I was going to lead onto what the current year looks like, as we're three quarters of the way through it and then (with an approximate debt figure available) ask what the situation was regarding turning this debt into equity. It's OK saying that the owners are covering the debt and not charging interest, that's fine until it's not fine. Debt is debt, whether it's "soft debt" or not and we as a club are vulnerable while we have it sitting as debt. The pool of people able to buy a club with £40m of debt is far smaller than the pool of people able to buy a club with negligible debt and football is full of clubs who thought they were OK until their owners ran out of cash, or lost interest, or became unable to get cash out of their respective countries.
Colin, am I not right in saying that the previous year, they converted about £2m of debt into equity? Someone on here posted the transaction from Companies House recently.
I presume they did that because it's the only way to run a playing budget as high as we are doing and still scrape under the Salary Cost Management Protocol cap (they certainly won't have done it because they want to, as it's clearly in the club's and not the owners' favor for them to do this).....and if that's right, they will be similarly obliged to do the same (or possibly even more) this year as well, as our playing budget has only gone up and we've not made any money from player sales?
Which still doesn't put us in a good situation - because the debt is still rising - but thankfully not at the £5m a year it might be if SCMP didn't exist......
Which again brings me back to the point that I can't work out, which is why on Earth are our owners plowing so much of their own money into the club, and planning on presumably at least part-financing a £150m stadium.........I still can't come up with an answer that makes any sense other than that they view the club (and future stadium) as a shiny toy that they want to show off to their billionaire mates.