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As the latest Deloitte’s football rich list shows Newcastle as the 14th richest club in Europe and the 6th richest in the premier league, just where has this money gone ?
Discuss on our fans forum.
With Newcastle generating an annual income of £87 million it would be interesting to know what has happened to all this income Newcastle have generated over the last few years.
On the Board we had our well-known Chairman and Chief Executive Freddie Shepherd. Alongside him on the Board was his brother Bruce. Then there was Freddie’s (once) best mate Douglas Hall and yes alongside Douglas was his sister Alison. Making up the gang of 5 we had Timothy Revill who no one has ever heard of but apparently operates out of Gibraltar.
Disappointingly, the club accounts show that this small group of 5 had actually taken around £23.6 million of money out of the club for themselves over the last 9 years.
When Mike Ashley bought the club for £134 million he gave £55 million to John and Douglas Hall for their 41.6% share of the club. He also paid £37 million to Freddie and his brother Bruce for their 28% stake.
After the Financial review led by Chris Mort, Mike Ashley decided to make refinancing the club's £80 million of debts a priority. "The debt's too high and it's something we'll look to address quickly," Mort said.
Newcastle took out a 15-year, £55 million bond in 2001, securitised against ticket sales, which incurs a 7.43 per cent annual interest charge. On top of that, there is another £25 million of short-term debt, the majority of which was player related.
But Ashley should not have been surprised by the level of debt at Newcastle as a cursory glance at the most recent set of accounts, for the six months to the end of December 2006, would have showed him that Newcastle had net debts of £77 million.
So it is no wonder Ashley is not yet stumping up cash for players as he has now paid of all debts Newcastle had.
But what of Freddie’s inheritance, he’s left the club saddled with debt and saddled with an inferior playing squad despite squandering millions on players.
Hopefully the fact that Newcastle can generate £87 million in revenue in a bad year will hopefully encourage Mike Ashley to invest and achieve Champions League status where the big money is there to be had.
Anyway here is the Deloitte’s table top 20:
1 (1) Real Madrid £236.2m
2 (4) Manchester United £212.1m
3 (2) Barcelona £195.3m
4 (6) Chelsea £190.5m
5 (9) Arsenal £177.6m
6 (5) Milan £153.0m
7 (8) Bayern Munich £150.3m
8 (10) Liverpool £133.9m
9 (7) Internazionale £131.3m
10 (12) Roma £106.1m
11 (15) Tottenham Hotspur £103.1m
12 (3) Juventus £97.7m
13 (11) Lyon £94.6m
14 (13) Newcastle United £87.1m
15 (16) Hamburg £81.0m
16 (14) Schalke 04 £76.9m
17 (-) Celtic £75.2m
18 (-) Valencia £72.4m
19 (-) Marseille £66.6m
20 (-) Werder Bremen £65.5m
Discuss on our fans forum.