Next Season's Squad.

[Hound]

Losing Gourlay is an extra £1m a year...

[Zip]

Ian are you sure that wages are that much higher than income? I know things are bad but those figures are horrible.

[NewCorkSeth]

Losing Gourlay is an extra £1m a year...

I'd pay 1 million a year to keep him away..

[Zip]

Losing Gourlay is an extra £1m a year...

We also haven’t replaced our Technical Director yet.

[muirinho]

So if McShane, O'Shea, Jaakkola, Popa, JvdB, Gravenberch and Harriott all leave on a free that's gotta be 60-70k in wages freed up right?

Add into that selling Kelly and Meyler and maybe another 25-30k in wages freed up? Would that really not be enough to turn the financial tide?

Obviously there are other player we could see gone to balance the books and then theres the question of Swift and Moore being possible transfer targets but imagining them staying surely there would be enough left wages wise to sign a couple?

Income is about £18m. Wages are about £30m.

£70k + £30k is £100k a week or £5.2m a year. So only about halfway there.

Cheers for calculating that! I hoped we would be closer and someone could say my estimates on salary were a little generous..
Potentially there is some bonuses in their too for these players?

Looks like shifting Gunter and McCleary is more important than i thought. Both must be on or around 20k a week.

How much do academy lads earn? Mafff had a very long list (33) of players that could/should go - some of them academy. Anybody care to have a go at pricing wages for this lot?

https://twitter.com/maffff/status/1125186559467315200
https://twitter.com/maffff/status/1125186561405067264

He's not even including players already out on loan for part of next season (Mannone and Aloku).

I'd love to keep McCleary and Gunter - but I don't think we can. Unless club can persuade them to take serious salary cuts (Gunter has definitely done this before, but on getting a new contract, not on an existing one)

Lots of the players we'll be moving on are decent players, who've done their best for the club - it won't all be overpaid Gourlay nonsense. Just hope the fanbase treat them with some respect and don't come over all "you were crap anyway"

[NewCorkSeth]

Income is about £18m. Wages are about £30m.

£70k + £30k is £100k a week or £5.2m a year. So only about halfway there.

Cheers for calculating that! I hoped we would be closer and someone could say my estimates on salary were a little generous..
Potentially there is some bonuses in their too for these players?

Looks like shifting Gunter and McCleary is more important than i thought. Both must be on or around 20k a week.

How much do academy lads earn? Mafff had a very long list (33) of players that could/should go - some of them academy. Anybody care to have a go at pricing wages for this lot?

https://twitter.com/maffff/status/1125186559467315200
https://twitter.com/maffff/status/1125186561405067264

He's not even including players already out on loan for part of next season (Mannone and Aloku).

I'd love to keep McCleary and Gunter - but I don't think we can. Unless club can persuade them to take serious salary cuts (Gunter has definitely done this before, but on getting a new contract, not on an existing one)

Lots of the players we'll be moving on are decent players, who've done their best for the club - it won't all be overpaid Gourlay nonsense. Just hope the fanbase treat them with some respect and don't come over all "you were crap anyway"

The club is bound to have a salary cap for academy players. I imagine most are on less than 1k a week. Losing them wont change too much as other academy players will just turn 17 next season and get a similar contract.

Aluko and Mannone are almost certainly getting their wages paid by the loan clubs. They dont need to be thought about until January.

[muirinho]

Ian are you sure that wages are that much higher than income? I know things are bad but those figures are horrible.

Possibly even worse. It was £35.3 million and £17.9 million last year

https://www.getreading.co.uk/sport/foot ... s-16148960

[Elm Park Kid]

The issue is that in any one season you'll have a number of teams receiving parachute payments and a few more whose owners are rolling the dice and spending significantly more than they earn. So even if Reading were able to boost their income up towards those of the 'big boys', in all likelihood our wage budget would still be tens of millions behind the biggest spenders.

We need to go back to basics and just make sure that we have players in every position who meet the minimal standard required in this league. Don't spend £5m on a new forward if you don't have an established left back.

[Snowflake Royal]

Ian are you sure that wages are that much higher than income? I know things are bad but those figures are horrible.

Broadly, if not generous.

I feel like I've been saying every year for at least five years that we need to heavily cut the wage bill, for people to list a handful of players leaving, ignoring the incoming, and claiming that'll have done the job, only to find out 18 months later when the accounts are published that I wasn't far off.

[NewCorkSeth]

Ian are you sure that wages are that much higher than income? I know things are bad but those figures are horrible.

Broadly, if not generous.

I feel like I've been saying every year for at least five years that we need to heavily cut the wage bill, for people to list a handful of players leaving, ignoring the incoming, and claiming that'll have done the job, only to find out 18 months later when the accounts are published that I wasn't far off.

I wish we just knew who was earning what. I mean the summer we signed Aluko must have covered the outgoing wages by himself. Mannone was apparently our highest paid player.

It seems like we make good outgoing transfers and then bring in some overpaid players immediately putting us in the shit.

[leon]

Ian are you sure that wages are that much higher than income? I know things are bad but those figures are horrible.

Broadly, if not generous.

I feel like I've been saying every year for at least five years that we need to heavily cut the wage bill, for people to list a handful of players leaving, ignoring the incoming, and claiming that'll have done the job, only to find out 18 months later when the accounts are published that I wasn't far off.

You feel like that, because you honestly think you’re right all of the time and you know everything.

I’d be surprised if you didn’t think that.

[Zip]

Surely our income will have been boosted by the sales of Bacuna and Ilori. Plus their wages are off the books along with Edwards too. If Aluko and Mannone’s wages are being paid by the loan clubs then that closes the income/wage gap a little more.

[Brain Traysers]

If we are serious about squaring the books this summer, I think every player will have to be reviewed from a value for money (wages) position - that puts huge question marks around any players outside of the first 11, but on first team wages. I'd say top of that list are Gunter, GMac, Baldock, McShane* and Meyler. Probably also Bod, Blackett, Kelly and Popa*, although their wages are probably not as big as the first group. (*- OOC this summer). Shifting the 7/9 of them not OOC will be hard work. I would imagine permanent moves for Aluko and Mannone are effectively sorted or close.

I expect on top of this we would be looking to bring close to £10m in via player sales (slightly above league median of £7-8m for 2017/18, but way higher than our £1m). I wouldn't be surprised to see 2 of Swift, Moore, Rinomhota and Barrow sold. Aside from them I don't see too many salable assets - perhaps Loader and Olise as players with high potential although that would look terrible optically.

I fear it could be a busy and quite depressing summer - without round two of Howe/Gomes transfer and loan magic we could quickly go from a bloated squad to a thin one quality wise.

[Zip]

Ian are you sure that wages are that much higher than income? I know things are bad but those figures are horrible.

Broadly, if not generous.

I feel like I've been saying every year for at least five years that we need to heavily cut the wage bill, for people to list a handful of players leaving, ignoring the incoming, and claiming that'll have done the job, only to find out 18 months later when the accounts are published that I wasn't far off.

I wish we just knew who was earning what. I mean the summer we signed Aluko must have covered the outgoing wages by himself. Mannone was apparently our highest paid player.

It seems like we make good outgoing transfers and then bring in some overpaid players immediately putting us in the shit.

In 2017 we spent a fortune on incomings and I cannot think of a single decent transfer fee we brought into the club. AAH left for not very much and Williams left on a free.

[Zip]

Ian are you sure that wages are that much higher than income? I know things are bad but those figures are horrible.

Possibly even worse. It was £35.3 million and £17.9 million last year

https://www.getreading.co.uk/sport/foot ... s-16148960

Appalling mismanagement. Our match day revenue will have fallen even further this season as our average gate has slumped to 14, 992. Not good.

[URZZZZ]

Broadly, if not generous.

I feel like I've been saying every year for at least five years that we need to heavily cut the wage bill, for people to list a handful of players leaving, ignoring the incoming, and claiming that'll have done the job, only to find out 18 months later when the accounts are published that I wasn't far off.

I wish we just knew who was earning what. I mean the summer we signed Aluko must have covered the outgoing wages by himself. Mannone was apparently our highest paid player.

It seems like we make good outgoing transfers and then bring in some overpaid players immediately putting us in the shit.

In 2017 we spent a fortune on incomings and I cannot think of a single decent transfer fee we brought into the club. AAH left for not very much and Williams left on a free.

Didn't we sell Beerens for quite a bit - more than we paid for him?

[Zip]

I wish we just knew who was earning what. I mean the summer we signed Aluko must have covered the outgoing wages by himself. Mannone was apparently our highest paid player.

It seems like we make good outgoing transfers and then bring in some overpaid players immediately putting us in the shit.

In 2017 we spent a fortune on incomings and I cannot think of a single decent transfer fee we brought into the club. AAH left for not very much and Williams left on a free.

Didn't we sell Beerens for quite a bit - more than we paid for him?

Yep good call although it was in 2018. The financial damage was in 2017.

[Snowflake Royal]

Surely our income will have been boosted by the sales of Bacuna and Ilori. Plus their wages are off the books along with Edwards too. If Aluko and Mannone’s wages are being paid by the loan clubs then that closes the income/wage gap a little more.

I think transfer fees are often accounted for differently and don't always get paid in lump sums anyway.

Bacuna et al leaving will certainly have helped.

[Brain Traysers]

The issue is that in any one season you'll have a number of teams receiving parachute payments and a few more whose owners are rolling the dice and spending significantly more than they earn. So even if Reading were able to boost their income up towards those of the 'big boys', in all likelihood our wage budget would still be tens of millions behind the biggest spenders.

We need to go back to basics and just make sure that we have players in every position who meet the minimal standard required in this league. Don't spend £5m on a new forward if you don't have an established left back.

While other teams' parachute payments and ambitions/reckless owners are certainly part of it, another is that we have been overextending ourself in recent seasons. Swiss Ramble posted a good thread on the most recent (2017/18) financials today. When you dig into the relative numbers, you see where the issues are:

2017/18 Revenue - £18m (17th highest in league, with or without parachute payments).
Matchday Revenue - £4m (19th highest in league - based on 15th highest average attendance) - a small part of football finances these days but a strong case for the end of the ticket price freeze.
Wages - £35m - 10th highest in league (slightly above Leeds £31m and significantly higher than Sheffield Utd £19m and Brentford £17m). But waaay behind Villas £73m.

From an underlying profitability position, our EBITDA ("Earnings Before Interest, Depreciation and Amortisation, which strips out player sales and non-cash items") of -£19m is the 19th best in the league

We simply haven't had close to value for money on our mid-table paid squad.

I also note we had the third highest directors remuneration at £1.4m (but very low interest on our debt - the Dai's are funding us on generous terms)...

[URZZZZ]

In 2017 we spent a fortune on incomings and I cannot think of a single decent transfer fee we brought into the club. AAH left for not very much and Williams left on a free.

Didn't we sell Beerens for quite a bit - more than we paid for him?

Yep good call although it was in 2018. The financial damage was in 2017.

Only ones we sold in 2017 were Hurtado, Cooper, Samuel and Stacey. Imagine cooper may have gone for a bit, not sure though. Others would have been minimal I’d have thought