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Grealish

DeanoAustin said:
Exactly. How else would we have afforded a new stadium? We aren’t paying cash down.
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Quite.

The club is leveraged to a large level of its value. There are sensible limits to which we should be leveraged and for all we know there are strict ones from our lenders over which we're not allowed to go too. In fact, it would be very surprising to have got loans of the magnitude we have without such covenants.
 
scaramanga said:
Quite.

The club is leveraged to a large level of its value. There are sensible limits to which we should be leveraged and for all we know there are strict ones from our lenders over which we're not allowed to go too. In fact, it would be very surprising to have got loans of the magnitude we have without such covenants.
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How leveraged are we?
 
Starts tonight.

Let’s watch him run the show, or will he play like the bang average championship player a few of us think he is.
 
I don't think we're especially bothered about this one. It must be a price that we are comfortable with or else he stays at Villa (or someone else stumps up £20m+). It seems like the days of signing people like Alli for under £10m are no more. Must be better value abroad.
 
SpurMeUp said:
I don't think we're especially bothered about this one. It must be a price that we are comfortable with or else he stays at Villa (or someone else stumps up £20m+). It seems like the days of signing people like Alli for under £10m are no more. Must be better value abroad.
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Yea agreed, this one has always felt like a value signing. If value is no longer there then doubt we’ll buy him. Similar to Barkley.
 
scaramanga said:
That would depend on the value of the club and the amount we've had to borrow.

I don't know either, but I know the amount we've had to borrow is in the £00Ms.
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So a quick google search says that as of 2017 (the last time we published accounts) we had drawn down 100m of a loan and had a 5 year 400m loan facility of which we wouldn’t have to repay anything until we opened the stadium. We had another 70m of loans on our balance sheet at that time and 200m in cash or cash equivalents. Our equity was about 227m so our debt to equity ratio (or leverage) was reasonably healthy at 0.7.

So even with the stadium debt, we’re not too heavily leveraged and have a lorry load of cash sitting on our balance sheet.

At that point, we’d spent over 300m on the stadium, the majority of which was financed by the club. Levy was obviously hoping we could finance most of the rest of it because the 400m was just a facility payable over several years rather than an actual loan.

Looking at Man U for example (I couldn’t find Liverpool’s published accounts), they had around 500m in borrowings against equity of 414m meaning they are far more leveraged than us (ratio is 1.2 compared to our 0.7).

The short version is, I’m sure the banks would loan us money, we’re in a healthy position. Levy runs a fantastic but cautious business.

However, that is from a quick internet search via phone from someone who isn’t a financial expert. So if anyone has numbers that supersede that or my interpretation is wrong, I’ll happily stand corrected.
 
Gazza Dazzla said:
Yea agreed, this one has always felt like a value signing. If value is no longer there then doubt we’ll buy him. Similar to Barkley.
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Not going to pay over the odds for squad players with potential. They are not going straight into the first team. And we have Winks, Skipp etc. No one's stumped up for Dembele so far. So we won't be knocking their door down.
 
SpurMeUp said:
Not going to pay over the odds for squad players with potential. They are not going straight into the first team. And we have Winks, Skipp etc. No one's stumped up for Dembele so far. So we won't be knocking their door down.
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Well on the face of it Dier and Dele when purchased were nothing more than squad players with potential yet they were thrust straight into the first team, you have no idea what Pochs plans are for him. As for Skipp don’t make me laugh, you’ve seen him in a couple of pre season games at most and already comparing him to the guy who created the most chances from open play in the Championship last season? Ok then....
 
harr1984 said:
Well on the face of it Dier and Dele when purchased were nothing more than squad players with potential yet they were thrust straight into the first team, you have no idea what Pochs plans are for him. As for Skipp don’t make me laugh, you’ve seen him in a couple of pre season games at most and already comparing him to the guy who created the most chances from open play in the Championship last season? Ok then....
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You've put your finger on something - we are a lot better now. To get into the side is that much harder than it was. Dier and Alli joining now, wouldn't have a striaght run in the side...becuase they'd have to get past Dier and Alli! Makes perfect sense! :)

Skipp isn't going to be a starter, but if you sign Grelish, it means Onomoha or whoever from the youth ranks will face another player to get past.

That's why this window is so challanging. We only really want to sign one or two elite level players. But they are the hardest to get. Grelish would be awesome for sub £20m. How did he do tonight? How does he compare to what we have already?
 
SpurMeUp said:
You've put your finger on something - we are a lot better now. To get into the side is that much harder than it was. Dier and Alli joining now, wouldn't have a striaght run in the side...becuase they'd have to get past Dier and Alli! Makes perfect sense! :)

Skipp isn't going to be a starter, but if you sign Grelish, it means Onomoha or whoever from the youth ranks will face another player to get past.

That's why this window is so challanging. We only really want to sign one or two elite level players. But they are the hardest to get. Grelish would be awesome for sub £20m. How did he do tonight? How does he compare to what we have already?
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Of course we are better now, but the point is we had established players when Dele came and no one was expecting him to go straight into first team but he did. Not saying Grealish will but all this labelling of squad player etc - even if they are they’d still get a shedload of games and if the quality of our backups were better than currently are they’d get even more games because our first XI really need more rest than they currently get.

People keep banging on about Onomah, Grealish was the much better player of the two at Villa last season. We quite clearly aren’t going to get elite level signings so we have to improve our squad quality so Poch can more confidently rest our stars. It’s half time, he’s got an assist by taking a corner and he’s been fouled GHod knows how many times. He’s playing well enough, but being first game of season he’s not going to be firing on all cylinders.....
 
harr1984 said:
Of course we are better now, but the point is we had established players when Dele came and no one was expecting him to go straight into first team but he did. Not saying Grealish will but all this labelling of squad player etc - even if they are they’d still get a shedload of games and if the quality of our backups were better than currently are they’d get even more games because our first XI really need more rest than they currently get.

People keep banging on about Onomah, Grealish was the much better player of the two at Villa last season. We quite clearly aren’t going to get elite level signings so we have to improve our squad quality so Poch can more confidently rest our stars. It’s half time, he’s got an assist by taking a corner and he’s been fouled GHod knows how many times. He’s playing well enough, but being first game of season he’s not going to be firing on all cylinders.....
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Her does sound like a good player. He draws fouls like no one I've seen. There is something there for sure. But imagine one thing: if you took the £30m odd to sign Grealish and the £30m spent on Sissoko, could you put it to better use?
 
SpurMeUp said:
Her does sound like a good player. He draws fouls like no one I've seen. There is something there for sure. But imagine one thing: if you took the £30m odd to sign Grealish and the £30m spent on Sissoko, could you put it to better use?
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On one player? You’d be bumping into a wages issue I imagine.
 
Benny_Lad said:
On one player? You’d be bumping into a wages issue I imagine.
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If you have two players paid £50k pw off your books, its not such an issue presumably.

In short, where we are now, we have to avoid another Sissoko type signing, we don't need sqaud fillers (not saying Grealish would be, he looks to have more potential), we need players who will be starters or at least challange for a starting place. And it's better not to spend at all, than get another player who does what the existing ones do. That just weakens us in future windows.
 
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