Swedish Rumble Summer Transfer Window Update #3 -- The Q3 report addition!
United has today announced its Q3 result, as always the full report will be published within a couple of days.
🔺What I want to point out first and foremost, due to the ambiguous reporting of the Q2 results -- have Ineos fixed United's finance and is the club profitable?
No, the club is losing money. 11m during Q3 and 14m lost over the first nine months.
What got so much attention last report was that United had a "Operating Profit". This is the profit/loss without financing costs. The club's financing costs was a whopping £63m the first nine months. Most of that is interest payments, but also currency swings, costs for hedging USD/GBP exposure etc.
🔺So Ineos has done nothing? The financials are not improved? Look, had this club still been run like it was under the Glazers, we are probably looking at a >£100m loss in a season where we only play 40 games and get no TV money at all from UEFA.
Ineos has improved the club's financial positive significantly. But -- the key thing here -- is that while it is improved, Ineos will never improve the club's financial position so much that it significantly "improves" on a season to season basis. Sounds like Greek? What do you mean?
Manchester United has made big losses every year since 2019. This means that the debt increases and the cost of financing the debt becomes bigger every year since. Ineos has improved the club's financial position so the losses each season are smaller. But the club stil lose money. A great year under Ineos, the club could make a profit of £25m or whatever. But the debt is 1.1 billion. So even if we make a profit of £50m per year, it takes 20 years to pay off the debt.
And this is not taking into account one penny being invested in Old Trafford.
Why is this relevant? A common notion is something along the lines of this: "Ineos just came in, give them time, they are fixing the finances of the club that were a mess, things will get better." This is just not the case.
🔺We now know that we finished 3rd -- was the performance better or worse than expected? How does this impact things?
Slightly better than expected, revenue outlook for full financial year 25/26 was raised from 640-660m to 655-665m.
🔺What stands out the most? United's income per home game was £8.25m per game. Last season, it was £5.22m per game. So income from each home game is up 58% this season comparing Q3 to Q3, remarkable. It is probably slightly lower on average over the full season -- but around thereabouts.
🔺What about the wage bill? United's wage bill for the quarter was £70,8m. That is very very low. Prorated over a full year, it gives you a total wage bill of app. £280m. Last year, Liverpool had a wage bill of £428m. But isn't that bonuses? Liverpool's wage bill was £386m in 23/24 when they played in the Europa League, and has not been below £310m since 19/20.
With a 20 percent Champions League increase, United's wage bill is currently projected to be £325m. It will surely be £100m less than Liverpool's in 26/27. This equals £100k more per week for 20 players. The big difference is not how much the depth players on the squad gets paid, the big difference is at the top. If Casemiro is United's highest paid player, Liverpool will surely have 10 players earning more than him.
The difference between United and City is even bigger.
Regardless what people say in media about players looking at the project and not caring about money -- United will 19 of 20 cases never beat out Liverpool or City in the race for signing a top player. Semenyo will get at least 150k more a week from City than United when both play in the CL. That is £37.5m more over 5 years. Its extremely rare that someone leaves 37.5m on the table, that is just a fact.
🚨This is a bit hard to swallow -- but to fix something as broken as MUFC, it is always essential to have a cold, correct and unbiased description of history/reality.
Does MUFC have that? No. For example, during 3 of 4 seasons between 2017 to 2021, prime Ed Woodward years, it is an -- indisputable fact -- straight from all club's annual accounts that United -- slightly outperformed -- what was invested in the squad. We got more bang for the buck than our rival.
Utterly embarrassing. Amorim had absolutely no business keeping 3 centre-backs on the pitch for the entire 90 minutes....it was tactical negligence. The lack of adaptability has been criminal from start to finish. He’s got it wrong in every department tonight, every decision, every adjustment, or lack of one.
A complete disaster of a performance from the touchline #mufc
@oykun Simple doesn't seem the go to model. Using 0000000s brings a good amount of ambiguity it seems. Maybe so people dont consciously realise how many tokens they are using for basic tasks