THE LAB | The Spurs Finance Q&A - Why Cash Is King

34:02I mean, they pushed him at the right time because they get all the benefit from the frugalness of his work. Yeah. And we've seen, yeah, so far they've been pretty true to the word in terms of putting the money in. This is, I saw a graph actually earlier. It was yesterday, I think, where up to four years ago or three years ago, basically when Joe Lewis was in charge, the net amount of money put into the club was something like 26 million over 20 years. They've put in 300 million in the space of the last three and a half years now. So the first part was the loan from, what was the name of the bank?

34:36Macquarie. Macquarie, which is a cash. We essentially sold future rights, TV rights in the Premier League owed to Tottenham to a bank and they gave us 100 million in cash and we're going to give them 102 million pound when we get the money yeah exactly that was sort of a big deal thing that's just leveraging it was a loan to smooth over some cash flow headaches basically so the second investment of 100 million and this is the question we got here um fuck where is it uh we have from just a Paul Bradshaw um which is where are all the Lewis where are the Lewis Moundy getting all their money from um so so the first the second thing was a legitimate 100 million pound cash from enic or from tavistock through enic yeah or would it been enic money do they no so enix yeah it's like a shell company but they would have they would have probably had to give i don't know how they actually structure these they might have had to give the money to enic to buy or they may have just bought it and attribute the shares to enic i'm not sure the mechanism but basically it's their money yeah 100 million of their money the family's money went put into Sodom.

35:43Now, has the third lump, this third 100 million, has that been injected into the football club? Yeah, sounds like as of yesterday, I think it was, the day before, Gold was reporting it. So yeah, another 100 million has gone in. That should, in theory, a lot of the 100 million, I think we were speaking last week, in theory, a lot of the 100 million from October should still be there because that was to support at least some of the spending in January. Now we've got another 100 million. They've said it's, you know, for operating costs. It's not all for transfers. But we went and conserved it before.

36:11We said, you know, let's assume 60 is still sitting there. Let's assume 60, 70 of this would be for transfers. There's potentially 120 to 140 million sat there ready to be used for transfers in pure cash. And just to be clear, we can't sign, despite what we were talking about earlier in terms of us being able to spend 450 million pounds without being in trouble. that is only a reality if you have the cash to pay the upfront payments and signing on fees to the players you can't sign the players if you don't have liquid cash in the bank which which is why we required cash injection from the lewis family is that right yeah that's it you can't put it all on credit you know some clubs will be willing to take a tiny bit up front but they're probably going to charge you more for it you know if you want their player and you want to only pay 5 million now they're probably going to charge you an extra 10 million at the back end because they want they want some you know advantage to doing that so yeah you need the cash now it makes it a lot more attractive you know you can chuck you can chuck 50 of the fee up front a lot of clubs want cash so it makes you a really good buyer because you know like there's a lot of talking man united at the moment don't have much cash does that give us advice with fernandez you know can we say to west ham all right you've gone down here's 30 million pounds up front or 40 million pounds up front that's why you need cash yeah yeah so so it does it gives you a huge advantage and as you say there's those two sides to it there's your room from an accounting perspective and there's your actual cash that comes in and out the door to pay for these so the two are decoupled you know that amortization is smooth over the five years that's a charge against your accounts but on the other side of things you might pay all the cash up front that might be no further fees owed within a month or it could be five years ten years just to be clear there's a room significant room we have for psr we can only realize that room if you have cash in the bank which which the lewis family have injected twice 200 million pound in the last eight six to eight months yeah that's it yeah right so if there is that's the demonstration that for their intent you would imagine like fans might go well no actually if tonali and fernandez get over end up becoming tottenham otto fans that's the that's the intent no the that's the reality of the intent the intent is that they're injecting cash into the football club yeah they'll they'll only get back once it's sold and they'll probably get it back three or four times over probably yeah well i mean i find i don't know about yeah i think it's a positive thing even if we don't get to nali the fact that we're in for that level of player that degree of financial commitment i think is a is a great sign because if we don't get in there's lots of good central midfielders out there like the assumption is and i know people be skeptical and say yeah but we won't get him we'll go and do nothing but we're going from we've overpaid for van hecke because we want it because there's everyone in van hecker we're overpaying on potentially for tonali or fernandez because the manager wants them because we think they're good players so if we're willing to do that now we have the money to go and do it on other players so i don't see any reason at this time to assume we won't go and just get someone else and you saw the reports with this episode is brought to you by fox one watch all 104 matches of the fifa world cup live in 4K for just$19.99 a month with three days free.

39:24Build your own multi-view, choose up to three streams, and follow player spotlights. Stay on top of every moment with live stats, highlights, and instant replays. The FIFA World Cup, streaming live on Fox 1, offers a subject to change. See fox.com for complete terms and conditions. This summer, FanDuel is the best place to bet on goals. Including equalizers, follows, headers. Every goal is worth more on FanDuel. So, let there be goals. New customers get$350 in bonus bets guaranteed when you bet$5 for seven days. 21 plus in present and select states. First online real money wager only. Minimum$5 wager required for seven consecutive days.

40:01$5 first deposit required. Bonus issued as non-withdrawable bonus bets, which expires seven days after receipt. Restrictions apply. See full terms at fanduel.com slash sportsbook. Gambling problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER or 1-800-MY-RESET. Music, food, art. These things define and unite us. And they come in colors that breathe culture. Colors that connect us with their variety and richness. You'll find that same variety in Valspar Ultra paints. Great coverage and durability starting at$29.98 per gallon. Enjoy everyday protection against scuffs and wear with a smooth, washable finish. We're made of colors.

40:35And with Valspar Ultra, you can reflect that pride of culture you have inside on every wall of your home. Available at Lowe's. Real Madrid can't compete with Tottenham on a financial level because Matias Fernandes apparently has said he doesn't want to join Real Madrid. He wants to join Tottenham. He doesn't necessarily... Man United have been shocked at the offer Tottenham have given for Matias Fernandes. He's not coming to Tottenham. If he does come, because he's passionate about our football club, he's coming because we've been offered him eye-warring money at 21 years old. And that's what we've been asking our football club to do for a long, long time.

41:11And it seems to be happening. If both those deals get done, I mean, that's incredible, incredible business. I don't think we can moan about overpaying really after years and years of saying, why don't we just pay the money? We see that complaint every summer and now suddenly people are moaning about a neck of being a slight overpay. Maybe, but we've got the guy we wanted and the guy that's a perfect Ronaldo replacement. Yeah. To answer Paul Bradshaw's question is where is all the Lewis money coming from? I don't know if you know the answer to that. I mean, they're loaded. Yeah, Joe Lewis made billions and billions from investing.

41:49And sometimes it's like assets rather than cash in the bank. Yeah, it won't all be in cash, but enough of it. The 100 million is not going to be a huge deal to them. They just made 300 million from selling their art. I was about to say that. They just sold 300 million pounds worth of art. So, you know, they've got money. They can afford to put 100 billion in. They can afford to put a lot more in if they wanted to, I think. So, yeah, although a lot of it won't be in cash, enough of it will be that they can afford to do this without worry. Callum Bradker says, it's a good question, for how long could we have spent like we are looking to spend this summer?

42:23As in how far back? I mean, I would argue we have spent pretty heavily. 40 % of the wages. Yeah, the wages is the one that's lagged a bit. So we could have, that's been climbing slowly. Really, since the stadium opened is probably the answer. Before that, we were, We were roughly on the line since the stadium's opened. Our spending's gone up, but it could have gone higher than it was. It couldn't have gone as high as we may potentially do this summer because SCR, like we said, is quite kind. It allows you a lot of wiggle room. So this is really an opportunity now. I think we're going to see a big spend across the Premier League with a lot of clubs taking advantage of it.

43:02And that's probably why we're seeing the fees getting a bit silly, really. But yeah, we could have spent more since the stadium opened. we just couldn't have spent to the extent we're maybe looking to spend this summer. We'd have been slightly more shackled. James Daniels says, it seems like the club are taking an approach on large transfer fees but maintaining a wave structure under 300 grand a week. Is this leaning into the new CSR model to enable Tottenham to land more A-grade players without giving in to the whims of certain players demanding more? see if the reports around Rashford yeah I think so I think that's probably fair comment I think yeah there's an argument to say do you really want to be going above 300k like what players would we want that would be willing to come to Tottenham and Rashford is probably a good example here but there's not many players that we would be desperate to get who would be willing to come to us who are going to demand over 300 grand a week you know there's a sort of very elite set of players and they're going to go to your super clubs so do we want to be throwing that sort of money at players who maybe aren't in that elite bracket leads would be a worry right probably not yeah you got your leads you got those things like that so 50 000 a week to seth johnson or maybe it's i think it was 50 000 a week to seth johnson back in the mid-noughties mad yeah crazy and yeah and look what happened so yeah exactly you don't want to overextend yourself we could offer those wages if we wanted to, but I would argue there's not much value in just offering them for offering them's sake.

44:31Like I say, Rashford, are there better options out there who are maybe a bit younger, who would command lower wages, maybe work a bit harder on the pitch? I don't know, people's opinions are very on Rashford. But yeah, I think it's a fair comment that we're trying to maximise our spending potential within that by not just going out and saying it's 400 grand a week to every target because there's only limited value in that. Where do you think, who's making these decisions? Because obviously Lewis family are providing the financial requirements, the cash in the bank. Venkatesham is deferring to who?

45:07I think it's Langer and Deservey. Yeah, I think those two are picking the targets. But who's deciding how to manage the wage budget? Would it be... That would be Vinay and Mohsen, I think his name is. You know, the guy who came in from City, apparently he's doing a lot of negotiating. He did a lot of player contract negotiations and things and transfer negotiations at City for a spell. Yeah, Rafi Mawson. Yeah, it sounds like he's the one. Him and Vinay are doing the negotiating and sort of agreeing the contracts and Vinay and Langer are doing the sort of legwork. Yeah, and from the board, this is a max we can increase our wage spend by and this is the amount of money we can spend in transfer fees up front.

45:53yeah yeah so they'll they'll exactly they'll they'll know exactly all the constraints they'll know what we could spend without hitting those limits they'll have they'll have some i don't know what software they use at clubs i'd be interested to uh be one of the few people in order to be interested to see it but um yeah but they must have something i imagine it can't be just a spreadsheet that's like that's sort of quite a smart way of all right if you do this this is going to then approach this as you approach this limit club trains a problem that sort of thing so i would like to think they manage it in a smart way but in in your point how In your opinion, how complicated is it to run the finances of a football club?

46:28Is it chief CFO, the chief financial officer? So he'll do the reporting, prepare the accounts, that sort of thing, make sure we've got enough in reserve to pay things that need to go out the door. But how complicated is it? It's probably more complicated than ever. I think they are complicated businesses. There's so many moving parts with player contracts, player add-ons, clauses, that sort of thing. I think really complex is the answer and same with director of football people sort of simplify that role but there is an argument to say it is more than a one-person role these days because you've got to be an expert in everything in like contract law and you know international law in movement of movement of people in football player contracts and everything so so much that goes into football clubs nowadays and that's why we needed more experts rather than just the sort of two or three man bands that we had for you know 20 years or whatever it was which is what the Gibbs river report probably threw up um highlighted yeah yeah i'd love to see that report it's not public information it would never be public information if it was a god no god no because it would be this is this is this make they'll have like error risk there are problems like things that needs to be fixed immediately and in front of it will be daniel levy i think i've been involved in some before but and they will have different just quickly what what what is it the gibber review what what what would they would have come in they would have basically sat down looked at all the all the areas of the club spoken to people looked at past performance looked at indicators versus other clubs looked at model versus other clubs things like that and they would have basically come up with a rapport or some sort of feedback that would say all right on these key components that we've agreed to measure on so like strategy uh your structure your your efficiency of spending that sort of stuff on all of these things this is how we rate you and i would imagine a lot of those would have been red rather than shit but you know shit shit shit it would have been old-fashioned you're too old-fashioned you need to modernize um and you are you are wasting and i think they knew this i think why they appointed it was they knew that we'd opened the stadium finally we were here we had all this money to spend and we were getting worse so it's like there's there's something wrong there yeah um and i think they would have fed back all the things that were wrong and that would have led to you know charrington coming in and nevy eventually leaving and the thing is the thing is is they don't give river that company which is an obscure uh american company they don't care they're just coming in and purporting what they see yeah there's no independent paid a fee to come and get exactly yeah you want you want a third party it's completely independent because like you say otherwise they've got vested interest in if you get it done internally they're going to tell you what you want to hear where i could whereas you get them to do it they're not going to pull punches and that should be something you set up front is that don't sugarcoat it tell us what the problems are yeah and fascinating really and you kind of look back at the interview that gary neville did with daniel levy and now it looks like his final words it almost like an epitaph before he'd given his own epitaph when i'm gone i'll get the credit i'm due more or less what he said yeah and so he should so he should he deserves a lot of credit.

49:33Yeah, 100%. It's a good question from East Texas. How many Solanke level flops can the club tank before their ability to spend is curtailed? So, you look back at Ndombele and LaSalle so it had a massive impact on the club. Yeah, I think we reached that. We reached the limit of spending 60, 50, 60 million on players and then not working out. I still think Solanke could come good under De Zerbi personally. I don't think that means Solanke. I defend him personally, but I get his point. Yeah. I think E-Tac has an issue with Solanke. I think that's perhaps using the endomely level. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

50:09Yeah, you can only afford so many of them. Say we did four this summer, we'd be out of room. And if none of them paid off, you're in trouble because you can't sell them for a profit. You need the value of the player to be retained or improve. Yeah, and that's the issue. You would have heard the comments, I think, from Vinay, was it, when he first came in or something like that? And he said, look, due to decisions in the past and due to missteps and poor spending, we aren't in a completely clear, you know, we can spend infinite money. We've got loads. We do have a huge bill. We owe people 300 million pounds for players we've already bought.

50:41A lot of those players haven't worked. So, you know, it does. It creates a bit of a tail and you have to sort of then spend a few years getting past that. So what we can't really afford to do this summer is use up this opportunity by buying four players that completely flop. because if we do that or six or how many we end up buying you then really struggle in the sort of four or five years after that how so how does how do free transfers work then in this respect so you sign robinson on a free transfer sanessi on a free transfer book value zero zero yeah but there'll be some sort of cost sign sign on fee which should be heavy i'd imagine yeah yeah so you have cash go out the door um i don't think signing on fees count as you know acquisition thing so i think it would be a book value of zero um okay and and then yeah you've got some cash going out the door to them you've got your wages so obviously it chips away at your percentage because your wage bill goes slightly higher but ultimately um yeah if you then sold them for 20 million it's 20 million profit straight away so sonessi has two great seasons of tottenham but it's kind of not quite there and villa by him probably villa or newcastle uh buying for 20 million that's that's 20 million million in profit so 20 to buy a player at 28 for a freeze genius business really yeah 100 and as you said that 20 million takes us back to you can buy a 50 million pound player on 150 grand a week for that because the way those are that cost is sort of spread means that that's maybe 20 million out of your current headroom um so yeah that that can actually buy you quite a lot as long as you have the cash in the bank as long as you have the cash yeah which is why selling players and future cash injection i don't know would you anticipate more cash injection from the I mean I wouldn't have sort of I wouldn't have assumed so but Gold said there is going to be more so after this yeah he said there's more to come where I think he's worth so yeah who knows so it sounds like they're in it for the long haul and ultimately it's beneficial for them as well you know we get back in the Champions League and we start doing really well and we start winning stuff value of their shares rocket so yeah I don't care if they're doing this for the love of the club or whether the reality is the same is that if they end up we're consistently in the Champions League again these are dream pie in the sky ideas but if we're consistently in the Champions League and we add for four years and you might in that if you do that you might add half a billion pounds of the value of the football club yeah that's their investment return in fact what is their investment that what their investment has been 26 million before like as you said yeah for four four three years ago four years ago yeah and back in the day I can't remember what they bought the club for was it 30 million it was something crazy wasn't it wasn't expensive um but they've invested nothing technically because they got it from their dad their shares from their dad so they're sitting on probably two two and a half billion pound asset for from that for their share um for nothing really so yeah at some point they're gonna they're gonna be all right for money indeed uh that's fantastic i mean yeah and it just it's we can only benefit from this so yeah oh yeah i don't have any issue um joe finland said he says in the united states You can avoid capital gains tax by selling assets and reinvesting it immediately into another asset you own.

53:45Is this the same in the UK with the Lewis family art sale?

53:54That's different, isn't it? Because that's Tavistock or the Lewis family. Technically, that's nothing to do with Spurs. So it doesn't benefit Spurs, that sale, unless they're doing that because they're like, well, yeah, we can chuck 200 million of that out of the club, but technically separate. yeah I don't know the capital gains thing actually if you can immediately I haven't heard of that you can immediately reinvest to avoid capital gains in the US he says yeah I haven't heard of it being a thing in the UK but it could be but yeah as you say it wouldn't impact Spurs even if they did because unless he's sort of saying them investing in shares of Tottenham would mean they don't have to pay tax but again whether they do or don't probably doesn't worry us too much yeah a question with Jose says how reliant are we on non-football activities like cup and European money Sorry, how reliant are we on non-football activities and cup and European money?

54:43Are they absolutely necessary to be able to keep up the level of spending we appear to be adopting in this transfer window? So non-football, yeah. Yeah, that's now our biggest revenue stream. We need to keep those going. So suddenly NFL dried up. We make more money from non-football than we do football. We make it. That's our biggest. Yeah, we make more from that than we do from, say, the Premier League revenue money, all that sort of stuff. And that would be. Last year's accounts. um i can't remember what the figures are no no no you don't need to give me the figures yeah it's concerts concerts f1 f1 money spent on beers and things in the stadium skywalk yeah skywalk all that sort of business yeah commercial also covers your sponsorships things like that so commercial is our biggest pillar but it covers all that stuff as well so you know you got sponsorship deals in there you know kraken all that sort of business so so yeah it all rolls up under one banner that's now our biggest revenue generator so yeah it's huge we need to keep the um stadium revenue going um europe's the next biggest one i'd say like premier league you sort of always expect to be there i know we flirted with it last season but you sort of expect that's a constant so you know that's that's a given if we go down it's a problem but you know we assume that'll stay and um and then we've got the the european yeah so europe is the thing that differentiates you like if you look at arsenal so sorry to bring them up but like they they've their revenue's flown up by something like 325 million more than it was five years ago and that's because they're in the Champions League every season.

56:04Their sponsorships have gone up. Everything's gone up. So I think they're the fastest growing revenue of any club in the Premier League. They've outstripped us. I think we might be second or third in that list over the last three to five years. And that's because they're in Europe every season in the Champions League and getting to the latter stages. If we could do that, we have the commercial weight behind us. Yeah. What we're able to spend if the cash is there, we would be one of the most powerful clubs in the country. Yeah. Man City will always, Man City generate insane amounts of money, don't they?

56:36Something like£700 million in revenue. And we would be in the 600, 650 zone almost automatically if we're in a Champions League season. So 70 % of that, what are you on? 440 odd million, something like that. So yeah, bearing in mind, we're probably at a conservative at a sort of high estimate on 375 now. It doesn't leave you with loads of room. But if you do that every year and your sponsorships go up and you get to 650, 680, suddenly you can spend you know a lot more than we're spending now your amortization bill could go up by 40 50 million a season which as we know is a spend of say 200 million pounds now so yeah it makes a huge difference got a question here from shippo is with premier league clubs typically have a financial year ending the 30th of june will we see more action the moment we move into july yeah possibly yeah so so what would be the reason there so there's obviously we're coming to the end of the PSR window.

57:29So any clubs with a PSR hole would be looking to sell now to avoid any sort of punishment. We've seen that in the past with like Forrest selling, who was it, Johnson to us? Was it Johnson? Obviously Anderson to Newcastle. Yeah, Newcastle to Anderson. So yeah, we've seen that in the past. We might see some deals coming up to the end of June. There's some rumours West Ham might be one of those clubs that need to sell before the end of June. Don't know if it's true or not. Chelsea are another one that we may potentially see trying to sell before the end of the PSR and European SCR window. So yeah, there will be a few.

58:02I think Cucurella went, didn't he? So yeah, I think we will see a few before. We might see, he's right, we might see some at the start of July get announced. So if a deal goes through 1st of July, it goes into your next year. So if you've got no PSR headaches and you're looking to make a big sale, like you're not in the forest and you're fine for PSR, you want to sell him on 1st of July because then you've got all this extra headroom for your SCR because you've made a huge profit. so so if so manchester city um they they sell anderson they buy anderson for 130 million that's 130 million cash up front of wiggle room not no not cash uh of of the the cash would depend on how much manchester city play up front but the psr sort of this scr room would be improved to the tune of 130 million if it goes ahead on the 1st of july for forest yeah yeah Whereas for City, it probably doesn't make a huge difference just because of the way they're accounts for.

58:58So if you're buying, it probably doesn't really matter to you that much, unless you're really close to PSR limits. You don't really care if you're doing it in June or July. But could that be the reason why Savio might be delayed till the 1st of July? Yeah, because City might be saying, look, if Forrest want us to put Anderson's purchase through on 1st of July to give them extra room this season, we want Savio to go through on 1st of July as well, because then that gives us some of that back. We get some profit back into ours. So yeah, they might do. They might say that gives us our biggest win.

59:29So I think it's all selling clubs who are fine for PSR probably would lean towards doing it at the start of July. So we could well see some over the next four or five days. This deal has been agreed. It goes through in three or four days time or whatever. And a final couple here. Nick Boyce says, if the club are experiencing cash flow issues while only repaying£30 million per year, How are we expected to repay the principal amounts when due while still investing sufficiently in the squad? So, yeah, so cash flow issues were a bit of everything. Mostly it was transfers. Mostly it's big spend on transfers.

1:00:05Like I said, we owe 300 million odd still on transfers. And obviously those are structured. So usually you pay a chunk up front, maybe 20%, up to 50%, something like that. And then the rest of it, particularly with Spurs, we've done a lot of it, but all clubs do it. We'll say, you know, over the next two years, three years, five years, we'll pay you this much every year. So a lot of that money last season was the fact that our wage bill had gone up. So obviously cash goes out the door to pay the players every month. And we owed a lot of money last season to clubs for players we'd already bought.

1:00:33So a lot of those payments happened to fall in that period. We don't know how many exactly because they don't specifically tell you. But yeah, they sort of give you a bit of a clue in the account. So yeah, probably 100 million, 150 million of that had to go out over the last year. That's why we ran into cash for everyone. We only had 20 million in the bank last June. So we had less coming in than had to go out the door. The interest payments went up a little bit as well. So yeah, he's right from that extent. We had some cash flow headaches. One thing is they're injecting cash when we need it. So that's a good sign.

1:01:03So whenever we need it, that should help us. The other thing I think is that we won't necessarily pay back that principle when it comes up. So there's a good chance that they're all long-term structure bonds. We don't know what the interest rates will be when we get there. But when we get there, they could just refinance it. But my guess would be if they do look to sell in the next, whatever, 10 years, the buyer would probably clear those as part of coming in and would put money aside to clear those as part of the purchase. But I think that's what they'll do. They'll just keep kicking the can down the road rather than looking to pay it all off.

1:01:36If we were to be in the Champions League every year and we were really starting to make big money and we were earning$700 million, maybe they start putting money aside to pay that down when it comes. But yeah, my guess would be they'd just kick the can down the road until someone buys the club. Yeah. And the cash flow issues probably was attended to by the upfront loan that we applied. Yeah. So the loan from the bank who are on future TV revenue would have addressed the cash flow issues. What we're seeing now isn't about cash flow issues other than needing money to buy players the upfront fee and signing on bonuses.

1:02:14Yeah. So actually this is the opposite of a cash flow issue. This is injecting cash in order to improve. Yeah. If we had to take another Macquarie loan next season, we might start to ask questions and say, why is this a regular thing? But as a one-off, it's no big deal. Loads of clubs do it. Yeah. Okay. Jake says, are we doing a lead? I hope not. No, I don't think so. I think we're all right. I think we've got such a number of news. Maybe we are doing a lead. If the players are all shit and we tank and we get relegated, yeah, then we might do a lead. Did they get double relegated? I think so, didn't they?

1:02:46They may have done. I know, I mean, I was quite young. I was probably in my mid-teens when this was happening. But he spent huge amounts of money building a really impressive lead side. But a part of that building, he spent lots of money on players that weren't as good as we all thought they were. Seth Johnson from Derby, you often used as the example where he was given a long contract on 50 grand a week at a time where that was certainly unheard of of a player of his ability. but they believed in him. And they were banking on finishing in the Champions League every season for the next 10 years because that was the trajectory they were on.

1:03:27They actually got to the semi-final. I think they got knocked out to AC Milan in the semi-final. I might be wrong. But they didn't qualify again. And then the bills started piling up. A club more likely to be doing a leads is Chelsea. Their amortisation bill is higher than ours. Their wage bill is higher than ours. Yeah, they had that season. and what was it a few years back where they spent 500 million or whatever it was on players um yeah they their revenue is lower than us you know our revenue even when we weren't in europe was 530 that they just posted record revenue of 490 like they just don't make the money we make they can't extend their stadium um without huge problems it's an expensive area committed to a lot of these players and they're going to get kicked out of europe more than likely for a season for the next next competition they qualify for because it's they're going to find it very hard to stay within in this plan that they've agreed with UEFA.

1:04:16So they're a lot more in danger of being in leads than we are. We've got that. Thankfully, Daniel Levy provided us with a very good foundation. Yeah. And I guess we've, you know, I mean, aren't SCR rules and PSR rules designed to prevent someone doing the leads? Yeah. So using Buko and doing all these loopholes, actually what they're doing is committing the club to transfer fees and wages that the club cannot afford and then passing those losses on to blue coat but if the owners suddenly get bored or walk away or lose their money that they're backing it with then that's that's when clubs get in trouble and that's why as much as people will say it was brought in to stop people climbing it wasn't it was brought in because clubs were being run into the ground routinely by owners um and the health of clubs was just i think i can't remember how many billion clubs were in debt but they were in huge huge debt when it came in there was a big survey about it and they said, look, clubs are going to go bankrupt here.

1:05:16So yeah, that's why it's here and it's supposed to stop you doing that. But when you find loopholes, you're still spending more than you can sustain. Loopholes don't always mean good. They just mean an opportunity and you don't know the sort of fallout of it. And you can't forget the fact that Chelsea,

1:05:36Abramovich just sort of, because of the position he was in, just essentially gifted the 1.6 billion debt that Chelsea owed him. He said, don't worry, you don't have to ever pay that back. Which is mad. They should have gone under years ago. From the way they operate, they should have gone under years ago. But they keep getting propped up. So we'll see. All right, Ben, you've been a legend. Thank you so much. If you enjoyed this Q &A and you want more, then say so in the comments below on Spotify. And this is going to be published on the main feed on the Fighting Cock as well. So if you're still here and you're listening on the Fighting Cock, please go and follow the lab and go and follow BenWhite86 on Twitter.

1:06:13You'll find him arguing with Villa and Newcastle fans. Yeah, most days. Cheers, Ben. Cheers, sir. This episode is brought to you by Google Health. Stop chasing someone else's definition of health. What matters is what's healthy for you. Google Health offers a new kind of coach built with Gemini for effortless tracking, sleep insights and holistic coaching tailored to you. Visit googlestore.com to learn more and start a new relationship with your health. Requires Google account, Google Health app, internet, and Google Health premium subscription. Features subject to change. Availability and results vary.

1:06:46Not intended for medical purposes. Works independently of Gemini apps. Check responses for accuracy.