Summer transfer thread 2022

Ajax have announced the fee as €57.37m, potentially rising to €63.37m.

Your exchange rate is high...

Fitz quoted:

€57.37m plus €6m in add ons which is

£48.2m plus £5m in add ons.

So it's £48.2m. Not £60.

But overall a decent outlay on the defence. Gotta hope its better this season.

It's €10m in add on's not €6m so your wrong on that.

As Agent Coulsen has worked out above the max payable at today's exchange rate is £57m so I was quite a bit closer to the correct figure with £60m than you are with £48.2m.

Edit: it'll be interesting to see does ETH use Varane, Maguire and Martinez in a back three in big games?

Go back and read the post... The figures were from Fitz, not mine. I just done the correct exchange rate for you.

Your exchange was way off on the figures quoted, simple as.

The fee paid you now refer to from Coulson is €57.37m which at todays rate is £48.2m. That's the fee paid for the player.

But its also good to see we are back to inc add ons when talking about man utd transfer fees paid but with other, I. E. Nunez its less add ons... How unusual.

Still, shouldn't expect anything else, should we.

I'm sorry now Dave but I originally posted the tweet from Romano above with the full details. I clearly state the max could be £60m (which I admit was slightly to high by £3m).

Fitz posted the incorrect details and Coulsen corrected him with figures that were in line with my link as released by Ajax.

No-one has said the fee is the full amount but rather could rise to that. What seems to be your issue here? That people are saying the max fee may be up to a certain amount?

That gets edited for every new expensive signing. The original quote is about Fred. 😁

de Ligt to Munich done.

Another great threas from Swiss Ramble.

Barca again just kicking the can down the road.

The final part of thre thread

Okay, so as I had some time in work I figure I’ll get this out of the way now! With more time I would have streamlined this but here we go.

So, in 2020 they had a loss of 133m & a worse one of 555m in 2021 accounts. Their total debt has tripled in 5 years to 1.2bn. Their interest payments had gone up massively between 2018 and 2021, 1m to 41m. Most of the debt was used on player transfers over the past 5 years due to the structured nature of most transfers, transfer debt was down to 230m in 2021. Things could not have been more bleak looking in 2021, but they have improved since then.

They restructured their debt with a new 10 year loan at a decent rate which covered the massive 596m short term debt. This was the biggest threat to their survival as a club imo and has been successfully dodged. They have sold a portion of tv rights also which generated much needed Revenu almost as an equity method of injection presumably to attempt to balance their gearing. They were in such a terrible place in 2021 due to some pretty huge one off costs – 271m of the 555m. The write down they took on the player values gives them the advantage of player sales generating higher book profits which helps improve their net revenue, it also reduced the player amortisation costs which reduces the squad cost for their La Liga salary cap. I’m not sure of their workings for the Covid impact, but I know they included a net loss of 92m due to Covid so in normal circumstances their 2021 loss was ‘only’ 193m instead of the headline 555m and this is significant. As you can see in the thread their issue with La Liga is the salary cap imposed. La Liga calculate it by doing the revenue less non-sporting expenses & debt payments – this is the key element as Barca will be forecasting much higher revenue and much lower debt repayment.

The problem for Barcelona is that they are done in advance unlike FFP rules. Obviously given the revenue drop and massive interest payments etc in the 2021 it puts them under pressure for 2022. The wording is very important around the accumulated equity section re signings. Signings that exceed the limit can be agreed using part of the clubs equity, provided the equity doesn’t fall below the clubs acceptable ratio threshold – what is their acceptable ratio threshold? The club can also seemingly cushion the effect of losses caused by Covid by only having to include a smaller percentage of the losses in its salary cap calculation – 15% for the coming season. Their negative salary cap issue in January was driven by that huge reported loss but if Barcelona revenues go back to pre pandemic levels, and higher you’d imagine which they will the salary cap will also increase. They had the highest salary cap in Spain a couple of years ago and though it is a ridiculous balancing act and they have taken steps to reduce the wage bill from the last reported figure from FY20/21 of 432m. Messi has gone since then, along with Coutinho and a big earner like Aguero is off the books & you’d imagine they are getting some relief on the wages of Griezmann who was on massive wages, Pjanic and Lenglet to name the ones in the thread.

They also have the players who have restructured like Dembele signing on a lower terms contract and Sergi Roberto, following Pique Busquest and Alba in the previous 12 months. They have also restructured some player contracts to lower salaries in year 1 and/or 2 and increasing over the life of the contract, this allowed them to sign Ferran Torres (and register him). They posted **** all from player sales in FY20/21 and per the thread they will look to address this since the activity of selling gives them a double whammy in terms of meeting the salary cap, the gain from the sale & the savings from the wage bill.

They can sell off the likes of Umtiti, Neto, Memphis and others (including potentially De Jong of course) to avail of this “double whammy”

It is a balancing act as I have said and one they seem intent on playing, they are not signing these players with no plan of how to register them and they can’t be millions of miles away either or more departures would have occurred as you would need guarantees of players out of the door for one thing.

It is definitely not clear cut in my eyes that they are desperately in need of huge money in from player sales (any one player at least) and that they still have wiggle room given the huge reduction in debt payments they will have along with player salaries already shifted from the wage bill and the presumably very large increase in Revenue year on year.

They are also looking to sell more tv rights, they are considering selling a % in BLM to raise revenue which will help them meet their transfer requirements, they are talking about activating economic levers but what they are talking about is just selling off future earnings and mortgaging the club for short term benefit.

Are they in a good position financially? **** no, but they don’t care. And in fairness it isn’t like they are in danger of going out of business now their short-term cash flow has been sorted. They generate massive amounts of revenue.

To be clear, I expect the likes of Memphis to go, I expect the likes of Braithwaite to be shipped out one way or another and surely some others but things are looking a lot better for Barcelona than they were 12 or even 6 months ago.

TL;Dr I got the idea things aren’t as bad as was made out (ie apocalyptic and won’t be able to register players) from the thread due to the conclusion of the author pretty much stating just that really even if you don’t wanna dig in through it yourself. They have options, which they will use I have no idea.

"While these machinations mean #FCBarcelona can probably meet La Liga’s salary cap and therefore sign the likes of

Rapinha and Lewandowski, this strategy is clearly a gamble, essentially hoping

that it will drive success on the pitch and generate more money in the future."