do with the third-tier Europa Conference League, however, would bring the promise of far less income. Last season’s inaugural winners Roma, who beat Feyenoord in the final, earned €19million.

 

A fifth-place finish in the Premier League would guarantee qualification to the Europa League group stage next season, with sixth also likely to secure a spot depending on who wins the FA Cup. Unless Sheffield United win the FA Cup, or Brighton win it and finish outside the European places, seventh place would also mean busy Thursday nights next season, but in that instance, it would be in the Europa Conference League. Liverpool are eighth, three points behind Aston Villa in sixth and two behind Brighton in seventh.

 

“You can claw some of it back (via the other European competitions) but it’s nowhere near the Champions League level,” says Plumley. “You’re looking at something like half the value of the Champions League and that would be going all the way.

 

“You might make anywhere between £20m and £40m from the Europa League but it’s not at the level of the Champions League. That’s where they want to be.”

 

Liverpool do have other insulation if next season brings no European football at all. A redevelopment of the Anfield Road stand will boost the capacity of Anfield to 61,000, with an additional 7,000 seats creating the opportunity to significantly increase matchday revenues. Building work, which began last year, is set to be concluded in time for the start of next season.

 

Liverpool also have new and extended commercial deals with their two main sponsors, Standard Chartered Bank and Expedia, beginning in 2023-24.

One other saving to consider is the wages that Liverpool will need to pay out in 2023-24. Although no player will see a pay cut come directly from missing out on the Champions League, the majority of contracts are heavily incentivised.

 

Bonuses are typically paid on progression in the Champions League and that was a major factor in Liverpool’s wage bill for the 2021-22 season rocketing to £366million, an increase of nearly 17 per cent on the previous 12 months. No Champions League football in 2023-24, therefore, will inevitably see the club’s wage bill fall.

Where does this leave Liverpool?

Not where they want to be. The last six seasons have had bumps in the road but Champions League football has helped Liverpool become one of European football’s financial powerhouses.

 

Go back to the 2016-17 season (when Klopp guided the club back to the top four after missing out in six of the previous seven years) and Liverpool were lagging behind other elite clubs.

 

Deloitte’s Money League, a measure of European football’s most powerful, had Liverpool down in ninth place that season but gradual progression in the subsequent years has brought a climb up to third.

 

Only Manchester City and Real Madrid had greater revenues last season, with more earned by Liverpool than Manchester United, Paris Saint-Germain and Barcelona. By every metric — broadcast, commercial and matchday revenues — Liverpool have grown in the last six years.

 

This season will bring falls in revenue but nothing like a campaign without Champions League football. That has become the rock from which Liverpool have built, with a top-four finish assuring them of important financial help.

 

“That’s always our goal at the start of the season,” chief executive Billy Hogan told German newspaper Bild in Oct 2022. “Qualifying is important because of the turnover we can make in the Champions League but the way we run the club is to make sure we’re as sustainable as possible. You can’t automatically count on Champions League qualification.”

 

Hogan makes a point but Liverpool, even unwittingly, have grown used to Champions League football.

 

They can FUCK OFF with this garbage. We didn't fucking spend when we were IN IT.

[navbasi]

Just now, BeefStroganoff said:

They can FUCK OFF with this garbage. We didn't fucking spend when we were IN IT.

The PR machine has kicked into action.....

[VERBAL DIARRHEA]

They really take the piss don’t they.

[kemskem]

Calm down. I have reliable information he will stay at Dortmund until FSG can make the numbers work.

[Section_31]

I didn't even know until I was watching a game show the other day that FSG had tried to trademark the actual name "Liverpool". Scenes.

[Pidge]

10 minutes ago, Section_31 said:

I didn't even know until I was watching a game show the other day that FSG had tried to trademark the actual name "Liverpool". Scenes.

And the liver birds, I believe...

 

Americans are gonna American. 

 

The end result was that every time we sing "Liverpool" we have to quickly whisper "football club TM" afterwards.

 

And a bunch of YouTube channels had to design their own liver birds (because the club started protecting their designs). 

[Razoray]

52 minutes ago, navbasi said:

Liverpool’s finances: No Champions League, no Bellingham and a £100m hit

 

In all the drama of Liverpool’s 2-2 draw with Arsenal last weekend, there was the realisation that even the faintest hopes of qualifying for the Champions League had abandoned Jurgen Klopp’s side.

 

The gap to the top four has been allowed to grow again and now even the most optimistic Liverpool supporters have been forced to accept a six-year unbroken run in Europe’s elite competition is over.

 

A dismal season, in truth, saw to that long ago.

 

Liverpool face a fight to secure any sort of European football in 2023-24 and for that, there will be a price to pay. For the first time since 2016-17, there will be no Champions League money coming to Anfield next season and Liverpool’s turnover cannot escape the hit that is coming.

 

Klopp’s side have also admitted defeat in their attempts to sign Jude Bellingham, the Borussia Dortmund and England midfielder who would cost around £130million ($162m) plus wages and agent fees.Liverpool have pulled out of the race to sign Bellingham this summer (Photo: Richard Heathcote/Getty Images)

The deal stopped making sense for Liverpool when the Champions League shortfall and the wider scale of this summer’s rebuild were taken into account.

 

Then there’s the question of how to attract one of the best young players in the world without the lure of playing in Europe’s elite club competition. Liverpool are also reluctant to pin all their hopes on one footballer — even if Dortmund could have been persuaded to sell — when numbers are needed in midfield as well as defence.

 

Don’t forget too that the club’s owner, Fenway Sports Group, is still exploring bringing in extra investment. Resources are finite.

 

The Athletic analyses where a disastrous season leaves Liverpool ahead of the summer transfer window.

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How much do Liverpool make from being in the Champions League?

A good old chunk. More is taken annually from the Premier League pot (£152million last season, for example) but since 2017, Liverpool have made roughly half a billion pounds through Champions League distribution money alone.

 

UEFA’s annual financial reports are published every March and the last five seasons on record detail that Liverpool have earned £422million from their exploits in the Champions League.

 

Last season’s adventure to the final brought in €119,957,000 (£106m; $131m). Although this campaign’s figure will have dropped after Liverpool were eliminated in the last 16 by Real Madrid, the latest payout from UEFA is still expected to be around the £71million mark.

 

 

Liverpool’s recent successes in the Champions League also grant them a bigger slice of the pie. The higher a club’s coefficient ranking — the system that decides how both clubs and their associations are ranked for every season of European football — the greater the benefits. Tottenham Hotspur also exited in the round of 16 but Liverpool will bank as much as £8million more due to UEFA’s distribution being partially weighted in favour of recent achievements in the competition.

 

And that is not all. Matchday revenues have also been boosted by those Champions League nights at Anfield.

 

Last season’s accounts showed that £87million had been earned from the 30 home games played since 2017, suggesting that every fixture staged is worth somewhere between £2.5million and £3million. Liverpool have played at least four home games in the Champions League in each of their last six seasons, with sellout crowds as good as guaranteed.

 

Qualification to the Champions League never brings a specific lump sum but Liverpool’s habit of going far has come to make European football an important revenue stream.

Take last season’s numbers as an example. The £105million earned in prize money from UEFA alone amounted to 17 per cent of Liverpool’s record-breaking total turnover of £594million. Seeing that disappear leaves a significant hole in the balance sheets.

“The figure any club earns depends on how far they go in the competition but even if you just made the group stages and nothing else, that’s minimum £50million for an English club with the way the prize money is set out,” says Dr Dan Plumley, a sports finance expert and lecturer at Sheffield Hallam University. “That can then go up to £100m if you go a long way.

 

“Then you’ve got the other things that come with a Champions League season, like the additional matchday revenue and the commercial benefits. You’ve got to be looking around the £100m mark for a season in the Champions League.

 

“I don’t think missing one season of the Champions League is a disaster for a club like Liverpool but if you start to miss two or three seasons then it starts to put a real dent in things.”

A big summer ahead then, right?

Absolutely. FSG, Liverpool’s owners since 2010, has made no secret of its attempts to find outside investment and even went as far as considering an outright sale of the club in November.

 

Crucially, the need for someone to fund a summer rebuild is pressing.

 

Klopp has admitted that significant changes are required and failure to reach the Champions League on the back of a poor recent run will only have entrenched that belief. Naby Keita, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain and James Milner are all out of contract at the end of the season, while Arthur will return to Juventus following the end of his loan spell.

Liverpool had long courted Bellingham as a potential key piece in the jigsaw but hopes of a successful pursuit have receded. Other targets, such as Chelsea’s Mason Mount and Alexis Mac Allister of Brighton & Hove Albion, might be more achievable.

 

A clear indication of the funds Klopp will be given is yet to come, but principal owner John W Henry is not about to revise the funding strategy deployed throughout the reign of FSG. “We continue building in a responsible manner,” Henry told the Liverpool Echo last month. “We’ve seen many football clubs go down unsustainable paths.” Investments, he added, would have to be made “wisely”.

 

Recent history tells us that Liverpool are unlikely to be among the Premier League’s biggest spenders. This season and last both brought net spends of roughly £50million, and the campaign before it was only marginally higher. The season before that — 2019-20, when Liverpool ended their long wait to be champions of England — even saw a profit made in the transfer market.

 

Unlike Chelsea, who will also miss out on the 2023-24 Champions League (unless they win this season’s competition), it at least ensures financial fair play is not considered a worry.

 

A failure to back Klopp this summer, though, would make the task of returning to the Champions League for 2024-25 that little bit harder. The ‘Big Six’ is becoming the ‘Big Seven’ with Newcastle United’s transformed wealth but at least there will be the likely prospect of five English clubs featuring in a revised Champions League model from 2024.

Liverpool’s modern period of prosperity has owed much to their success in Europe and it is a revenue stream they can ill-afford to let run dry.

How could Liverpool go about making up the shortfall?

It might be an unpalatable option given the club’s recent glories in the Champions League, but qualification for the Europa League would be the easiest way to plug some gaps.

Not only would matchday revenues be protected with the guarantee of additional home games, but there is also money to be made from the competition where Liverpool finished as runners-up in 2015-16.

 

Last season’s winners, Eintracht Frankfurt, made €38million from going all the way, while progress to the semi-final stage also earned West Ham United €32million. Liverpool’s strong club co-efficient ranking, with only Bayern Munich, Manchester City and Chelsea higher, would also see them enjoying greater financial benefits given the structure of earnings.

 

Having to make do with the third-tier Europa Conference League, however, would bring the promise of far less income. Last season’s inaugural winners Roma, who beat Feyenoord in the final, earned €19million.

 

A fifth-place finish in the Premier League would guarantee qualification to the Europa League group stage next season, with sixth also likely to secure a spot depending on who wins the FA Cup. Unless Sheffield United win the FA Cup, or Brighton win it and finish outside the European places, seventh place would also mean busy Thursday nights next season, but in that instance, it would be in the Europa Conference League. Liverpool are eighth, three points behind Aston Villa in sixth and two behind Brighton in seventh.

 

“You can claw some of it back (via the other European competitions) but it’s nowhere near the Champions League level,” says Plumley. “You’re looking at something like half the value of the Champions League and that would be going all the way.

 

“You might make anywhere between £20m and £40m from the Europa League but it’s not at the level of the Champions League. That’s where they want to be.”

 

Liverpool do have other insulation if next season brings no European football at all. A redevelopment of the Anfield Road stand will boost the capacity of Anfield to 61,000, with an additional 7,000 seats creating the opportunity to significantly increase matchday revenues. Building work, which began last year, is set to be concluded in time for the start of next season.

 

Liverpool also have new and extended commercial deals with their two main sponsors, Standard Chartered Bank and Expedia, beginning in 2023-24.

One other saving to consider is the wages that Liverpool will need to pay out in 2023-24. Although no player will see a pay cut come directly from missing out on the Champions League, the majority of contracts are heavily incentivised.

 

Bonuses are typically paid on progression in the Champions League and that was a major factor in Liverpool’s wage bill for the 2021-22 season rocketing to £366million, an increase of nearly 17 per cent on the previous 12 months. No Champions League football in 2023-24, therefore, will inevitably see the club’s wage bill fall.

Where does this leave Liverpool?

Not where they want to be. The last six seasons have had bumps in the road but Champions League football has helped Liverpool become one of European football’s financial powerhouses.

 

Go back to the 2016-17 season (when Klopp guided the club back to the top four after missing out in six of the previous seven years) and Liverpool were lagging behind other elite clubs.

 

Deloitte’s Money League, a measure of European football’s most powerful, had Liverpool down in ninth place that season but gradual progression in the subsequent years has brought a climb up to third.

 

Only Manchester City and Real Madrid had greater revenues last season, with more earned by Liverpool than Manchester United, Paris Saint-Germain and Barcelona. By every metric — broadcast, commercial and matchday revenues — Liverpool have grown in the last six years.

 

This season will bring falls in revenue but nothing like a campaign without Champions League football. That has become the rock from which Liverpool have built, with a top-four finish assuring them of important financial help.

 

“That’s always our goal at the start of the season,” chief executive Billy Hogan told German newspaper Bild in Oct 2022. “Qualifying is important because of the turnover we can make in the Champions League but the way we run the club is to make sure we’re as sustainable as possible. You can’t automatically count on Champions League qualification.”

 

Hogan makes a point but Liverpool, even unwittingly, have grown used to Champions League football.

 

So this year we wil make £72m from the CL plus about £10m matchday revenue. 

Next year, if we are in the Europa, we can earn up to £40m for winning it, keep similar matchday revenue, make about £7m extra from the ARE extension and will have less bonuses to pay because we don't have champions league football.

That is not a shortfall of £100m. 

[navbasi]

9 minutes ago, Razoray said:

So this year we wil make £72m from the CL plus about £10m matchday revenue. 

Next year, if we are in the Europa, we can earn up to £40m for winning it, keep similar matchday revenue, make about £7m extra from the ARE extension and will have less bonuses to pay because we don't have champions league football.

That is not a shortfall of £100m. 

Plus the additional sponsorship money from SC and Expedia.. 

[an tha]

2 hours ago, No2 said:

That can be true but doesn't explain the public withdrawal. We could easily have let the player know privately that it's a non runner, the numbers don't work. The fans will know its not happening when Nunes and Caicedo are unveiled. If both Madrid and ourselves are genuinely out then the only club to benefit is City, another thing that makes no sense.

I feel the club are maybe conscious of people being pissed off at how their chase of last summers top target went and the aftermath and have decided that being transparant this year will be a better look....

[dave u]

13 hours ago, Barrington Womble said:

But for our wages to be as high as they are (it was more than £350m iirc), then we must save 10s of millions in bonuses in a season such as this year. And with no CL next year that must provide opportunity for knock on savings. 

 

A great point that.

[Harry Squatter]

18 minutes ago, navbasi said:

Plus the additional sponsorship money from SC and Expedia.. 

As well as cutting the following from the wage bill:

 

Oxlade Chamberlain £110k per week

Kelleher £25k per week

Milner £80k per week

Keita £120k per week

Adrian £58k per week

Matip £100k per week

Phillips £30k per week

Firmino £180k per week

 

Most of these are now bit part players/permanent crocks or want to leave to play 1st team football. That's over £30m a year for players who don't contribute much.

 

Obviously there will be the need to buy new players but Diaz signed and isn't on mega wages. 

[Wicket]

Either that or its going to show we’ve got a lot of overpaid players, which will also beg the question why are we paying so much compared to our peers, cos we aren’t forking out huge transfer fees in addition. 

6 minutes ago, dave u said:

 

A great point that.

 

[Dave D]

1 hour ago, BeefStroganoff said:

They can FUCK OFF with this garbage. We didn't fucking spend when we were IN IT.

 

Precisely. Ridiculous article as our transfer budgets dont seem to be affected at all by the £100m gain/loss regardless     

[dave u]

3 minutes ago, Wicket said:

Either that or its going to show we’ve got a lot of overpaid players, which will also beg the question why are we paying so much compared to our peers, cos we aren’t forking out huge transfer fees in addition. 

 

I remember when we won the CL and then the league there was a lot of talk about how much it cost us in bonuses as contracts were heavily incentivised like that. So it's not unreasonable to assume we're paying a lot less when they win fuck all and (likely) finish mid table.

[skend04]

FSG are taking a huge wedge out of the club, they wouldn't be looking to buy other sporting ventures if they weren't. Clever accounting just hides all that shit. 

[Wicket]

1 minute ago, dave u said:

 

I remember when we won the CL and then the league there was a lot of talk about how much it cost us in bonuses as contracts were heavily incentivised like that. So it's not unreasonable to assume we're paying a lot less when they win fuck all and (likely) finish mid table.

Yeah, my gut feel is that Barrington’s take is right and we should be seeing the knock on savings which surely can be taken advantage of, but it’s something ill be keeping my eye on

[ZonkoVille77]

We're owned by fucking scabs. That's all there is to it.

[TheDrowningMan]

22 minutes ago, skend04 said:

FSG are taking a huge wedge out of the club, they wouldn't be looking to buy other sporting ventures if they weren't. Clever accounting just hides all that shit. 

It’s fast becoming the most plausible explanation. To believe otherwise at this point is to believe books are never fiddled which is, by extension, to believe Man City’s headline figures. £50m all-in for Haaland, wasn’t it?

[an tha]

Don't pay attention to them so don't know - but is there so much talk and so much analysis and importantly so much what seems to be jeopardy around the finances of other clubs around us - the obvious exception of the cheats...?

 

 

Just seems like it might be unique to us.