Why Micah is likely to leaveUpdated: December 20th, 2006
I was chatting to an accountant the other day about City’s recent financial results. The guy is a City fan and a chartered accountant who has worked in a variety of senior financial roles over the past 20 years. Due to strict rules about what accountants are allowed to say publicly he doesn’t want to be named, but he posts on the MEN message boards as OB1.
And what he told me was pretty alarming.
According to the annual accounts, City would have made a loss of £11m last year had they not sold SWP. Not only has the club had a sizeable gap between its income and expenditure in the last few years (shored up by loans from Wardle and Makin which now stand at £22m), but we’re looking at a similar shortfall this year.
This is how OB1 describes the situation:
With deferred income (season tickets) down by £5.1m and a continuing decline in attendances, the gap is not about to close so without more borrowing, which the club can’t afford, or new equity investment, the spectre of selling one or more of the best young players looms very large.
The whole thing does have the making of a nasty vicious cycle if something is not done about it quickly. I believe the club can trade profitably but it needs to fill the ground regularly, finish in the top third of the league consistently, sell the naming rights to the ground and get a decent shirt sponsor, amongst other things.
If that’s not bad enough, you have to wonder what effect the acclaim Richards received after his England debut has had on the player.
I was looking at what England’s other defenders earn. See if you can spot the odd one out in the line-up from the Holland game:
Cole (£90,000 a week), Ferdinand (£100,000), Terry (£130,000), Richards (£15,000).
And Richards is probably earning a lot less than that. Although the MEN reported that Micah’s four-year contract was worth £15,000 a week, the Daily Telegraph claims he earns just under £10,000 a week.
So how long will it be before Richards goes for a drink with his new England team-mates and one of them says: “You’re earning how much?”
Aside from the temptation of challenging for a title or Champions League trophy, what player is going to turn down the chance of a ninefold increase in his wages? Even if City revised his contract, the current wage ceiling of £30,000 a week (including bonuses) means we can never come close to matching rival offers.
Unless that foreign billionaire investor materialises soon, the chances of Micah being here next season are looking very slim indeed.
~ If Micah does leave, I wonder if that will make City’s Jim Cassell the most profitable academy boss in British football?
Cassell’s academy has now produced players worth well over £40m - SWP went for £24m, Richards’ value has now soared above £10m and Barton was valued in the summer at £6m.
Formerly Oldham’s chief scout, Cassell was brought to City in 1997 by Joe Royle and immediately set about re-organising the youth set-up.
His first coup was picking up a 16-year-old Shaun Wright Phillips, who had been released by Forest, and he is responsible for signing Richards from Oldham’s youth academy aged 14.
A profile of Cassell from the MEN, written in 2004, can be found here.
Now this is worth seeing again
The Mancityfans talkboard have found a video of Vassell’s acrobatics from Saturday, which can be viewed at YouTube here.