Whitey Grandad

'A tiny bit if investment'? We'd need a lot more than that for Champions League.

Well spotted. Why is it that others can't see this?

Footballers don't think, they're not qualified enough. Their agents, on the other hand, are in it for everything they can get.

Yes indeed. It all depends on the replacements. One of the (few) advantages of getting old is the acquired patience.

It's not really a clearance sale though because the only ones going are being sold at stupid silly prices.

No problems! Believe me, if you make a profit you'll pay tax on it and if you don't then you can't take a dividend. If you could save tax by investing your profits in new acquisitions at the end if the tax year then every company would be doing it by buying up a load of stock one day and selling it back again the next.

This is the important issue. The payment structures are complicated in a unique way, such that they lead to staged payments, player loans, loan fees, payments through 'image rights' companies to offset Income Tax and NI contributions much of which is still under discussion with HMRC.

That's clearly not true. Those that wanted to go an have massively increased their pay have been sold at what everybody must agree are ludicrously lucrative values. If it was ALL that we could then lots of others would have gone for relatively little.

Thank goodness there are some of us left. Why look for someone to blame? There's nothing that anyone should be blamed for.

11pm BST 1st September (that's BullShïtTime)

Well put. Most other clubs beneath us must be very jealous.

Give it a chance, for Gawd's sake. Come back in 3 or 4 weeks and then you can start worrying, if you still want to.

Not so. If the book value of the assets at the end of the year is higher than the beginning then that counts as a profit. Either way, the talk of somebody taking large sums out of the club ignores the mechanism for doing so. If it's repayment of directors loans then that can be done even if the business is operating at a loss but a large amount if debt was converted into equity and dividends on shares can only be paid out of profits, and that will be after tax in those profits.

That's a ridiculous conclusion. How can you come to a judgment based on a couple of weeks of dealings when the fellow's been here a few years? Wait and see before you get the razors out.

There are all sorts if tax and accounting reasons behind these deals. Sell him at a notional loss and we can offset it against profit on others. Spread the payments over several seasons and you can reduce your tax liabilities, that sort if thing.

Not really, what did I say? Upper end if the lower half of the table? It all depends on who we get in.

You need a new fag packet with accounting like that. Take off all the debts hanging over from previous years and corporation tax on any profits, if there are any, and there's not a lot left for future investments, maybe £50m is about right and that gets us another team probably better than we had last year.

Please read that Times article and keep a sense of proportion. We are only part way through the process of reconstruction and any sensible person would at least wait until the new team is in place before coming to any conclusions. Talk of massive profits at this stage is very naive.

I'll wait until it's all done and dusted.

That's easy for you to say. By the way, do they charge per letter if you have a players name put on the back of your shirt?

Plus Premier League guaranteed income one way or another, even if it's parachute payments.

The assets were clearly undervalued and we don't know what type of debt this is. Next year's figures will be interesting.

That'll change.

Yes, exactly. So how much profit have we/will we have made on Lambert, Lallana, Shaw and Lovren and possibly Chambers? I would be pretty certain that their book asset value is nothing like the amount we are supposed to be getting for them. Lovren for example, signed for £8.5m for 4 years so written down to £6.375 after one year and sold for a reported £20m at a profit of £13.625. Of course the profit/loss on trading players has to be included in the total company figures but the extra money that we receive from selling players for more than their book value is not all going to be available for replacements.

They might want to join because they can see all the great deals that our other players are getting after just one season in the Premiership. They can see what's happening and think 'I'll have some if that'.