Tim

It would only amount to about an extra £3.5m

we didn't win as many games as ac milan through the whole competition.

wrong There is, and always has been, a space for automatic qualification left for the title holders. As a result it had no effect on the automatic qualification places for the country involved. The issue we had was that 5 teams qualified for atleast the qualifiers when only a maximum of 4 teams were allowed in the competition. And the FA would do well in noting that were it not for our UEFA cup win in 2001 I don't think england would even have 4 places for the european cup.

1. No they wouldn't, this was brought up two years ago, it was also brought up last season for arsenal and the answer was always given that the second place team would NOT go into the qualifiers. 2. I'm not denying that but we would still be near on 20 points behind being top spot. 3. We would have only a minor increase in revenues for the current financial year compared to the last couple of years, next season onwards would be different but only because revenues are due to increase by around £18m a season anyway with the new tv and sponsorship deal. Now if we got to a similar stage next season in the competition then I would be inclined to agree (we would get around £4m from the monaco and japan trips alone), but we need to perform better than the first knock-out stage as happened last season.

1. no they wouldn't 2. we would not be highest ranking team, far from it infact. 3. we would be not that much better off than we have been for the past two years, the fact that new shirt sponsorship and new tv deal next season will do more for us financially compared to the last couple of years (compared to 2005 it would only give us about £3m more from tv money for next season).

Erm, am I not correct in thinking he does NOT own an american football team? His architects firm was the one that designed the cowboys stadium but thats it. So it is deffo sky doing the research then

A mate rang me just after the game and said that he didn't get in the ground till about 5 minutes before half time, also said some others didn't get in till after half time.

Got to love the bit where he says he wasn't going to be let through passport control unless he promised not to groundshare

To be fair the price at the moment does seem to have come down from the figure quoted a few months ago (I think it reached about £235m). Also bascombe does the usual journo trick of not actually doing any research. The arsenal deal with emirates is for shirt sponsorship and stadium. The stadium sponsorship "only" brings in £3m (equivalent as I think they took alot or all the cash upfront as they did with Nike)

For all UK registered companies accounts have to be filed at Companies House. They are then available for the public to obtain for £1. Got both the mancs and chelseas accounts that way. could get more if I could be bothered but will probably wait until the close season to have a look through.

They said at the beginning that the purchase would be funded by debt which would not be on the clubs books (also worth noting that at the last reporting date the debt taken on by the glazers is not on the mancs books). They also said that they weren't sure how the stadium would be funded by I would expect this to be done through the club.

Just thought I would do a quick update. Chelsea now in £180m of debt, only £37m or so of it externally though. Abramovich had to convert another £100m into equity in the year to get the club signed off as a going concern. They have also started their loss cutting exercise. Essien has signed a contract extension which will shave a couple of million off of their amortisation charge for the next few seasons. Abramovich has currently "invested" around £540m in chelsea. Their wage bill rose back up to £114m. Also a point on the mancs. It turns out that the debt is not on their books, it is on the books of a parent company that is using the assets of the mancs as collateral. Atleast that is what it was at the last reporting date, since then they have refinanced the debt so it may have been transfered since, but I am not too sure about that.

But Glazer took over a club that was making profits year on year consistently. In terms of getting to a break even level they don't have that much to do compared to Chelsea. Also they are going to have to replace, or renew contracts of, their players. That is going to cost them a fortune either with increased wages or high transfer fees. The only way I can really see them breaking even the next few years is them reporting EBITDA as the mancs did. £80m is alot to make up in 3 years (especially since over the last 2 their losses only dropped by £7m).

All they will do is do what the mancs are now doing, quoting the EBITDA figure. There are 3 items that are included in their figures this year that won't improve the books next year. The saving of the £25.5m charge for cancelling the umbro contract, the £13m charge for cancelling the contract of Mutu, and the £4m to £5m increase in shirt sponsorship. That there is £42.5m of the reduction in loss. The new tv deal won't go through their books until 2007-08 season so next year won't be a significant improvement bar the adidas deal that adds about £7m to £9m to their revenues. But then this will be offset by the £4m a year amortisation of Mikel, and £7m amortisation of Schevchenko's transfer fee. They may reduce their losses again next year but I suspect it won't be by much. If you compare this years figures to the accounts from 2003-04 they have only cut their losses by £7m. The next tv deal will help to shave off about £15m but they still then have about £50m to £60m to find. There are only a few ways that would occur. 1. They don't spend any more money on new players. Unlikely 2. They renew the contracts of all players who cost alot of money thus reducing the amortisation charge through the P&L, although this would increase the wage bill and won't really help cashflow. 3. They change accounting/estimation methods. Very unlikely.

Man Utd made £2.2m in turnover from overseas sales in 2004, in 2005 this dropped to £383k. As for arsenal and chelsea having higher turnover than us. Chelsea tend to charge upto 50% more for tickets than us, arsenal charge more than us too, infact in 2005 they took in nearly £5m in extra matchday revenue than us. As has already been said chelsea include their village and travel business in the figures too. Arsenal's from 2005 includes turnover from property developments.

Just to clarify the clubs annual aaccounts from year ending 31 july 2005. The net debt figure stated of £17.1m relates to interest bearing debt only. The figure only takes into account, cash, cash equivalents, bank loans, overdrafts and finance leases. If the amounts owed on transfer fees were to be included as debt then the figure would have risen to at most £53.8m. However this is one end of the extreme. This figure will include normal every day trade creditors as the club do not separate the amounts owed to clubs and the other trade creditors in the notes to the accounts. It also does not take into account transfer fees (and the reebok money) owed to LFC. A more realistic figure of the clubs debt would be around the £37m mark, with repayments spread over 5 years.

It needs to be pointed out that if Gillett does buy the club, and it costs upto £450m, that upto £300m will be for the generation of a new Income Generating Unit. Something that will increase annual revenues by an estimated £30m. While any debt he may put on the club for the purchase appears to be no more than £30m above the book value of the clubs assets compared to glazer where the debt is over £400m above the book value of the clubs assets. Not saying it is the right thing to do, however when comparing it to the mancs situation it is significantly better due to what most of the debt would be actually being used for.

Just to add, to be fair he actually said the stadium would cost £250m to £300m. They won't have any final figures, and there will be a contingency fund required for the project. Media being as they always are take the higher figure to overplay it.

The original figure of £80m was for the stadium only. The figures doing the rounds now all include the work for regeneration etc. The latest figure the council put out for the project (back in september) was £237m for the whole lot. £22m for anfield plaza, £12m for stanley park, £180m for the stadium plus infrastructure costs of around £10m aswell as sunk costs.

From what I remember they refinanced about £150m of the PIK debt. Overall it still leaves them paying approx 10% interest on average. As for the results they've annouced. I'm gonna wait till I see the full accounts I think before commenting.

It's possible. I am not sure if the re-investment of the funds from sale of players qualifies for rollover relief, it would for tangible fixed assets, but not sure if it is the same for intangibles. If they do qualify for rollover relief then any tax charge would be delayed for a fair few number of years. In fact I've just found a piece on the fa website about tax http://www.thefa.com/NR/rdonlyres/3CE15AFE...FAU_CorpTax.pdf

The process of capitalising and amortising the value of intangible fixed assets is covered by FRS 10 ("non-financial fixed assets that do not have physical substance but are identifiable and are controlled by the entity through custody or legal rights?). The aim is to apportion the cost of fixed assets to the useful economic life of the asset. In the case of football players this is the period of the contract, as such the initial cost is amortised over this UEL. It used to be that transfer fees were immediately taken to the revenue account, but the accounting standards changed in 1998. http://www.bbk.ac.uk/manop/research/wpaper...everma99-05.PDF The above link covers the issue of capitalisation of players registrations in some detail.

I think that judging by Rules 9 & 10 of the City Code (Mandatory and Voluntary Offers) an agreement needs to be in place to purchase (or already own) greater than 30% of shares with voting rights. Without the agreement, there is no potential for effective control, thus no right to look at the clubs books/process' as for anything less means they are just a minority shareholder.

Mihir bose is talking out of his a*** again (no surprise really). Unless Gilette has changed his mind.

Well, if the best for a company is for it to be combined with another then that may be what needs to be done. But ultimately the board need to consider what is best to keep the company trading, whether that be as a combined company or remaining a separate legal entity. Different scenario, Glazer enacted a hostile takeover. Once he got past the 30% shareholding barrier the board had no choice. The only way gillette will realistically be able to get 30% of LFC is to strike a deal with Moores, so Moores has the power to tell him where to shove his offer.