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This page has comment on it. All the figures come from the clubs accounts but are my view of what they mean.

The financial results for the year ending June 30th 2006 were released on 27th October. These figures have been incorporated into the rest of this site. This page includes highlights from the results.

For the fourth consecutive year the amount of money the club have taken in has dropped. The only part of the business which is growing is the commercial part which covers merchandising, sponsorship and catering. The club have decided to stop splitting the commercial figure which makes it more difficult to spot where the successes are. The most worrying drop is in the gate receipts, which dropped below the 2003 figures, despite an 11% rise in season ticket prices over the same period.

The TV related income also fell for the 4th year in a row. The results for 2007 will depend, as ever, on league position and the number of televised cup games. In 2006 the club finished 7th and received 12% more from Sky than in 2005 because of this. Any drop from 7th would impact the Sky payment for 2007. In the 2007/2008 season the new Sky contract will begin and the TV revenue should increase, but only if the club are in the "upper regions of the Premier League."

The club like to exclude player amortisation costs from the accounts. For an explanation of amortisation please go here. They do this as the transfer costs make the business look less profitable. To do so does not make sense though. It is like Stagecoach deciding not to include the costs of buying buses in their accounts. Over the last few years the amount the club has spent on players, as shown by their amortisation costs, has been in decline. This has allowed the club to be seen to be making profits. The profits have only come from not investing in the playing squad, a policy which could not last. In 2006 there is a huge leap in player costs. It is unclear at what level the club thinks it should be running at. It used to in the £14m per season range, then it was allowed to drop to under £10m, in 2006 it was back to over £16m. There seems to be a lack of planning in this.

The wages seem to be out of control. The 11 month wages bill was £2m higher than the 12 months for the previous year ! The results try to explain away some of this by putting it down to 'exceptional' costs from sacking managers. They have had to do this for the last two years, and for 4 of the last 9 seasons. Clearly not that exceptional then. The target for wages has always been to under 50% of the turnover. If the managerial costs are ignored, as the club would like, then the ratio is 64%, with the 'exceptional costs, it is 68%. It is unlikely the club can continue at this rate for very long.

The on-going problem with the wages being so high is that all the players signed over the last couple of years are on long-term, high wages. If the players do not turn out to be any good, the club are stuck with 4 and 5 year contracts to pay up.

Of course the other way to improve the wages ration would be to increase the income to the club. The only sign that this would be possible would be the extra Sky money. To get the current wages tot he correct sort of level the income would have to go up to about £106m. This would mean Sky paying us £49m per year rather than the current £26.8m.

The overall profit and loss for the club shows a huge drop. The £12m loss, for an 11-month reporting year this is very poor. All the money that comes into the club does so during the playing season. The costs of running the club are over 12 months. Adding in an extra month's wages, and an extra month of amortisation the 12 month figure could be a loss of over £16m. The only positive that can be seen from this figure is that it has stopped the board from awarding a share dividend of any sort for the first time since becoming a PLC.

A summary of the overall results would be that they are very poor. Gate receipts down, TV money down, profits down, wages up, borrowings up. The board of the club have little to be proud of.