Reading FC ltd company announcement

[TheLawnMowerMan]

RFC invoiced Beijing Renhe F.C. £3m for the loan of a player (Sone Aluko) in 2018/19.
It looks like a one-off loan fee as there was nothing in the following year and his loan spanned both financial periods.

Probably didn't even cover the full cost of his wages.

That would mean he was on £60k a week. And that Renhe weren't paying any of his wages separate to the fee

Unlikely that the sum was covering the wages directly as it would have to be spread across the two fiscal years. Wages could have been covered by either clubs (or both) but I suspect it was a case of RFC paying the wages and that the amount also covered some of the transfer fee that had been paid. £3m would be very high to cover the loan fee if they were also paying the wages .... but we were desperate and it is the same ownership. Maybe they did cover his wages and give us a £3m loan fee - it's allowed under the rules.

[3points]

STAR analysis of 2019/2020 accounts per the link

https://star-reading.org/news/rfc-accounts-in-detail

[Forbury Lion]

Probably didn't even cover the full cost of his wages.

That would mean he was on £60k a week. And that Renhe weren't paying any of his wages separate to the fee

Unlikely that the sum was covering the wages directly as it would have to be spread across the two fiscal years. Wages could have been covered by either clubs (or both) but I suspect it was a case of RFC paying the wages and that the amount also covered some of the transfer fee that had been paid. £3m would be very high to cover the loan fee if they were also paying the wages .... but we were desperate and it is the same ownership. Maybe they did cover his wages and give us a £3m loan fee - it's allowed under the rules.

Same ownership is the key takeout for me here.

Our owner may have £3m of cash they want to put into the club but they can not do so under Financial Fair Play rules, The club can however receive £3m of fees from another club for the loan of a player..... could just be a way of our owner moving money from pot A where it isn't needed to to pot B where it is needed.

Interestingly, if we make start to make profits and the shareholder wants to take money out of the club because we have bucketloads of it spare we may do the same thing in reverse or possibly instead of paying dividends to the shareholder we may loan funds to the shareholder instead, that way if we ever need funds invested from the shareholder they can just repay loans, which won't be the same as investing money into the club.

[PATRIQT]

Definitely some cooking of the books there. FFP is a bag of spanners and needs re-writing anyway.