Matt Damon
Player Valuation: £60m
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/fo...artin-Broughton-reassures-Premier-League.html
Liverpool chairman Martin Broughton has been forced to offer assurances to the Premier League that the club will be able to fulfil their fixtures next season after their most recent accounts, published on Friday, revealed record losses of £54.9 million and soaring debts of £351million.
Broughton, appointed as non-executive chairman last month, had to provide proof Liverpool could meet strict financial guidelines laid down by the Premier League and Uefa and that they would be able to continue trading as a going concern throughout the 2010-11 campaign
Accounts for the club’s holding company for the year ending in July 2009 show spiralling interest payments of £40 million, wages breaking the £100 million-a-season barrier, a record loss of £54.9 million and an increase in the club’s debt of £51.5 million.
Liverpool now stand £351 million (net) in the red. Some £233 million of that is owed to the government-owned RBS and the US investment bank Wachovia, while £144.4 million is owed to Hicks and Gillett’s parent company, Kop Cayman.
Much of Liverpool’s loss — increased by £14 million to July 2009 — can be attributed to the interest payments on that debt, which have cost the club a little over £40 million alone, or almost £110,000 a day.
But perhaps the greatest concern is that Liverpool’s financial picture can be so bleak in a year when the club’s turnover was £185 million, an increase of some £20 million on the previous year, thanks in no small part to the television rights and prize money accrued for last season’s second-place finish in the Premier League and run to the Champions League quarter-finals.
So desperate are Liverpool’s financial straits that twice this year they were forced to extend their credit facility on a short-term basis with RBS, while auditors KPMG expressed a “material uncertainty” about the club’s ability to continue as a going concern for the second year running.
In such a climate, Torres and Gerrard would feel forced to consider their futures. Broughton’s insistence that he has formulated a piecemeal transfer policy with manager Rafael Benítez — the clearest indication yet the Spaniard will spurn the advances of Juventus — is unlikely to allay their concerns that the club are locked into a decline they do not have the finances to arrest.
Liverpool chairman Martin Broughton has been forced to offer assurances to the Premier League that the club will be able to fulfil their fixtures next season after their most recent accounts, published on Friday, revealed record losses of £54.9 million and soaring debts of £351million.
Broughton, appointed as non-executive chairman last month, had to provide proof Liverpool could meet strict financial guidelines laid down by the Premier League and Uefa and that they would be able to continue trading as a going concern throughout the 2010-11 campaign
Accounts for the club’s holding company for the year ending in July 2009 show spiralling interest payments of £40 million, wages breaking the £100 million-a-season barrier, a record loss of £54.9 million and an increase in the club’s debt of £51.5 million.
Liverpool now stand £351 million (net) in the red. Some £233 million of that is owed to the government-owned RBS and the US investment bank Wachovia, while £144.4 million is owed to Hicks and Gillett’s parent company, Kop Cayman.
Much of Liverpool’s loss — increased by £14 million to July 2009 — can be attributed to the interest payments on that debt, which have cost the club a little over £40 million alone, or almost £110,000 a day.
But perhaps the greatest concern is that Liverpool’s financial picture can be so bleak in a year when the club’s turnover was £185 million, an increase of some £20 million on the previous year, thanks in no small part to the television rights and prize money accrued for last season’s second-place finish in the Premier League and run to the Champions League quarter-finals.
So desperate are Liverpool’s financial straits that twice this year they were forced to extend their credit facility on a short-term basis with RBS, while auditors KPMG expressed a “material uncertainty” about the club’s ability to continue as a going concern for the second year running.
In such a climate, Torres and Gerrard would feel forced to consider their futures. Broughton’s insistence that he has formulated a piecemeal transfer policy with manager Rafael Benítez — the clearest indication yet the Spaniard will spurn the advances of Juventus — is unlikely to allay their concerns that the club are locked into a decline they do not have the finances to arrest.
