The Woolster

They actually played 2 full seasons with each other at Celta Vigo in the Segunda. Michu played 63 and scored 13, Aspas played 64 and scored 9. Michu is a bit older and had quite a lot more experience at that point though, and Aspas followed that up with scoring 23 the next season.

I'm actually a fire breather by day, but do a bit of financial analysis as a hobby. At the last accounts net debt was £87m, £22m of which was an interest free sharholder loan. Year end was brought forwards by 2 months though and before we would have got the season ticket cash, so if comparing to previous years, it would be a bit lower. Since then, FSG have repaid £47m of the bank loans with an increase of interest free shareholder loans. Interest free shareholder loans can be considered as equity.

This may have been posted elsewhere, but I read this today Comment: Liverpool FC have finally seen the ugly truth about Luis Suarez > Liverpool FC News > Sport | Click Liverpool

My preferred choice of action is that we spend the £40-50m (including wages) net that I believe we can afford in the squad, and that if we sell Suarez, we put half of that into the squad and put half of it aside for the stadium. I think that £60m is a serious investment in the squad, and however much the other teams spend, it should be enough to really challenge to get into the top 4. More than that and I feel we could end up spending for spendings sake and not get value for what we would be spending. I did write answers to the rest of your post, but decided not to post them becasue if I did I would be coming back to see your respnses and it would go back and forth etc etc, but this thread is turning into petty squabbling rather than sensible discussion and I'd rather stay out of it for a while. The only other thing I will say is that in the last 15 years we've seen Valencia break the Real/Barca stranglehold and win 2 La Ligas, get to 2 Champs League finals and win Uefa cup, and we've seen Porto win the Uefa and follow it up with the Champs League. I don't think Dortmund are a once a generational thing.

I know this has been discussed since what I posted, but the relevance of those teams is that they are or have punched above their weight, perhaps in their own league, perhaps in Europe. And its not about copying anyone, as the teams I mentioned have done it differently themselves, they are just examples of teams who have been smart. So Dortmund may well have it easier in their league, but their team cost somewhere south of £50m to assemble I beleive (prior to this season), so apart from the guys who have come from their youth academy, I don't see how them being in a league with a different structure stopped us signing the players that were good enough to get them into the Champs League final did for the money they did?

We cry and cry and cry. Or we do things smarter, like Spurs have done, like Dortmund have done, and like Udinese have done, like Lyon did at one stage. I don't see either matchday or commercial revenues falling for a long while yet though, that would require another Hodgson type mistake.

Here are my very quick numbers. Big guesses and nice round numbers used for ease though. Redevelopment - Cost £150. Naming rights £2m per year (gonna guess we sell rights to part of the area outside the stadium) New build - Cost £300m? Brightons cost £93m for 30k seats in the middle of nowhere. Emirates cost £470m for 60k seats in middle of London. Naming rights £10m per year. It will take 19 years before cost less naming rights income is lower for new build (300-190=110) than redevelopment (150-38=112) If the naming rights contract is renegotiated after say 10 years, that might shave off a couple of years from that. A New build would have higher average ticket price though as there would be more corporate seating I would have thought.

You completely disagree with my last sentence, thats fine, but you did not answer my question which preceeded it, what happens if we spend big and don't get into Champions League next season, spend big again? And if we don't get in again?

The 3 previous seasons to last are irrelevant as far as I am concerned, different managers, different teams, different systems. Last season is relevant, and for the vast majority of the season we were not far off top 4 form, from 1st October onwards we were only 5 points off CL spot. In my opinion, our squad going into this season as it stands is much better than it was going into last. We may lose our top scorer, but we'll have money for replacements, and we may well have a more balanced and efficient team. Arsenal only scored 2 goals less last season without van Persie. I am confident going into this season that we can put a real good challenge in for 4th, we might not make it, but we'll be there or there abouts.

This type of things gets said by fans of all teams every summer "the other teams will be spending big and they'll get better". But its not about spending money for money's sake (not saying you are saying that), its about spending the right money. If we look at the traditional big 4, we've all spent money over the last 3 or so seasons (even Arsenal, their net spend is low because they sold 3 players for £84m, but they've spent over £100m in 2 seasons I think), and as far as I am concerned, we are all worse teams than we were in say 2009. The 2 teams that have improved are City who have spent an obscene amount of money, and Spurs, who have spent the right money (until recently, think they seem to have abandoned that now). Lets say we do spend all the Suarez money, as well as all the money I beleive is available, there are 5 other very competitive teams we are up against, what happens if we don't get top 4, do we spend big again the next season? We'll probably be back to paying Champions league wages without being in the Champions League, which is something we are only just breaking free from. The top of the league is much more competitive now, and it would be sensible to keep our powder dry, especially as we will need to invest a significant amount into the refurbishment. I am not saying that our net transfer budget will be that high, for one I think that FSG may have a similar view that I do about funding the stadium, and I think they will be able to hide behind the fact that we have had significant 'losses' the last 2 seasons to explain a similar transfer spend to previous seasons if they wanted to. That also means that other clubs don't think we have cash burning a hole in our pocket when it comes to transfer discussions. But those losses are not really losses, which I explain here Wooly Jumpers For Goalposts: Liverpool's Annual Accouts: Will the Reds stay in the red?, and you'll see how I come to my guestimate of what we can afford to spend. I think we should be spending about £40-50m net this season (including winter transfer window), and if we sell Suarez, then another £20m on top. What may well happen though is we sell Suarez, spend £60m net and FSG get away with saying we reinvested all of the Suarez money, and we'll be in the same position anyway.

For a start, I don't think our squad is very far off top 4 strength as it stands. I also think that we can afford to spend a net £40-50m on transfers this season (so 2 transfer windows) from our own cash flow, if you add £20m from a sale of Suarez, then £60-£70m is more than enough to put a real challenge in to getting a top 4 place, if not higher. So far our net spend is more or less zero, we could get 3 £20m players for that to add to an already good squad.

In terms of naming rights, I think that FSG have said that they would not go down the naming rights route if they refurbished rather built a new stadium, although they may well sell naming rights for the new stands, but I don't think it would be worth £100m. Its hard to compare as most naming rights for stadiums also include shirt sponsorship, but at a guess, the price for having your name on a stadium is maybe £10m a year (if that). So for a couple of stands we would be looking at less than £5m a year, so an optimistic max of £50m for a 10 year deal. Just my opinion of course. The £150m cost of the refurb, if financed through debt, would cost us in interest, assuming a nice easy to compute figure of 5%, £7.5m in year 1. If we aimed to repay in 15 years that would be £10m a year in debt repayments. If we got £5m from naming rights, that would be £12.5m we'd need to cover. If we increase capacity by 15,000, and with a mix of normal and corporate seats, plus added merchandise and food/drink profits, lets say we increase revenues by £100 a seat. A massive guess on my part, but it makes the calculations easy and sounds about right. That an extra £1.5m a game, so depending on cup runs and European competition, £30-40m a season. Theres extra costs to having a bigger stadium, lets say £5m a year, but it could be a fair bit less. Take off the £12.5m finance costs, we'd have £12.5m-£22.5m extra per season to invest in the squad on transfers and wages. There would be a lag between having to pay for the refurb and getting the extra revenues in, although we probably could wiat before we start repaying the debt back, we would still need to cover that £7.5m a year of interest. Our current position, with the new TV deal and having cut the wage bill, is very good though, so we can easily manage that interst cost and have enough to still invest significantly in the squad. Getting the stadium done is the single most important thing that we can do for our long term health though, much more important than getting back into the Champions League because there is now a big 6 and getting into the Champions League is no longer a virtuous circle. My personal opinioin is that if we do sell Suarez, we should not reinvest all of his transfer fee on ne wplayers, but we should put half of it towards the stadium, reducing out interest and either the amount of time it takes to repay, or the amount we need to pay off each year. I also think that, due to the age of the squad plus the decent number of lads coming through the academy, that quite soon we will be in a position that we only have to buy a player or 2 a season and have a very small net spend, and be able to pay off the debt quicker rather than invest in the squad. Obviusly depends on how the transfers we make work out though.

From memory, that should be considered as 'different' debt. Arsenal were basically 2 separate businesses, football and property. The property part took out some loans to build the flats, and the majority have now been sold so the debt was paid off. But if you want to compare them to other teams finances, you should in effect ignore the property business.

Whilst your point about the stadium is correct, what dennis directly quoted you about was your comment that "£14m" is paying down debt which he said was actually interest, and he is correct, £14m per year is the interest payment, and £6m is the principal repayment. Ive only read the recent stuff about arsenal, so cant comment on any other arguments you are having.

I probably shouldn't bother to get involved, but I've kind of looked at Arsenal's finances in the past to discuss (argue) on another forum. Arsenal's revenue did go up by £60m when they moved into the Emirates, however not all of that increase was from the stadium. Almost £20m was from property sales, although broadcasting revenues did fall £10m. Abot £10m was increase to commercial and retail, I can't be bothered to check, but I'll say thats down to naming rights and better shop facilities and higher footfall at the stadium. So a £50m increase. But there are increased costs in moving to a bigger stadium. The annual accounts for 2007 say that operating profit from football went up £29m, and to that we add back the £10m reduction in media revenues to get £39m increase in profits from the new stadium. This £39m cannot be ploughed back into the team though as they have to pay the £20m odd financing costs (£14m interest, £6m debt repayments) each year. So, they have had about £20m increase year on year that was available to invest in the squad. Arsenal have not been paying off their debt early, only the scheduled £6m each year, as there are significant penalties for doing so. They have just been increasing their cash levels, and so the often reported net debt has been falling. In their last interim accounts they had for Nov 2012, they had £123m of cash. Not all of this is available to spend as they are required to hold a certain level of cash as part of their debt agreements, but I think as Swiss Ramble has said, they have at least £50m that they could spend on transfers very comfortably. Why haven't they spent this? I think its 2 reasons, Wenger has his 'philosophy' about spending and building a team, player value and the debt on the club etc. but it was also very beneficial for the owners, as that increased the share price, and they made a massive profit selling to Kroenke and Usamov. Now Kroenke has control and is still not spending, and I personally think he is also trying to increase the value of the club for a future sale, perhaps to Usamov, perhaps to someone else. If Usamov gets control, they will spend big.

Because they are paying us £25m a year instead of the £12 that Adidas previously paid

As a new entrant to the market, I think they've decided not to make as many sales as they could on the away/3rd kit and go for the publicity, even if its not great, of having people talk about the kits, especially as they are getting to make up lost sales by releasing a new home shirt each season rather than the prevous every 2nd season. Going on the first 2 Home shirts, they can cleary design very nice shirts and I wouldn't be surprised if last season was our biggest ever seller in a single season. Once they've had a few more seasons, praticularly if they sign up a few more teams, then I reckon they'll make some nicer ones.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.tvmobile.android.bamboozle

Indeed, average figure would be far more telling. To answer your question, I've seen on Twitter that for Utd its about 5% of tickets are the cheapest, and that also their season ticket holders have to buy Cup tickets whether they are going or not.

I'm much the same. Sky just had a Super Middleweight Gloves are off, I've not seen it before, but it had Eubank, Collins, Calzaghe, Roy Jones, Richie Woodhall and Jonny Nelson sat round a table chatting. Eubank is so entertaining, I used to hate him as I was a Benn man, but I love him now.

Im assuming we sell skrtel and Coates, so need 2 CBs, and 1 first team attacker, the others I mention are nice to have rather than need to have for me.

I agree that's how Remy has been in the prem, but when I first saw him I was impressed with his skill on the ball and ability to beat a man. Looking at his stats, he's scored a lot of headers, so is decent in the the air, and I think he's shown he can finish. To be honest, you are right in that we don't need weimann if we get the attacking player we need, whoever that may be, but I think he's got what it takes to be a very good player, and with his contract situation, we could get him on the cheap We need someone at dm, so we either spend big and get someone better than lucas, or get a back up in. Id rather spend the money on the defence and get a back up. And I think our full backs are essentially wing backs anyway, and is specifically why id go for Beausejour.

I don't think Schneiderlin would cost that much as there really hasn't been much hype about him, my guess would be somewhere less than £10m, but if he did, then of course he would not be good value.

I reckon we might have about £40/45m to spend this summer. We'll probably need to spend £30/35m on the 3 or so regular 1st team players, so any squad players we get aren't really going to be particularly ambitous unless we get lucky with a cheap signing or 2.

Wasn't meant snidely, lots of people watch lots of football and it amazes me. I've got 2 kids, 2 cats, 40 fantasy football teams, never more than 10% free on my Sky+ with loads of programmes on series link, and a ballbreaker of a wife, I just don't have the time. The comment is more about my lack of knowledge of European football more than anything, and because I try not to want players if I've not seen them (sometimes its hard not to get caught up in the hype though), then I can only really go for players in the Prem. Having said that, I do doubt that everyone who goes crazy over some of the foreign players, the ones that don't play for the big clubs anyway, have really seen that much of them. But I wasn't suggesting you were one of those. I do think that Remy is good enough, he impressed my when I saw him in the Champs League but I hadn't really seen enough, so I've been looking out for him at QPR, and think he is very good, I'd say he is at a similar level to Sturridge. 2 years ago he was rated around £15m, he looks worth that to me, but he will cost around £8m. I think thats good value. I don't think our back ups just need to be wold class, just good enough to step in when required, and I do think Schneiderlin and Weimann are good enough for the level of back up we need to fight for top 4, and they both have potential to get better. Weimann is apparantly in the last year of his contract, so he shouldn't cost much if he wants to leave. Southampton have a rich and ambitious owner so Schneiderlin might not be really cheap, but I'd imagine he would be cheaper than this Waynama fella that lots of people mention (can't tell you who I think is better as never seen Waynama). And if Wigan get relegated, there will be a bit of a fire sale there so Beausejour might not cost too much. As for his quality, for me its a 2 year stop gap so Robinson can go on loan, and his 6 or 7 assists this season are quite a good return.