Better than Leicester and their £74m loss then!!!!!!!

Well it's nice to get some good news, even if as the article states " This was not the intention at the beginning of the season ".

Not really good news then if it went against club intentions. I'm sure they would have rather lost money and stayed in top division and kept all the players they wanted to keep. But making a profit will be enough to make some fans happy. Of course it doesn't tell the whole story.

Funny business isn't it?! An unintentional profit! Just look at those numbers from TV revenue compared to gate receipts and season tickets, therein lies the power to change KO dates and times whenever they see fit. Also highlights the lack of emphasise on cup competitions.

Clearly we had money to spend but couldn't attract the right players. As highly as our club is regarded and despite the deep rooted love we have for it, the players we will be looking to sign will be born around 2004, and would have fallen in love with football during a period we were struggling in the Championship and then relegated to league one.
Contrast that with the clubs we are competing against for these players, and perhaps people will understand it's not a right of passage to get people here.

Bazza8564 perhaps not attract the right players more purchased the wrong players

Surprisingly good accounts considering our turnover with new players and ground/training improvements in a difficult financial climate. Well-done Mark Ashton and support team. Better players higher wages.

There you go folks £77 Million on wages gets you one home win in the premier league.
The promised land indeed.

A profit!!! Blimey....

11.5 M for McAteer in mext years accounts!!!

So. The sale of Hutch for £38m will provide profits for this years accounts. Good to know.

Funny how any comment that isn't simple-minded gets voted down lol

I guess it’s easier to conflate where we are now on the pitch relative to our financial health.

£120 million additional turnover, straight out the door on players. And double the wage bill.

If we don’t go up, it’s about a sustainable as a fart on the planet Pluto.

So are we getting promoted. And do we look good value for the spending, I’m not sure we’re better than the legacy group that cost almost nothing, or even Micks 14/15 team that cost even less.

Of all Ashtons sins. This is the worst. If we go up, a rising tide etc, but miles off how elite clubs operate. Miles off.

If we don’t go up. And he seems to be doing his best to make sure we don’t, it’s off a cliff…, even mitigated relegation clauses, we’ll have one of the highest wage bills ever in the EFL, and a manager paid more than our entire TV revenue.

It’s like Ashtons ego plays roulette with our long term future - if it’s red, he gets his ego massaged, if it’s black - the club loses everything, everything, and he just walks away.

What happens when you index your entire future, to just one man.

TB Big, it may equate to the same thing, you work down your list until they say yes. We aren't as big a draw as most fans imagne

MVblue - and this is the issue. They were prem, then champ on Prem legacy payments.

At this point we’re league one legacy wages, at the end of this period the DOUBLiNG of the wage bill is the issue…, I don’t know what it is today, but it easily be one of the highest ever in the EFL.

We pay our manager more than our entire TV revenue …., we aren’t anymore sustainable than them at all, these numbers are just a couple years behind them… if we have EFL revenue to service those liabilities, we are in trouble. Do the basics, £120 million less in revenue (at least) and probably not £77 million wage bills, but not far off.

£77 million wages. £37 million turnover last time in this league - it’s about the same isn’t it. Losses will be between £30 million plus if we don’t go up. And they increase each year too. This isn’t a sustainable set of numbers. Far from it.

And as for Ashtons intangible assets, they include Muric, Ogbenne, McAteer etc etc players like Johnson too, who we can’t sell, because they aren’t worth what we paid them in fees or wages, who thinks Johnson is worth £50k a week?? He’s going nowhere. Third choice in the EFL and paid more than most premier league starters, it defines not sustainable.

It’s what happens when the talent ID is poor, it isn’t football manager, there are actual consequences. It’s the real business world. The liabilities hang around for many years.

Stay in the EFL and we have the exact same challenges - one more year of parachute will help, but then it’s off a cliff .., and the way Ashton has destroyed our brand appeal, that’s getting worse.

Up or bust …, over to McKenna having just been told bizarrely by Nigel Farage that Mark says he’s getting the sack if we don’t go up, fun times ahead - I can see why people think Ashton is elite…, they never understood the numbers. Or the consequences.

We don’t have the revenue as of today to pay our wage bill, not even close, KM would HAVE to leave if only for financial reasons. It’s why Ashton paying him more than god, was always such a truly breathtakingly bad decision.

Stay and build long term, get paid commensurate with success, or don’t. But don’t pay someone in their field more money than anyone in the industry, when they don’t have a seconds experience at the top of that industry. A huge, generational opportunity has been missed (if we don’t part the cracks with promotion and another splurge). The waste has been staggering. Throwing it at the wall and hoping it sticks. Some successes, but we spent European leading amounts. To build a decent EFL group.

It’s the decision making isn’t it. That’s the obvious issue. It’s not shockingly bad, but it’s poor, and at times very poor, it certainly is well short of elite.

Tens of millions lost THIS season, maybe £40 plus in future seasons.

Thats the legacy. That’s the important bit if you love this club.

Ashton won’t be here at that point. And he’ll point to a profit at his next interview, rather than the legacy liabilities crippling US in the here and now.

Sigh. Might be time we woke up now.., the red flags have been around long enough.

Clubs cease to exist when wages are 150% of entire revenue.., this could be the genesis of that. It’s where the live P&L is at, probably a little worse than that.

I do wonder if Ashton wants out. Sacked for politics, when he does have the authority to make those decisions. Paid up in full. And maybe easier to work again, than took a team to the premier league, then bankrupted them.

If we don’t go up, we get a decent run at next season, after that, it really is a financial shit show like we’ve never seen, no ifs or buts…, £60 million wages at that point, in to £40 million revenue (based on full houses match day) - then you need to run the club!!!!!

Can you see why gamechanger saw through Ashton yet? …, asymmetrical risk. The good thing happens. Small benefit (we spent so badly we still need to spend big) the bad thing happens, and you’re £20-40 million a year in a hole. In an industry where spending is indexed to revenue, so you can’t spend even if you want to, because you did it so badly when you could, you still have those liabilities.

I make Brett and Gamechanger right. I make Mark Ashton the busy fool.

Still. Promotion. Ashton out. Edu in. Next stop Europe. Delap on loan - it’s a funny old game.

Match day tickets and revenue is dwarfed by other sources of income. No wonder boards in the top 2 divisions care so little about the fan base.

In truth fairly ordinary players cost far too much and the wages are off the scale. They in no way connect with the struggles of ordinary fans.
Bloated by terrestrial tv payments where again fans pay through the nose for and many games when contested by the bigger clubs aren't a spectacle as points mean prizes,
This season has been seen in both the Premier and Championship Leagues a lack of quality and consistency.
Kick off times,VAR and poor refereeing are all ruining what was meant to be the "Peoples game" That time past when fans wore rosettes,carried rattles and wore flat caps.
Now to quote Roy Keane it's more for the "Prawn sandwich brigade".

We only filed the accounts yesterday - I can’t remember when you usually announce the numbers, but year end is in the summer, so guessing it’s then or after usually.

As defections go. It’s a bit pathetic from Mark. If anything it just fuels the narrative that OUR club is now Ashton FC, and he does what he wants, when he wants, to suit only his own agenda.

Even our annual reporting isn’t safe. He genuinely must think our fan base are VILLAGE IDIOTS will the see the £4 million and not understand the rest.

He really is odious. Vile. The most morally corrupt individual we ever had near the club, not a comment on his politics, more his competance and personality.

I don’t have a ticket Monday - but temped to drive 9 hours ‘park one’ in font of his office door and place an Ashton FC flag in it!

Decent set of numbers Mark, in the premier league, bloody car crash in the EFL you moon faced Brummie sloth.

Wow Darkhorse. Such insight. You should be CEO........... sorry just remembered, you're just a bloke with too much time.

Those that don't want us to go back up, would rather stay in the Championship and don't want Premier League football again, then let's be honest. However we manage to get back up this season, we've gotta want to do it for keeping the club in a sound financial position, and give us the chance to make use of our only just re-implemented scouting network. For all the mistakes we're supposed to have made, Omari and Delap were class signings for us, and this year we've added to that with Matusiwa and the progression of Philogene and Jackie Clarke.

If we manage to get back up, then hopefully we'll take a leaf or two out of the Sunderland strategy and recruit athletically and cleverly as they've done picking up players from the French/ Dutch & German leagues.

I for one want promotion, both because it's fun to be up with the big boys, and it means we can build the club even more more and make use of the financial risks we are taking.

Another 3 points on Monday please!

I don't really want to be in the Premier League next season - I also don't really want to be in the Championship. Does anyone else feel as helpless as this and is alcohol the answer or the cause?

darkhorse28, I know some downvote your posts automatically without hardly bothering to look at them. To be fair, on ocassion I think you do have some good points to make. However there's one thing I'm 100% sure of. If the owners want MA gone, gone he will be. If not, what might that say about them?

darkhorse28, again you make claims that bear no connection with reality, claiming the accounts were released at a different time than normally to distract from other news.

The most recent accounts were filed on 3/4/23, 22/3/24, 31/3/25 and 31/3/26. There is nothing out of the ordinary here, however you might like to distort it to support your agenda.

Our failure to stay in the Premier League is our
failure to persuade 12 to 15 Prem quality players to the club. Impossible given the profile of the club.

Then throwing money away on players not worth signing.

Everyone wanted by Premier League clubs should have gone, that includes McKenna to Brighton/Crystal Palace or whoever wanted him when his value was at its height. Before we kicked a ball in the Premier League.

Ashton/McKenna, there have been many warning signs, disastrous stuff brushed under the carpet, such as...

Norwich Carrow Road ticketgate 2 years ago

Failing to give Hladky the contract he wanted, letting it drag on, and playing goalkeeper roulette for high stakes leading to Muric

Relegation at a whimper. 39 year old Ashley Young joining.

The fall out over a list of players presented in January not considered good enough.

All warning signs.

Agree that our figures will look more like Leicester in the next two seasons.

But who can come in and make a change? Impossible situation.