General Club Finances 2023

How Concerned Are You About Our Increasing Debt Levels?

  • Total voters
    83
  • Poll closed .
warksox said:
Whilst I agree with the general gist of your post, I don't think the bit I've bolded is strictly true.
The loss for the year was £6.18m.
The debt rose by £4.18m (from £19.98m to £24.16m).
Unless I'm mistaken the difference is the £2m worth of ordinary non-redeemable shares issued 23rd June, effectively the owners giving £2m to the club.
Not that a £4m increase in debt is bad enough, just pointing out it could've been worse.
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Yes, you're right about the £2m, and there was also a conversion of debt to equity of £1.5m the year before as well. But the losses in those two years equal £10.3m, so only a third has been converted, and this is (I'm led to understand) only so that we meet the SCMP requirements.

We have P&L Reserves of minus £31.5m and called up share capital of £7m, meaning a negative equity situation of over £24m at 30 June last year.

Edit: I have now noticed that @tonyw made the point about SCMP further up the thread
 
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Hang on a minute. I voted very concerned and now it's showing up as not at all concerned and I can't change it:ROFLMAO:.

Did someone tinker with the voting categories :unsure:
 
GeneralLee said:
Would I not be right to suggest that we have been submitting abridged accounts for some years, taking a similar view of other clubs? I'm not defending it, I think it leaves much to interpretation yet it seems to be increasingly commonplace now.



Barclays have leant the club some money which is underwritten by the football club in the event it isn't repaid. I.e. if you don't pay, 'X' is the consequence. I've *some* knowledge on this having done it myself when selling a business, though my knowledge on this isn't 100%. That would be my loose interpretation!
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We have trimmed 2 or 3 pages out of the accounts over the last few years. On top of this we now no longer provide small shareholders with Management Accounts, which contain all of the really interesting stuff.

We're not yet in the Wycombe Wanderers world of absolutely minimal information, but I think our SMT would be happy to take us there, if they thought they could get away with it. Many clubs at our level put us to shame, and provide very comprehensive Directors' Reports and fully transparent accounts, detailing income streams and a breakdown of expenses.

I find it all very galling when I hear certain senior club employees talk about improved communication. They should look at the kind of detailed accounts the likes of Portsmouth and Carlisle provide.
 
holdsteady said:
I don’t really get the whole fans are complicit thing? What can we do?
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Complain, protest, write to the club, even argue on here in favour of financial austerity more often (we know people at the club read this forum).

But we don't do it. We're constantly "We need another striker" here, or "We need another CDM" there. We're consistently praising the club when they go out and spend money, and putting pressure on them to do so when they're not.

And I'm not trying to say that it's an Oxford thing - all fanbases do it.

But let's not pretend that we haven't cheered all the overspending that's been going on over the past few years - because we have. Go have a read of the Murphy/Wildschut/Goodwin/Findlay etc. etc. signing threads if you have any doubts.

The one thing I can't stand is the intellectual dishonesty of fans like Reading's, who cheered like crazy for years when they were overspending hideously, and are now all "Yongge is the devil, we've been betrayed" tennis ball protests and the like. Let's not be like them. Now we are the ones overspending hideously. Either we need to start protesting that spending and advocating for us being more frugal in the summer or we need to own it. Accept that all our chips are in the middle, and that this ride ends with a new stadium and higher division football or it ends with AFC Oxford, and there's probably nothing in between.
 
tonyw said:
Complain, protest, write to the club, even argue on here in favour of financial austerity more often (we know people at the club read this forum).

But we don't do it. We're constantly "We need another striker" here, or "We need another CDM" there. We're consistently praising the club when they go out and spend money, and putting pressure on them to do so when they're not.

And I'm not trying to say that it's an Oxford thing - all fanbases do it.

But let's not pretend that we haven't cheered all the overspending that's been going on over the past few years - because we have. Go have a read of the Murphy/Wildschut/Goodwin/Findlay etc. etc. signing threads if you have any doubts.

The one thing I can't stand is the intellectual dishonesty of fans like Reading's, who cheered like crazy for years when they were overspending hideously, and are now all "Yongge is the devil, we've been betrayed" tennis ball protests and the like. Let's not be like them. Now we are the ones overspending hideously. Either we need to start protesting that spending and advocating for us being more frugal in the summer or we need to own it. Accept that all our chips are in the middle, and that this ride ends with a new stadium and higher division football or it ends with AFC Oxford, and there's probably nothing in between.
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Sh!t or bust

Or probably both.
 
Carpy said:
This will come across as combative when it most definitely isn't meant to be, but what exactly is the alternative? We can't stay at the Kassam, and no sane owner is going to saddle the club with no debt and instead take it on themselves.

The ideal would have been a bigger piece of land to increase the revenue streams, but that isn't going to happen, even Stratfield Brake was arguably smaller than you'd have liked to provide the ongoing revenue to cover all the costs.

And the only way of reducing our ever increasing debt burden before the new stadium is here is to stop "going for it" in the league
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I’ll have a lot more to say on this once the planning process is over, one way or the other. The narrative of how this all happened absolutely stinks.

Also, nobody has the moral right to rack up record debts in the club’s name, while putting millions of pounds against it for a stadium it’ll never own, yet will pay for whether people understand that or not. That absolutely stinks, and I’m surprised more people aren’t furious about that, honestly. If the club won’t own the stadium, it sure as hell shouldn’t be having the cost of getting it approved put against it.
 
tonyw said:
Complain, protest, write to the club, even argue on here in favour of financial austerity more often (we know people at the club read this forum).

But we don't do it. We're constantly "We need another striker" here, or "We need another CDM" there. We're consistently praising the club when they go out and spend money, and putting pressure on them to do so when they're not.

And I'm not trying to say that it's an Oxford thing - all fanbases do it.

But let's not pretend that we haven't cheered all the overspending that's been going on over the past few years - because we have. Go have a read of the Murphy/Wildschut/Goodwin/Findlay etc. etc. signing threads if you have any doubts.

The one thing I can't stand is the intellectual dishonesty of fans like Reading's, who cheered like crazy for years when they were overspending hideously, and are now all "Yongge is the devil, we've been betrayed" tennis ball protests and the like. Let's not be like them. Now we are the ones overspending hideously. Either we need to start protesting that spending and advocating for us being more frugal in the summer or we need to own it. Accept that all our chips are in the middle, and that this ride ends with a new stadium and higher division football or it ends with AFC Oxford, and there's probably nothing in between.
Click to expand...
I really don't agree with this. Supporters ( especially ours recently) don't know the strategy - we don't even know the funding model of the stadium.
Of course supporters applaud new signings. I am really not sure, however that if Madison or Joe Taylor had been signed on loan, whether supporters would have been less keen than Goodwin.

In my view any new football regulator should have the ability to make clubs trade within their means- not pinning the blame on the supporters.
 
Why shouldn’t we be allowed to know what the financial strategy is? It’s our club, and only lent to various owners as they pass through (yes I know that’s not technically true, but you get my point).

I honestly can’t work out what the plan is. Why would foreign investors want to give hundreds of millions to a league 1 football club for very little in the way of financial return?
 
RyanioBirdio said:
I’ll have a lot more to say on this once the planning process is over, one way or the other. The narrative of how this all happened absolutely stinks.

Also, nobody has the moral right to rack up record debts in the club’s name, while putting millions of pounds against it for a stadium it’ll never own, yet will pay for whether people understand that or not. That absolutely stinks, and I’m surprised more people aren’t furious about that, honestly. If the club won’t own the stadium, it sure as hell shouldn’t be having the cost of getting it approved put against it.
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I would suggest people don't know it to be true, hence the lack of uproar, plus, there seems to be enough limiting factors to what they could do with it, part of the problem with the Kassam is that Firoz owns the land, Bakrie and Co will not, the land is also completely useless to most other entities whereas the Kassam is an attractive parcel of land without the stadium.
 
Carpy said:
I would suggest people don't know it to be true, hence the lack of uproar, plus, there seems to be enough limiting factors to what they could do with it, part of the problem with the Kassam is that Firoz owns the land, Bakrie and Co will not, the land is also completely useless to most other entities whereas the Kassam is an attractive parcel of land without the stadium.
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Exactly - the land provides no security and there will be no realistic alternative use. Unless the owners are prepared to sink huge amounts of cash with little prospect of returns, then we’re toast, or at best back with a new owner, more debts, and negotiating a stay of execution with Kassam.
 
If anyone wants to do a bit more reading about the overall trends here, Google “financialisation”
 
Foley said:
I really don't agree with this. Supporters ( especially ours recently) don't know the strategy - we don't even know the funding model of the stadium.
Of course supporters applaud new signings. I am really not sure, however that if Madison or Joe Taylor had been signed on loan, whether supporters would have been less keen than Goodwin.

In my view any new football regulator should have the ability to make clubs trade within their means- not pinning the blame on the supporters.
Click to expand...

The stadium is a separate issue - and frankly, it has the potential to make all this other discussion irrelevant. If £100m+ of debt is going on the club's books to pay for that, then whether we lost £3m or £6m this past season is kind of lost in the noise.

And yes, I would 100% be in favour of a proper salary cap that forces every club to trade within their means. We would have a much smaller budget now (both in real terms, and comparative to our peers) though if we did. We would have to over-perform to get in the promotion race.


But let's be honest with ourselves in the mean time. We've been massively overspending. It's been blatantly obvious to anyone who knows anything about football finance that we've been massively overspending. And noone has been complaining. I saw tons of posts after we signed Goodwin about how we needed one more top striker, because you needed three quality options at this level.


Let me put it another way - we could probably reduce this deficit by £5m in 2024/25 if we a) released Browne, Henry, Murphy, McGuane & Edwards, b) sold Tyler and Cam, and c) replaced them all with bog standard lower league pros. You could argue that it's the financially prudent thing to do whilst we wait for the stadium to get the go ahead. Wanna speculate on what the reaction would be around these parts if we did that!?!
 
Carpy said:
I would suggest people don't know it to be true, hence the lack of uproar, plus, there seems to be enough limiting factors to what they could do with it, part of the problem with the Kassam is that Firoz owns the land, Bakrie and Co will not, the land is also completely useless to most other entities whereas the Kassam is an attractive parcel of land without the stadium.
Click to expand...
The land isn’t a protection aid unless it’s leveraged properly. If the stadium built on said land is put around the club’s neck financially without sufficient protections then that’s pretty much that - the council keeping the land is only a positive if they get the terms and conditions bang on. For example, it needs to stipulate that Oxford United (or any associated Phoenix club) must be allowed to play at the stadium in order for it to be allowed to function, not merely that football must be played there. Two very different things. I’ve heard a number of people including Grant Ferguson in recent weeks talk about this.

“Football”. “Football”. “Football”. Never yet “Oxford United”. That’s the key. That’s what needs to be said. This football club.
 
tonyw said:
The stadium is a separate issue - and frankly, it has the potential to make all this other discussion irrelevant. If £100m+ of debt is going on the club's books to pay for that, then whether we lost £3m or £6m this past season is kind of lost in the noise.

And yes, I would 100% be in favour of a proper salary cap that forces every club to trade within their means. We would have a much smaller budget now (both in real terms, and comparative to our peers) though if we did. We would have to over-perform to get in the promotion race.


But let's be honest with ourselves in the mean time. We've been massively overspending. It's been blatantly obvious to anyone who knows anything about football finance that we've been massively overspending. And noone has been complaining. I saw tons of posts after we signed Goodwin about how we needed one more top striker, because you needed three quality options at this level.


Let me put it another way - we could probably reduce this deficit by £5m in 2024/25 if we a) released Browne, Henry, Murphy, McGuane & Edwards, b) sold Tyler and Cam, and c) replaced them all with bog standard lower league pros. You could argue that it's the financially prudent thing to do whilst we wait for the stadium to get the go ahead. Wanna speculate on what the reaction would be around these parts if we did that!?!
Click to expand...
Uh, that wouldn’t be ‘going for it’. The trouble is that although as you say we are overspending I don’t really feel we’re actually ‘going for it’ - just spending a lot in a fairly random way. Tbh I wouldn’t mind so much if we did as you suggest, if it would make a difference- but we’d still be in debt and would have less chance of going up and making any money back.
 
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