Soctty

If I'm ignorant when it comes to accounts, I'm in the wrong job... We made a profit last year. You seem to think because an exceptional item is in the accounts it shouldn't be counted. It's exceptional in this case mainly due to the amount of money involved, rather than for the rarity of the transaction. Football clubs sell players almost every year. The worry of us running out of players to sell is a valid concern, but at the moment we have two who will be prized assets, and as time goes by our track record is one of giving talent a chance - often after taking it from one of the bigger clubs. Our problem in the early part of this decade was that we didn't cash in on players, which led to us having to cut costs and panic selling the likes of McLean, which led eventually to our relegation. I think you will find that we'll make a significant profit in the current year - probably not if you discount the exceptional item of the McGinn money, but that's because that is there to use, so we will use a portion of it - it would be silly not to. We'll gamble a bit of money in January to give us a chance of staying in the league, but I can guarantee that anyone signed in January will be on a short term deal, so their cost will disappear if we go down, along with a fair amount of those currently on the wage bill. The worrying being done by yourself and other comes across as an assumption of at least partial naivity on the part of the current board. The guy pulling the strings is an experienced and hard-nosed operator. He didn't get to where he is by taking huge, unfounded risks.

The ratio is high, but as the majority of these contracts were 1 or 2 year deals, with a good deal ending last summer, the figures are already out of date. The club spent what it had to to get out of the Championship. The nightmare scenario being wheeled out by some doesn't account for a substantial increase in commercial and TV revenue, not to mention a noticable uplift in matchday income, through gate receipts and increased sponsorship revenue. That's before we look at another big cash influx from the McGinn deal - this is somehow being spun as some sort of negative. What you and others have done is to assume that those on the board have no business acumen, and are naive. You've made huge assumptions with very little if any inside knowledge on the workings of the club, the contracts given to players - including any relegation clauses and getouts, which a club in our position would almost certainly include in deals we are doing. You need to look beyond the numbers, but I get that it's easier to plug in your figures and panic.

Outstanding rant. Bravo.

You should take your own advice...

I could bore the pants off everyone on a subject I have no clue about - is that constructive?? Nice to see I've got a wee lapdog - down boy...

I find it simplest to say there is nothing, either per the accounts or from looking at post balance sheet events, which is worthy of comment, and certainly not worth worrying your fellow fans about. You really are becoming like Mr Dickson with your pretence of expertise in areas you have none.

Forgot that it's all so simple - it says so in your Frank Wood 2nd edition. There's only one fool here, and he's the self-styled jack of all trades... Keep going.

Whatever you say - I hope your fees are reasonable...

You're not really bringing up the Kenyans again are you...?

He's such a clueless fud.

Hamilton: Manager - Martin Canning Assistant Manager - Guillaume Beuzelin Goalkeeping Coach - Brian Potter Striking Coach - Jason Scotland Director of Youth Football - Allan Maitland Head of Youth Academy - George Cairns Physios - Alistair Callander & Rory Jack Sports Scientists - Kevin Symon & Sunnan Shah

Well he scored a couple of goals, so he must have been some player if he never played for us...

That's more research than most have done...

It's all amateur accountanting analysis. I've given my opinion on the accounts, but you've read a couple of books so you think you're an expert, therefore I'll leave those who want to, to listen to your ramblings.

I guarantee that it is. Looking at a set of accounts and calculating gross profit ratios, roi, debtor days and all the basic analytical stuff is indeed simple stuff, and in the contrived examples you get in a textbook it's easy to think it's all a piece of piss, but there is far more to it than that, especially when looking at the records of a football club. A simple manufacturing company is a lot more simplistic because you have turnover, raw materials used and overheads. Much easier to look at basic gross profit and cost of sales and the like. ETA Amateur analysis of figures is what makes fans worry when there is absolutely nothing worrying or unusual in the figures we've just released. By all means have a view, but some people are passing it off as though they're The Swiss Ramble...

Ah, but how many exceptional items were there in those accounts...

Kudos to you for the research on this. You'll still find people trying to be amateur accountants on the back of a brief look at our accounts, and some light reading...

It should be noted that there is a lot more to accounting than the numbers, and looking at any number of simple, or even complex, examples in a book doesn't give you any degree of expertise, or give the depth of understanding required to do any sort of meaningful analysis on the accounts of a slightly more complex organisation.

It's the way most clubs operate. Football clubs are different from any other business, because the customers are volatile and the product isn't something you can guarantee by putting in the same materials because the materials are intangible. I would love to see us have a rainy day fund, but when most days are rainy it's difficult to do.

It's a viscious circle. Of course we will have spent some of the McGinn money, because if we didn't then the board wouldn't have been acting in the best interests of the club. Had the McGinn money not been forthcoming, it is more than likely, in my opinion, we wouldn't have sacked Stubbs when we did. That influx of funds gave us the leeway financially to make an early call on that, and also to hopefully back the new manager in January. I'm don't think we'll spend massively, but I can definitely see us getting a few of higher quality in until the end of the season, thus not having the burden of extra wages going forward unless we stay up, in which case we would be in a position to lengthen any short term deals by a year at least. This should all leave us still in a healthy state of profit.

Getting back to the point on admin staff, I disagree. Should we have less admin staff than other clubs of our standing? Or clubs in lower leagues? If so, why? What are the admin staff that we should be doing without? What is the relative financial cost of the admin staff measured against the playing staff? How does this compare to the industry norm, and to teams of our size and stature? I can understand people worrying for the financial health of the club, but on the back of two years where we posted profits while performing well on the pitch, I think it's worrying unduly. This time next year we will have 2018/19 accounts in front of us, and then we'll know what damage the Stubbs episode has made, what level this season's wage bill is at against this season't profit - before and after "exceptional items" and we can argue again about figures without the knowledge of the inner workings of the boardroom or the timing of decisions made on spending. It passes the time between games, especially when the team have performed too well for us to moan about them this week...

Being cut adrift at the bottom of the championship was surely the very definition of a "rainy day", and hence funds were used to get us out of that situation. The board than showed ambition to back our manager to get us out of the championship. In doing all of that, we remained in profit. People are getting overexcited about something that hasn't happened, won't happen in this current financial period and beyond that people are making wild guesses of our demise it seems. I agree in the idea of developing alternative revenue streams - wasn't that something that was mooted in relation to the McGinn money? Or is that too close to giving the current board credit for not being naive and clueless custodians?

None. The fact that we didn't bring talent through in that period means that we were always cutting costs, which eventually led to our relegation. Our modus operandi should be to use the academy as a source of regular income. Maybe not every year, but selling on players is a regular source of income for wise football clubs. The need to live within our needs doesn't change, but our means are boosted by those sales.

How long does it take to realise that for football clubs, selling players is not an exceptional item. It's listed as such because it's not technically part of our "trade", but football clubs sell players constantly. The likes of ourselves don't buy players very often, but selling players will always be part of our business plan, whether the club admits it or not.

As I said in another post, we had one off exceptional items in the 2015, 2016, 2017 and now the 2018 accounts. Just how much of a one off are these items? I think in most cases the money was made, or was at least all but guaranteed, before it was spent, which means the club has spent money it had coming in to try to achieve an aim. There is a lot of knicker wetting going on, with people appearing to assume that those in charge of the club are naive or lacking in business nous. This isn't the case.