The Fans Forum minutes from the last meeting on Wednesday, April 25th have been released, but there’s not too much new information in them.
The club have talked about how Newcastle were stricken financially by relegation and being down below for one season before we returned to the Premier League a year ago.
The results of the last financial year – July 1st, 2016 – June 30th, 2017 will be released soon and will reflect the financial hit the club took – they will not be good.
Managing Director Lee Charnley – attended the Fans Forum meeting
Here’s what the club said about relegation and the accompanying financial position:
“The club stated that relegation to the Championship had undoubtedly given clubs that had remained in the Premier League an advantage financially.”
“The club also discussed, in addition to transfer fees, that there are often significant costs such as its wage bill and agents fees that are not factored in or referred to.”
“The club also noted that figures attributed to transfer fees in the public domain were often inaccurate.”
“During the 2016/17 season, the club took a considerable gamble to invest significantly in the team in order to gain immediate promotion.”
“By way of example, the club committed heavily to its wage bill, which was well beyond not only its competitors in the Championship but also many clubs in the Premier League.”
There are extra costs which we sometimes gloss over like wages and increasing costs to Premier League clubs are agents’ fees.
These seem to be increasing every year and in the past Newcastle have refused to pay them – such as when we almost had a deal tied up to buy Dele Alli just over three years ago for £5M when he was at MK Dons.
But Newcastle hesitated on the fees his agents were asking for.
That’s probably an unfair example, but Newcastle will need to start paying agents’ fees for players if we want to get the best players available.
That’s unless the FA can limit the fees agents are asking for their players before it gets (completely) out of hand.
So beware – the next financial figures coming out at the club will not look good but during this current (financial) year, we are back in the promised land.
And Newcastle could get as much as £125M from the Premier League, and that will be a huge increase from our year down below.
That compares with about £47M we received from the Championship (£7M) and Premier League (£40M parachute payment) last May – almost £80M more!
Comments welcome.
5 comments so far
Lee Charnley Bunga Party
May 2, 2018 at 2:14 PM
Comment #1Feels like they are setting us up for saying no money is available?!
hibbit
May 2, 2018 at 2:20 PM
Comment #2miss management was the main factor in our relegation poor decisions made by the people at the top and penny pinching by the owner
the owner and his cronies are there own biggest enemies so it’s no good crying to us about the loss of income they were the main factor for the loss and relegation
Ron Knee
May 2, 2018 at 2:30 PM
Comment #3“During the 2016/17 season, the club took a considerable gamble to invest significantly in the team in order to gain immediate promotion.”
Not that Ashley usually gambles by doing the Bare Minimum.
dig-n-dig22
May 2, 2018 at 2:38 PM
Comment #4I am anti Ashley, so I expect to hear this crap but it must be demoralising for the pro Ashley’s.
dig-n-dig22
May 2, 2018 at 3:04 PM
Comment #5” The club have talked about how Newcastle were stricken financially by relegation and being down below for one season” Yet the Owner did absolutely nothing in the previous January window to avoid the exact same situation happening again.How could fans not be alarmed reading that, it doesn’t exactly inspire me confidence regarding the owner.