I don't know if anyone has seen this article;
Top-flight clubs are facing huge losses as they are still having to pay out their biggest costs, such as wages, without receiving any income. One Premier League club is reportedly losing '£9m a week'.
www.dailymail.co.uk
Essentially stating one club is losing 9m per week (around £470 per year, or 540 euro's a year). Comment one from a Kopite is it must be us who rent the training ground from the council (we don't). They talk about us in a manner that is 20 years out of date and it's quite sweet.
Anyway my initial thoughts on reading this were that it will be bad for everyone, as if 1 team is losing that level of money they are all probably losing a lot. I thought 5 teams would have that sort of turnover. On further inspection only 3 teams make upwards of 9 million a year or anything close (Spurs will be now much lower this season without a CL run) Chelsea may be a 4th.
We don't make anything close to £9m a week, so it's funny how some suggested it was us. 3 teams do. Manchester United, Liverpool and City. They are the only 3 teams it could feasible be.
To narrow it down further you would surely ask, which club has acted in a pretty panicked way early into this crisis, maybe trying to get the government to pay their staffs costs? 1 team in the top 5 (Chelsea, Arsenal, United, City & Liverpool) turnover wise have chosen to furlough staff.
I saw it initially in the Daily Star, but it apparently broke in the Mirror which have good sources at Liverpool. Manchester United have recently had an article in the Times saying they are fine financially and will spend big (which I think is probably untrue but hard to imagine the are briefing in such a way). Maybe Manchester City are losing £9 million per week and want to report it? Possibly.
The likeliest contender (by some distance) though would seem to be Liverpool. If it is them it's absolutely disastrous news. It would imply they are losing almost all of the sponsorship moneys for the duration of this crisis. It would suggest the contracts have enormous loopholes if they are already being enacted this early into the crisis. I would also deduce, it's highly unlikely that if football goes back behind closed doors, those sponsorships would go back to anything near full value either. Some may just terminate, others may well settle at 50%-60% of the initial value.
They are still paying back for that eyesore of a stand aren't they as well?
Thats really serious though. For whoever it is. Best case scenario is we start against part way through June meaning just over 3 months of this level of money lost. Well over £100m lost and probably pushing £150m. If we have to wait until August and the system is voided you could be pushing that number north of £200million.
The £100m loan makes sense with this too. Spiralling wage costs and overall costs probably running at about 80% of turnover means you would need £100m loan to cover the costs from 120m lost.
For whoever that club is though, even in the best case scenario it is a disaster. Any emergency loan, at this stage is going to be well above what the standard rate would be. (Banks are having to prioritise loans to business, so what liquidity they have is not going to football clubs). To enter a negotiation now, you may be looking at 15% to get them to arrange a short term agreement, maybe even north of that. Thats £15-£20 in interest you are paying back each year.
For whoever that club is, best case scenario is they get the loan, the fees aren't too crazy and neither is the interest (working to the above numbers) and it's belt tightening exercise. Worst case scenario they have to start panic selling to cover the money back, either as collateral, or because their owners can't have that much debt being piled on the hundreds of millions outstanding.
Buckle yourselves in lads, I strongly suspect they are going to start trying to push Mane out in desperation for some cash (if it's them). They hawked him around last summer of £150m and nobody even consider it. Real Madrid wouldn't pay half that. They are in serious financial trouble now as well. I think a day of reckoning is coming.
