Very illuminating line from the minutes of the board meeting with THST:
So the fear I articulated last season has been confirmed - the absolute clusterfuck with the stadium opening date cost the club tens of millions of pounds, so much that even reaching the Champions League Final wasn't enough to cover it. Between Wembley rents on a game-by-game basis, rubbish attendances, cheaper ticket prices, 8,000 coroporate packages unfulfilled, NFL cancelled and more, it's cost us an absolute fortune - enough to buy a world-class player - and we'd have been far, far better off just admitting from the start it was going to take two years and planning on that basis. Also explains the 18 month transfer drought if it was becoming apparent that we weren't going to be ready, which has obviously been a disaster on the pitch, and could yet lead to missing out on the same amount again by failing to reach the Top 4, and players either leaving or refusing to join. The long-term picture still looks bright, but this saga was disastrous and by far ENIC's worst moment in charge.
- MG asked how the figures for the year ending June 2019 were looking
- DL (Daniel Levy) thought they were looking okay as the UCL run had balanced out some of additional expenses incurred in relation to the extended stay at Wembley
How on earth can you tell that from that statement ? the CL run was about £60m. There’s no way an extra 6 months at Wembley cost that. Wembley overrun probably cost us about £20m maximum . There was very little in it attendance wise. The main cost was extra rent to Wembley. He basically said figures looked “OK” he didn’t say they looked“shit or awful”. And I’d imagine he was being on cautious side as they may well still be working on final figures. He just stated the obvious, Wembley cost us extra but the CL run compensated.
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