Daniel Levy - Chairman

[Hootnow]

Sounds like a similar story to my employer. I'm only (very) part-time these days due to having work elsewhere, but I work closely with the MD. Her workload, and the associated pressure has gone through the roof over the past few weeks. Dealing with the combination of staff absences and an increase to our core workload, responding to a threatened closure of our premises, all sorts of additional industry-specific pressures stemming from the circumstances, and trying to steer the company through this crisis and protect everyone's jobs.

I certainly won't be suggesting she consider working for free at this time.

Has anyone suggested this?

 

[DubaiSpur]

I certainly don't make promises to employees about subjects like redundancy unless I can guarantee it. You can't treat people's livelihoods like that.

When making redundancies in the past I've been asked by key staff if their jobs were safe and, as much as I wanted to reassure them, the best I could do is tell them they'd be last out of the door with the directors if it came to it.

People make life choices based on guarantees from employers, often costly ones. You can't make those promises whilst any events are out of your control.

Fair enough, but you're missing the point somewhat.

The Coates family and bet365 have guaranteed that Stoke City will pay all of Stoke City's employees in full for five months. They know that Stoke's revenue streams are non-existent, they have made the calculation about costs and cash reserves on hand (including the cash reserve of the Coates family), and have confirmed that there is enough money to pay their staff for five months, particularly because they prioritized paying their staff in full over other costs.

Thus, they can make that guarantee, and have made it, based on a reasonable assumption that takes into account all reasonably foreseeable possibilities. They can't account for a nuclear weapon detonating in Stoke-on-Trent, or other things. They are 99% sure that, for five months, they can cover this expense, because they have prioritized covering it.

A guarantee in these circumstances is reasonable, and, as you no doubt know, businesses cannot operate if they're seized up calculating minute possibilities and refusing to provide legal or personal guarantees until they address them. It's just unreasonable.

 

[DubaiSpur]

I don’t think their model is the same as ours, they are another foreign owned vehicle of reputation washing at best, at worst being set up for an asset strip.

Sigh. So, not even Arsenal, a similarly self-sustainable club similarly weighed down by their similarly-sized stadium, similarly situated a few miles from us, with a roughly similar squad profile and similarly absentee tax-exile wastes of space for owners..not even they are suitable for comparison in terms of doing the simplest, most elementarily moral thing, namely paying their ordinary staff?

Carry on.

 

[Grays_1890]

Fair enough, but you're missing the point somewhat.

The Coates family and bet365 have guaranteed that Stoke City will pay all of Stoke City's employees in full for five months. They know that Stoke's revenue streams are non-existent, they have made the calculation about costs and cash reserves on hand (including the cash reserve of the Coates family), and have confirmed that there is enough money to pay their staff for five months, particularly because they prioritized paying their staff in full over other costs.

Thus, they can make that guarantee, and have made it, based on a reasonable assumption that takes into account all reasonably foreseeable possibilities. They can't account for a nuclear weapon detonating in Stoke-on-Trent, or other things. They are 99% sure that, for five months, they can cover this expense, because they have prioritized covering it.

A guarantee in these circumstances is reasonable, and, as you no doubt know, businesses cannot operate if they're seized up calculating minute possibilities and refusing to provide legal or personal guarantees until they address them. It's just unreasonable.

Out staff wages are covered by the Governments furlough scheme, large portion are match day staff who will earn far less than the £2500 limit so for me this is a non issue.

you make it sound like we are doing something illegal

 

[Grays_1890]

Sigh. So, not even Arsenal, a similarly self-sustainable club similarly weighed down by their similarly-sized stadium, similarly situated a few miles from us, with a roughly similar squad profile and similarly absentee tax-exile wastes of space for owners..not even they are suitable for comparison in terms of doing the simplest, most elementarily moral thing, namely paying their ordinary staff?

Carry on.

Minus huge stadium debt

Huge miss there on your part

 

[scaramanga]

Fair enough, but you're missing the point somewhat.

The Coates family and bet365 have guaranteed that Stoke City will pay all of Stoke City's employees in full for five months. They know that Stoke's revenue streams are non-existent, they have made the calculation about costs and cash reserves on hand (including the cash reserve of the Coates family), and have confirmed that there is enough money to pay their staff for five months, particularly because they prioritized paying their staff in full over other costs.

Thus, they can make that guarantee, and have made it, based on a reasonable assumption that takes into account all reasonably foreseeable possibilities. They can't account for a nuclear weapon detonating in Stoke-on-Trent, or other things. They are 99% sure that, for five months, they can cover this expense, because they have prioritized covering it.

A guarantee in these circumstances is reasonable, and, as you no doubt know, businesses cannot operate if they're seized up calculating minute possibilities and refusing to provide legal or personal guarantees until they address them. It's just unreasonable.

If they have actual, liquid, cash of their own they can put in then they might be able to guarantee it. I'd be surprised if anyone with that kind of money is just sitting on cash though - that's not how the rich stay rich.

 

[DubaiSpur]

who cares about the PR

Football is morally bankrupt we are part of that.

If you want to live in a fantasy land where it isn’t you have the choice to Jack it in.

We should care about the PR.

I get that football is morally bankrupt -GHod knows, I don't think Levy will do the right thing out of simple human decency or social responsibility.

But the club is getting some atrocious PR out of this, which will stick around for a while because of the adversarial nature of sports in general, and football in particular. People remember this stuff.

Avoiding bad PR is every company's obsession - and we are sleepwalking into a PR blow of our own making.

 

[Baleforce]

Sigh. So, not even Arsenal, a similarly self-sustainable club similarly weighed down by their similarly-sized stadium, similarly situated a few miles from us, with a roughly similar squad profile and similarly absentee tax-exile wastes of space for owners..not even they are suitable for comparison in terms of doing the simplest, most elementarily moral thing, namely paying their ordinary staff?

Carry on.

A couple of years of financial prudence doesn’t mask how they got to that situation, it’s not that long ago they were handing out 350k a week contracts financed by oligarchs, if they are sitting on a pile of cash and have wealthy benefactors standing by waiting to inject more then thats not the model we are on imo.

We don’t have that, we have a pile of debt secured against future earnings which have now disappeared.

 

[Grays_1890]

We should care about the PR.

I get that football is morally bankrupt -GHod knows, I don't think Levy will do the right thing out of simple human decency or social responsibility.

But the club is getting some atrocious PR out of this, which will stick around for a while because of the adversarial nature of sports in general, and football in particular. People remember this stuff.

Avoiding bad PR is every company's obsession - and we are sleepwalking into a PR blow of our own making.

Bad PR from people that hate us already and gives them more reason to hate us. I doubt Levy cares

 

[Grays_1890]

A couple of years of financial prudence doesn’t mask how they got to that situation, it’s not that long ago they were handing out 350k a week contracts financed by oligarchs, if they are sitting on a pile of cash and have wealthy benefactors standing by waiting to inject more then thats not the model we are on imo.

We don’t have that, we have a pile of debt secured against future earnings which have now disappeared.

loss of income when mapped out is huge and explains better why we have done this.

Levy said we don’t know when this will end so we plan now.

It is the right and sensible thing to do.

 

[Glenda's Legs]

Out staff wages are covered by the Governments furlough scheme, large portion are match day staff who will earn far less than the £2500 limit so for me this is a non issue.

you make it sound like we are doing something illegal

Only 80% of the wages. Anyone on less than the £2500 upper limit will still only be getting 80% of their usual salary.

 

[Baleforce]

We should care about the PR.

I get that football is morally bankrupt -GHod knows, I don't think Levy will do the right thing out of simple human decency or social responsibility.

But the club is getting some atrocious PR out of this, which will stick around for a while because of the adversarial nature of sports in general, and football in particular. People remember this stuff.

Avoiding bad PR is every company's obsession - and we are sleepwalking into a PR blow of our own making.

Everyone hates us already, remember when Leicester won the title, they’d spent far more than us on transfers over the previous few seasons, had openly racists scum in the team like Vardy, yet finishing above us to win the title was some kind of fairy tale.

 

[DubaiSpur]

If they have actual, liquid, cash of their own they can put in then they might be able to guarantee it. I'd be surprised if anyone with that kind of money is just sitting on cash though - that's not how the rich stay rich.

Fine, it requires liquid cash - fair enough. But that's a far cry from your initial assertion that it was inconceivable and unheard of, is all I'm saying. As we're seeing, there are plenty of examples of clubs and businesses making guarantees to pay their staff these days.

 

[scaramanga]

Fine, it requires liquid cash - fair enough. But that's a far cry from your initial assertion that it was inconceivable and unheard of, is all I'm saying. As we're seeing, there are plenty of examples of clubs and businesses making guarantees to pay their staff these days.

It's not inconceivable that they can pay it at all. It's just a dangerous and (IMO) hugely unfair promise to make when they don't know what might stop that.

 

[DubaiSpur]

Everyone hates us already, remember when Leicester won the title, they’d spent far more than us on transfers over the previous few seasons, had openly racists scum in the team like Vardy, yet finishing above us to win the title was some kind of fairy tale.

Leicester were absolute bastards, no argument there. But that doesn't mean everyone hated us - they just drank the Koolaid about Leicester's fairytale story.

Did everyone want us to fail? Yes. But again, that's because we were trying to spoil their weird fairytale ending.

Bad PR from people that hate us already and gives them more reason to hate us. I doubt Levy cares

He should, because it's the sort of thing his precious sponsorships could suffer from. Especially since he's seeking a big one for the stadium.

 

[Glenda's Legs]

One thing that was in the statement from the Trust and that hasn't been mentioned is that the club are topping up salaries (to 80%) for furloughed staff who would normally earn more than £2500 per month. The logic being that everyone will earn 80% of their current salary, whether furloughed or not.
So one can argue about the other 20% but the club have taken a parity approach from top to bottom in terms of the wage cut %.

 

[Grays_1890]

Only 80% of the wages. Anyone on less than the £2500 upper limit will still only be getting 80% of their usual salary.

yeh and I imagine outgoings are down 20%, mins are nearly 50% down by lack of travel and outgoings

 

[Grays_1890]

Leicester were absolute bastards, no argument there. But that doesn't mean everyone hated us - they just drank the Koolaid about Leicester's fairytale story.

Did everyone want us to fail? Yes. But again, that's because we were trying to spoil their weird fairytale ending.



He should, because it's the sort of thing his precious sponsorships could suffer from. Especially since he's seeking a big one for the stadium.

Sponsors look at viewing figures and coverage not that the club decided to Furlough its staff.

The PR isn’t as bad as you make it either, barely mentioned on mainstream news and hasn’t made a front page.

it’s big news in football and Spurs but don’t overplay what level of PR this raises globally, it hasn’t

 

[Grays_1890]

Fine, it requires liquid cash - fair enough. But that's a far cry from your initial assertion that it was inconceivable and unheard of, is all I'm saying. As we're seeing, there are plenty of examples of clubs and businesses making guarantees to pay their staff these days.

He has a great point though and this goes for 6 months and they reneg which is still possible so let’s see

 

[Bedfordspurs]

Other than being upset and worried over their loss of wages, employees are annoyed there was no consultation process and that, so far, Tottenham staff are seemingly being treated differently to employees at other clubs.
Tottenham employees who have not been furloughed fear their workload will increase because of around half of the 550 staff being furloughed and that they will now be asked to do more while being paid less.
One source told Telegraph Sport: “People are angry and upset. Many are worried about their mortgages and other bills. Other clubs have furloughed staff, but at least they have agreed to top up their wages.
“We are still yet to hear whether or not the players and the manager will take wage cuts, and there has been no indication people will ever get the money back if the season can resume.
“This has left a bad feeling that will linger with a lot of people for a long time after the coronavirus has hopefully passed.”

We're doing plenty, mate. None of it good when compared to our peers.

That’s the same quotes from the same papers that said we had furloughed the whole staff
All it takes is one unhappy person for that quote to be valid as you can see...
Bad news sells