Well anything can change and I understand you not wanting Lawell to leave, but you never know what is really going to happen. There could be some deal on the table where he does indeed stay at Celtic for the rest of the year and then comes to Arsenal or maybe he does come to Arsenal now, but there is some type of compinsation. At thew end of the day all we have are what is being said so none of know from first hand account.
i have a fair idea from one of the Celtic blogs that i'm a regular on. the guy that runs it is close to PL and has stated that he(Peter Lawell), listened to Arsenal's offer and has decided to stay with Celtic. that's good enough for me.
he's a terrific Chief Exec. as i said on my first post on this subject, it may happen next season but it won't be this season. no doubt he wants to continue to improve both the club and himself. in order to do the latter part he may need to move to a bigger fish in a far bigger pond.
The Financial Times is running the story of Kroenke's appointment to the board and the new financial statement. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/9f4776a2-8519-11dd-b148-0000779fd18c.html
I want to know what our total wage bill looks like. We can't be anywhere near the manutd wage bill like we were two years ago.
I also read this article http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7624733.stm. It is really hard to figure out what they are saying. The headlines talk about record profits, which is true since the income has gone up, but the article tells a slightly different story. While income has gone up 11%, the debt has also gone up 12%. Given that the debt payments are amortized, one could conclude that cash has increased. However, Arsenal did not become more valuable. Regarding the cash flow statements, I understand that cash has increased, but it is hard to understand how much cash is on-hand. The article quoted earlier talks about having 93 million GBP in cash. This seems to be true but misleading. This amount does not include tax payments, debt service payments, or short term payables, which have to be paid in cash. The debt service payments are 31 million GBP alone. I do not know the tax rate in London, but given that it is England, I assume that corporate taxes are really high. Account payables (operating costs) will also significantly affect the balance. The article summary says that the 37.6 million GBP is pre-tax. If this is record profit, Arsenal is not a cash cow. You can see why Wenger might have been cautious with his cash during the summer. It seems like Arsenal is sustaining itself but does not have a lot of residual cash. It's still good business, but hopefully the cash situation may change in about fifteen months when units at Highbury Square can be sold.
Board says- "Will this mean the manager has more money for transfers in January? “In answer to your question, yes funds will always be made available to Arsène to improve the quality of the squad and we have consistently stated that adequate funds are available to him if needed." Wenger hears- "We have enough money for January to buy an obscure Lithuanian winger for 7m, and a 14 year old Brazilian striker for 2m."
You're selling Wenger short by forgetting the 9-year old asthmatic Albanian that he'll buy for 30 quid and a carton of Gauloises.
i diddnt know that mihir fly looking mother fcuker was a yiddo! his articles are all player hating on arsenal!!
Looking at the financial report available on the official site to verify the numbers used in the bbc article, I have one serious question to pose. We have all been assuming that our wages went down after getting rid of Henry. In fact, the wages went up about 12 million pounds last year. We are now paying over 100 million pounds a year in salaries. As always, the classic question is "Who the F to?" We look to have been in a notably better place because our profits went up and we didn't have the 21.4 million pound refinancing fee to make. The club made a very large amount of money last year. A year removed from the first Emirates financial report, still more questions and no answers.
The wage bill for last year was up by 11.5 million pounds. It's now 101.3 million. The team's after tax profit was 25.7 million pounds. For the preceding year it was only 2.8 million. That second figure sounds low to me, but add them together and that nearly 30 million dollars of profit in the bank. Not quite enough to buy a Berbatov or a Robinho, but certainly enough to add a top player in January. http://www.arsenal.com/news/news-archive/plus
I still don't understand how they went up that much. I always figured maybe the new contracts made up for the Henry money and balanced it out... But to add another 12 mil onto it? And I am betting we're never going to see that 30 million pounds again.
I wonder if payouts to Edelman and others is part of it. And you've got to ask who got new contracts last year. I think it said somewhere that about 5 million of last years profits was from player trading, so you've got a real pretax profit closer to 30 million a year. If wage inflation continues at it's current rate of 5-10 million a year, those profits are going to shrink pretty quickly.
Possibly, though revenue could continue to expand with those wages to maintain that profit margin. If, however, you introduce a new cost that hasn't been in there the last few years (transfers) and say start losing a reasonable 15-20 million a year on transfers, plus the wage increases inherent in that, plus the inflation on players already on the roster... Then the profits are gone.
The big jump in profits looks like it came through broadcasting revenues, which increased by 24 million, an increase of over 50 percent. That surely won't happen again soon.
2010, new foreign (and domestic?) TV rights deal. ESPN plans to bid - which will surely fire up the prices. Could be the largest TV deal in the history of sports media.
Yeah, you're right. The projections are insane. http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/football/eng_prem/7232378.stm
Of course, the moment clubs got their hands on anything close to that kind of cash they'd just throw it right away into the maw of transfer fees and player wages. And that could mean near guaranteed bankruptcy for any club that gets relegated.