First and foremost, best wishes for the coming new year to any readers, regular, one-off or anything in between. As the Covid situation remains so unclear, who knows what will be heading our way, in football and life in general.
Twitter has felt particularly virulent over the past few weeks. The ongoing culture war seems to seep into all areas, including the world of Forest and football in general. Keyboard warriors on both sides have their points to make and everyone has their views validated within their own echo-chambers. Now, not only can we debate and fall out over the merits or otherwise of Ryan Yates or Joao Carvalho, we can wind one another up over face-coverings and booster jabs. It’s not much fun and I‘m as guilty as any, I suspect. Must watch that. That said of course, I’m right: cover your face and get jabbed. Or shut up about it. Either. ;-)
The culture war was inevitably going to find a battle ground in football, where tribalism and opinions based on nothing whatsoever beyond personal bias and whatever ‘facts’ you can make up to support your view have always held sway. Again… guilty! This is a world where people can claim that Liverpool owners Fenway are behind Covid and that Jurgen Klopp is just a mouthpiece for the conspiracy *and* get plenty of people feeding their delusion by agreeing with them. As author Nicky Allt mentioned, “people who believe Covid was send in on 5G flying saucers from Burnley.”
From BLM and taking the knee, through views on Covid and now onto the ins and outs of poverty-baiting. The latter depressed me no end. For all the rivalry and partisanship, football is (was) a working class game and there should be solidarity not enmity between different strands of the working class. The middle classes have appropriated the game now to a large extent, though whether this is part of the reason for the recent upsurge in deprivation-related unpleasantness is unclear. This week, we’ve had the unedifying spectacle of fans from the UK’s 14th poorest city, Leicester, enthusiastically celebrating the historic economic woes of the 42nd poorest, Liverpool. Nottingham, in case you’re wondering, is 4th worst. Of course, it’s not just Leicester and, as someone pointed out to me online, it is possible that “Feed the…” started directed to Geordies from our very own Trent End in 1985. If it did, I probably sang it, for which I am truly sorry and embarrassed, guilt only partially put back in its box by knowing that I always did what I could to support striking miners and their families. Whatever, poverty is no laughing matter. If it’s passed off as banter, we really need to do better and find more suitable subjects. It’s not funny. I work with plenty of victims of austerity and deprivation and see it ruin lives and life opportunities. I’m sure we’d hear “Sign on…” in the City Ground if we were to play LFC at any tIme and a little bit of me would die as I heard it.
On the subject of filthy lucre, poverty and obscene wealth, I’ve been rolling around in the monied fleshpots of the Premier league again, reading ‘Done Deal’, by Daniel Geey. If you’ve not read it, this is a very readable explanation of how football finance works: contracts, transfers, FFP, take-overs, the lot. recommended. Much less scandalous than Football Leaks, which I reported on a few months back, but nonetheless thoroughly intriguing.
This sort of reading always takes me to a very dark place with regards to top level football. It’s all so very, very corporate. At times, I wonder if I want any part of it and/or for Forest to be any part of it. I’m on record as saying I’m not that fussed about getting promotion and I got (rightly) piled on for it. Of course, the point of any sport is for you, or the entity you support, to do as well as they can. No glass ceilings. I get that and I also fully get that there is a generation of Forest fans who have never experienced being in the top league and that it’s all very well for old gits like me who’ve enjoyed Europe and all that. Absolutely.
That said, the financial side of it is scary. And obscene. Without even getting onto salaries, tax-reducing image rights contracts, ‘loyalty’ bonuses and dodgy ownership, sponsorship and endorsements, just a look at the relative incomes and operating costs is mind blowing. Let’s have a quick, very superficial look, figures quoted the most recent I can find, mostly for 2018-19. 19-20 was obviously Covid-skewed anyway.
According to Deloitte (Football Intelligence Tool), the average Championship income was 33 million. This includes big hitting clubs with parachute payments and the median is much lower. Forest are one of the higher at around 29 million. In the Premier league, this is North of 250 million.
A season in the Premier League is generally accepted to be worth an uplift of around £180 million, comprising 90 million of broadcasting money, 80 million parachute payments (assuming relegation), match day revenues up 1-3 million (if ticket prices are hiked and/or attendances go up - the latter about impossible for Forest at present), headline sponsorship up about 3-5 million. The parachute money isn’t applicable in the season you are up there, of course, so the real uplift for the season there is more like £110 million. Add that, hypothetically, to Forest’s 29 and we get to £139 million income, which sounds massive.
Except it’s not. Remember that ‘North of £250 million’ I mentioned. This, of course, is skewed by the ‘Big’ clubs. In 2018-19, every club down as far as 8th (Everton) took more in TV revenue alone than Forests’s projected total income. Man City and Liverpool both took over £150 million. These clubs had total revenue more in the order of £300 million plus, the likes of Liverpool and United well over £400 million. That’s £260+ million more than Forest could expect.
The Premier league clubs tend to be profitable these days. They are allowed to make a loss of £105 million over three years, but few do. In 2017-18, all bar two were profitable. In 2019-20 Forest lost just under 16 million. We’d have to turn that around.
United’s shirt sponsorship deal with Chrysler is worth 47.5 million a year and their kit deal with Adidas a cool £75 million a year. They also have a further 60 commercial partners pumping in money. By way of comparison, in 2020 sponsorship and advertising in total brought Forest 2.1 million.
Championship clubs typically pay more in wages alone than total income - with a ratio of 148%, we’re one of the worst, an unsustainable model, of course. In the Premier League, the reverse is true: wages are on average 60-70% of income. On this model, crude as it is, Forest would splash out about 60-70 million on squad salaries (it was 38 million in 2019-20), leaving about 70 million for all other costs. You might have to add say another 15-20 million for other salaries - management, admin, commercial, players in the squad etc), leaving 50-55 million. This seems about right, comparable to say Leeds or Wolves, though they have a somewhat higher income (typically 160 million) than that I’ve projected here for us. Presumably, we’d need to raise money by selling players, but overall the gain would be two, maybe three players of the standard that say a club like Palace might target.
Another way to look at this, if we stick to this projected 139 million income, Forest’s most recent accounts show operating costs of £49.4 million and wages of £38.1. That’s £87.5 million outgoings operating at our current level. Leaving £51.5 million, that same couple of players gain. You can reduce that if you allow for player contracts having salary uplifts for promotion and the likely high salary demands of any potential news signings.
And, of course, FFP means you can’t spend more than you bring in. Mr Marinakis can’t just sell a boat or two, or whatever else he sells, and throw it our way.
All of this is sketchy, I know, but even allowing say 50% error either way, the overall picture is one of ongoing financial struggle, even given the Premer League benefits.
It’d be tough. Competing with the top 6 would require more of a miracle than we’ve ever seen before and the bottom line would be about survival. We could, one would hope, establish ourselves as a middle-lower-end club whilst the big boys roar further and further ahead over the horizon. The youth set-up would be crucial to this, although Bournemouth did OK for a while abandoning theirs (saving a few bob) and buiilding a second string team of other people’s cast-offs.
But, we all feel we should be there and we’d surely all love a tilt at it, sooner rather than later and ‘smaller’ clubs than us do hang on in there, though several of them now have a few years of big Prem money and profit banked behind them, of course. Sometimes though, you have to beware of what you wish for…
Back in the real world, yesterday’s match for me took in clubs in two North Notts villages that could have done with a bit of love and care from their fellow man over the years. Clipston and Rainworth have never really recovered from the death of the coal industry and, like my beloved Maltby, remain the kind of places your metropolitan elites just don’t understand. Clipston (formerly Clipston Welfare) and Rainworth Miners Welfare are both hovering toward the lower end of the NCEL Division One, but both look safe. Both have long and distinguished histories, Rainworth having played in the ‘82 Vase Final v Forest green Rovers in front of over 15,000, mostly from North Notts. A feisty and enjoyable local derby was watched by a bumper crowd of 203. Clipston’s tidy Lido ground is welcoming and features one of my favourite non-league things, along with the warmth, genuineness and excellent chip cobs - a pitch with a mahoosive slope. The hosts, started strongly, let slip a 2-0 lead and a 2-2 draw was probably about right. How this will have gone down with non-league legend Rudy Funk, on his managerial debut here, can only be guessed at. Rudy Funk, not only the coolest name in football, bringing to mind an offshoot of Parliament or Funkadelic, but he also looks exactly like a bloke called Rudy Funk should look. Terrific.
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