Thus far, I’ve written only about
Fulham and Chelsea. Time now to extend
that to west London’s third Premier League club, Queen’s Park Rangers. Here are eight observations that sum up their
financial position.
1.
This is a club that had a near-death experience in 2007.
Cash was heading out of the door faster than then-owner Gianni Paladini
could put it in, and administration loomed.
Enter the holy trinity of Flavio Briatore, Bernie Ecclestone and the
Mittal family. They funded a cash
shortfall of some £10m that season. And after that…
2.
…their initial focus wasn’t so much the playing
squad as the stadium. £5m was spent in
those first two years on sprucing up Loftus Road, including its corporate boxes
– an important moneyspinner these days.
That was paid for mainly by new sponsorship
deals – out went Le Coq Sportif and Car Giant, and in came Lotto and Gulf
Air. Even so, the new owners still had
to put in £20m that second season to keep the show on the road. No wonder Paladini wanted out. Still…
3.
…the cash drain eased the following season,
2009-10, falling to less than £15m. In
part, that was down to canny transfer market dealings, which brought in net
proceeds of nearly £3m – probably due mostly to the sale of Routledge to
Newcastle United. But the club’s revenue remained dismally low at less
than £15m – not even enough to cover the wage bill, and less than a fifth of
what Fulham brought in that season. It
was time to get out of the Championship.
And so…
4.
…Neil Warnock
was given money to spend. Nothing
excessive, mind you, but for about £6m he was able to bring in the likes of
Kenny, Mackie and Taarabt. They
delivered promotion. Which meant that…
5.
…revenue would have soared in 2012. We don’t have the accounts yet, but I’d
estimate that revenue for the season came close to £50m – at least triple the
previous, promotion-winning season. But
the cash drain would have continued,
with a series of expensive player acquisitions to keep the team up: Ferdinand,
Wright-Phillips, Cisse, Zamora among them.
But by then…
6.
…it was Tony Fernandes’s job to provide the funding, the Asian airline tycoon
having bought the club just as the season commenced. So just how rich is he? Well, ‘Forbes’ puts his net worth at about
£300m. Pretty darn rich – but not as
rich as Fulham’s Al-Fayed (£800m) or Chelsea’s Abramovich (£8,000m). Thus he probably can’t show quite the level
of largesse towards his team as they have done.
Remember, MAF has put a cool £200m into Fulham down the years. It’s unlikely that Fernandes could manage
that – although of course he’s starting with a Premier League club, whereas
Fulham were in League Two when Al-Fayed arrived.
7.
This season, QPR’s revenue is unlikely to be
much different to last season – and neither is the cash requirement, with
another string of player acquisitions over the summer. My forecast is for an overall cash outflow in the region of £20-25m, again. But…
8.
…that it’ll be less if there are player sales in
the January window. And that looks like
a good bet, because the squad is now on
the large side: 29 players, versus 24 at Fulham and 23 at Chelsea. None of the players with contracts expiring
next summer are young enough to be all that saleable, so that leaves the
young-ish summer 2014 expiries as candidates for sale: viz. Traore, Ferdinand
and – above all – Faurlin. Don’t be
surprised to see QPR cash in on him come the New Year.
