2017/2018 Accounts

[Sausage Roll]

Not sure if you need Twitter to read this or not, but it's a series of tweets outlining Forest's accounts, which were filed at Companies House today.

It's pretty scary that, while our wages to income ratio was the lowest it's been in the last few years, it's still 122%.

[optimistic_red]

So with my limited ability to read these things, we did make progress over the previous year.
Attendances etc have been up massively this year which has got to hep, although we certainly have too many players

[wassy04]

Should be pointed out these accounts are for last season up till June 18 so the improved attendances this year won’t show till next year.

Seems like we’ve made small improvements, our financials are pretty bad though. We’re midtable for income but too few for expenditure. Largely propped up in recent years but well timed sales.

We’ve got about £1-2m worth of sales to add to that plus BB next year. Also worth pointing out that football accounting is different for purchases and sales.

When you buy a player the cost is spread across the contract. So for example Grabban has a 4 year deal (?). So while it costs £6m in accounting terms that’ll be 1.5m per year. Then were we to sell him after two years we’d put the sale price minus remaining amortisation in the accounts. If that makes sense.

So for brereton we will have made pure profit as he’s an academy player so we paid nothing for him. Showing the value of academy players

[wassy04]

Also there’s a guy on twitter called Swiss Ramble who does excellent analysis of club accounts. He’s just done boro and sheff U for example. Would imagine he’ll do Forest in next few weeks. Will be worth a read when that’s out

[Kranky]

I'd imagine the Macron deal wouldn't be factored into these accounts?

[Sausage Roll]

No it wouldn't be as that only happened after the 2018 season I think. Likewise the BetBright sponsorship.

[Widdow]

So what we really want to know, do those figures show if we are close to FFP, we’re the losses under or over the limit.

I assume under as not in FFP, but sounds like we lost a lot of money last year but the player sales helped offset that

[Widdow]

The valuation works both ways, selling and buying players.

The £15m figure could be what we expect in total if Britt hits the relevant clauses maybe?

[wassy04]

Thanks for the info.

[wassy04]

In terms of FFP, we have now officially dropped the £20m from a few years ago. Therefore we’ll have £8m from last year, whatever this year’s final loss figure comes out as plus a projection for this season. Meaning we’re looking much more secure in that regard. Keeping our losses under £10m a year really helps

[Sausage Roll]

I wonder what the nearly £8m 'other loan' is for, and who it was borrowed from?

[ozzyten10]

This year’s figures (posted next year) will be interesting. I can see a number of issues but hopefully offset by increased sponsorship, TV and increased attendances. This should see us well within the £39m allowable loss limit. It is also on the agenda that this is to be increased slightly by the EFL in future accounting periods with the allowable use of writing off of loans becoming popular amongst owners in the division. Their argument being the inequality die to parachute payments. This would in theory protect clubs in loading debt and ensure creditors are paid. However Uefa / FIFA are not on the same sheet.
I’m confident the club knows what they are doing and have enough wiggle room to maintain sensible investment next year if as likely we don’t make it up. I don’t expect any £10m signings though.