The Woolster

21 minutes ago, littletedwest said:

Did I have him? Had him last year then thought I'd replaced him 

Sorry, seems I didn't change Mugabe to Prince Phillip...

14 minutes ago, littletedwest said:

Did I have him? Had him last year then thought I'd replaced him 

I'll double check, I used the spreadsheet I had from last year and updated that, I may have not done it properly...

I need to replace Valery Harper

And @Jenson @littletedwest, @Babb'sBurstNad and @redheart need to replace Mugabe

Scores on the Doors

Woolster - 60 ponts

MegadriveMan and redheart - 30 points

Skend04 and littletedwest - 20 points

VladimirIlyich, Jenson, Babb'sBurstnad, Thoth and Nelly-Torres - 10 points

On 21/01/2019 at 14:42, Fowlers God said:

On 03/02/2019 at 15:30, Fowlers God said:

Apologies. I do have some late entries in my inbox to add which I will do tomorrow. Been hectic at work lately but have cleared my afternoon diary to update the dead pool. It’s in my calendar after my conf call at 1515 and before my monthly construction update at 1600. 

 

It will be done

@Fowlers God must still be on his conf call...

I've based the scoring on the entries above and redheart, but who were the other late entries and who did you have on your lists?

Anyone with Mugabe can fist pump without that tinge of shame!

1 hour ago, Nelly-Torres said:

I had Mugabe. 

 

First time of doing this. Is the etiquette just to post your replacement in the forum? Either way, I'll have Henry Kissinger. 

Yes, post them on here

On 31/08/2019 at 16:58, redheart said:

Valerie HArper has gone at last!

 

More points for me. Can we have an updated points table?

I missed Valerie Harper! And Mugabe was high up in my list for next replacements!

I think @Fowlers God isn't around much anymore, I did ask for the spreadsheet so I could do the updates, but didn't hear back.

I'll get the info together, if not today then next week.

On 25/08/2019 at 12:18, Alex_K said:

This is an enormous myth. They have spent far more than our owners have (more revenues, sure, but doesn't change the fact). They just don't have the greatest manager in the world at the helm of spending it.

"They", as in the Glazers, have spent nothing, it is the club that has earned the money they've spent. That fact that it is revenues absolutely changes that fact. In 2018 they had revenues that were £135m more than us, that very clearly has an effect on what they can afford to spend on transfers and wages compared to us.

The Glazers have in fact taken money out, over the past 3 years they have taken out £65m in dividends. They also pay themselves wages, there are 12 directors, the Glazer make up 6 of them. Don't know what the break down is, but the board were paid £13m last year. Haven't a clue how much it is over their entire ownership, but imagine it is hundreds of millions.

They are successfully doing what to Utd what Hicks and Gillett tried to do to us.

My boy Woodburn came on in the 67th minute of the League Cup tie against Millwall  and won the penalty that Oxford got to equalise in injury time having bern 2-0 down with 3 minutes left. Them scored in the penalty shootout that Oxford won

3 hours ago, Barry Wom said:

Haven't they also have to refinance? It was a loan via fsg originally to get lower interest rates, but that is now no longer the case and we have something with a slightly higher interest payment. I don't know if that changes the term. 

Don't think there was a refinance. It had been said that the loan would be interest free, but when the accounts were published you could see there was interest on the loans. But apparently FSG had borrowed the money themselves, and lent on to us at the same rate

10 hours ago, sir roger said:

I thought the Main Stand was supposed to be self-financing over 8 years or so , and wasn't aware that they were potentially snaffling transfer funds to pay their loan off earlier.

Its the opposite. It was originally stated that the roughly £110 loan would be repaid over 5 and half years, so you are looking at about £20m per year. As at the last set of published accounts, so May last year, only £10m had been paid back compared to the £30-40m (could depend on the payment dates) that we would expect if it was being paid back evenly of the term of the debt. Much of what wasn't paid back was used for transfers over those 2 seasons.

So as of this year, we should have paid back £60m, for next summer, it is £80m. We don't know yet if anything was paid back this year just gone, it is also possible FSG may extend the term of the debt so the repayments could be spread over a longer period, but if they haven't, and if we didn't catch up with out payments last year, then there could be a big chunk of debt that needs to be paid off either this season or next. when you include the £50m being spent on Kirkby, then I can see why we the purse strings might be a bit tight this season.

5 hours ago, sir roger said:

Obviously hope you are right, NV.

 

If it is going to be bigger and better and the main reason we are not doing any spending this summer then I could cope with that. 

 The main reason we are not doing any spending this summer is possibly because we are finally paying for the Main Stand, is that something you could cope with?

Junior Agogo is a gone gone...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/49434573

I feel a bit bad about punning that one to be honest. We played for the same U16 team. In our league we finished tied at the top, had a play-off for the title and he scored the winner with 5 minutes left. He was the only one in the team to make it as a pro, even though he wasn't the best player in the team, and ended up playing with players like Stoichkov and Essien and playing international football. Haven't seen him for about 20 years mind.

57 minutes ago, Champions of Europe said:

I suppose there will be times when shithouse refs will avoid making a decision, holding their ear to see what they should do. A bit like when a lino doesn’t hold the flag up until the ref has made a decision. I’d imagine as the season goes on we might see more of that. 
 

That’s a difficult one really, when it comes to deciding if it benefitted us  because without var the decision could have gone our way. Maybe for the purpose of this thread those specific instances should go down as ‘neither’ unless there’s a consensus of us that decide one way or another. 

 

 

I think the way suggested is the correct way of doing it, because any other way would be distorted by subjectivity, but you just have to be aware of the bias in the results, so you can't necessarily compare to 'without VAR', you should probably only compare to decisions given to opposition.  

2 hours ago, Champions of Europe said:

I’m at all the home games so any help on this will be appreciated. For this particular thread I am thinking of only counting var decisions that are made that change the referees decision. So possible red card, or possible offsides etc don’t count if var doesn’t then uphold them.

 

The issue here is that referees and their assistants will be minded to let the play go one rather than calling tight decisions that they would have made without VAR. If it is a close offside, they will more likely play on, if there is a penalty call, they may not make it knowing that it can be reviewed etc

On 18/04/2019 at 14:44, The Woolster said:

Woolster's wishlist

 

Lozano - from what I have seen of him, which isn't loads I must admit, Lozano would be a perfect fit for the way we play, goals, pressing, workrate, determination etc.

 

Back-up keeper - I think that Adrian at West Ham and McCarthy at Southampton are 2 good, Premier League standard keepers who are sat on the bench at their clubs. They may want to leave to play games, but I'm sure they'd rather be on our bench than at their current clubs

 

Back-up left back - No fucking idea. I'd go for a seasoned pro who could perhaps also cover at right back, like a full back version of Klavan.

 

Wildcard - This time last year I was touting Son who was down to the last year of his contract. Well this year, Eriksen is down to the last year, and as yet doesn't look like extending. Would he cost a shit load? Yes. Is it likely to happen? No. But fuck it, its a wishlist.

Glad to see the Liverpool scouts are following my suggestions again...

Now go buy Lozano or Eriksen!

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.

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...)

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.

26 minutes ago, Reckoner said:

Oh you lucky lucky members!

My bang the drum thread and financial analysis is worth the members fee alone!

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.

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!

On 23/07/2019 at 22:09, Reckoner said:

You make some good points. Net spend of about £30 million a year isn’t it? Not great.

Based on the accounts from 2012/13 to 2017/18 it was £47m a year

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.