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Newcastle United accounts reveal extra £38.6m in bank

9 years ago
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The Newcastle United accounts have shown up at last at Companies House, allowing the public to have a peep for only £1.

Always hard to make total sense of the financial figures each year because a private company such as Mike Ashley’s, only has to give limited information/explanation as compared to one with shareholders to answer to.

At the end of March the club revealed some headline figures/information that they chose to publish and these showed only a profit of £4.7m on normal operation of the club, much lower than expected, which then increased to £18.7m in total profits once player trading and especially Yohan Cabaye’s sale were taken into account.

However, the Newcastle United accounts being filed and open to view at Companies House, means there is more information available and a bit of a broader picture to see.

The biggest thing to note is surely how much money the club had going into the bank.

An extra £38.6m of cashflow in 2013/14 compared to the previous year (2012/13), meant they went from having a minus figure of £4.5m in the bank to one of plus £34.1m.

It looks then as though they used some of this money to buy new players.

A special note in the accounts saying that £29.8m was spent on six players after the accounts period ended on 30 June 2014, the six appearing to be De Jong, Lascelles, Darlow, Janmaat, Cabella and Riviere (Colback and Perez brought in already during June).

However, another special note says that NUFC also banked £12.6m on player sales after 30 June 2014, almost all of that seemingly from Debuchy plus a few quid for Amalfitano and Tavernier. It looks though as that doesn’t include any income from Santon and Mapou Yanga-M’biwa (the accounts were signed off by the club on 27 January 2015, which was actually day it was confirmed Mapou was going permanently to Roma) moving out this calendar year.  Debuchy having been widely reported as costing over £10m.

With £29.8m spent on players and £12.6m banked since the accounts, that means a net spend of £17.2m on players from July onwards.

So deducting that £17.2m from the £34.1m that was in the bank at the end of June 2014, leaves a balance of £16.9m, which then adding Mapou and Santon transfer fees on, could give a surplus of around £25m going forward, give or take.

The total staff costs went up from £61.7m in 2012/13 to £78.3m in 2013/14, a rise of £16.6m. No doubt Loic Remy would have banked a few quid and the 5 players signed in January 2013 would have seen their wages included for a full year instead of six months.

However, the likes of Cabaye and others came off the wage bill so there may have been a decent chunk of the extra wages down to the infamous staff bonuses for finishing top ten, with it claimed all full-time employees including players, coaching and non-football staff were entitled to the bonus. So there could well be a few quid coming off that staff bill this season with top ten a very remote possibility.

The wages went down to 60.3% of turnover from 64.3% the season before, the massive extra money from TV more than looking after the extra wages and other costs.

One other statistic that is included in the accounts is the fact that the home league attendance went from 50,517 to 50,395.

No players bought despite almost £40m extra cash flowing into the bank account, you couldn’t make it up.

As for the fans, is there really a straw out there to break this particular camel’s back?

Can Mike Ashley really always count on fifty thousand fans no matter how he runs the club?

The #boycottspurs is the dry run but the summer will see many people wondering just why they should renew, whilst those on direct debits may well be thinking of putting a block on those until Mike Ashley either leaves, or accepts that even Newcastle supporters have their breaking point,

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