Club Accounts

Some of this doesn't read well in the sense that the accounts are less than transparent in some areas. Unlike most other clubs in League 1, City still hide behind a veil of secrecy (which they are entitled to do under company law) but does nothing to create an atmosphere of openness and transparency with its fans. It looks as though they are wanting to hide things. It's about time that the EFL took control of this and to improve governance in the game, require all clubs to publish full accounts.

When I see basic mistakes as the club saying it has no employees in either 2018 or 2017, it raises alarm bells for me and undermines my confidence in the rest. I am surprised that the accounts were signed off with such a glaring error. Similarly, there is no reference to Rahic having been a director of the company for the entirety of the season nor Mason having stood down as a director during the year.. Again it undermines confidence when even relatively minor things go unnoticed.

Going back to Rahic's infamous "£700k deficit", the accounts are showing the true position as a loss of £290k. Not great but better than what had been expected. The message for all is to be careful of words being expressed at the time without any context or corroboration which later are shown to have had no basis in fact.

Kieran Maguire makes a comment that the club has creditors of <1 year, ie money it owes to others, of around £3million. He doesn't comment that it was at a slightly lower figure for the previous year. Before people get too excited, there is a simple explanation. Most of it is what the club received as ST income from the likes of us which of course is paid in advance and of course happens every year! The club has always described these payments in advance as creditors. It is confusing when they do this.

Sometimes, it's interesting to note what hasn't been included in the accounts. The most significant is that there is no reference to what are known as 'post balance sheet events'. If Rupp, say, had injected more capital into the club after the accounts had been finalised, that would have been notified as a Post BS Event. And there's no reference to any such thing which is borne out by the lack of any filings at Companies House of additional capital having been provided. The widely held belief that Rupp has already invested more millions in the club isn't supported by the facts.

 

I believe that is highly unlikely since Rupp is a smart businessman and wouldn't be daft enough to throw his own €6mill down the drain 

 

Crikey! Did Duchatelet ever sell Charlton?

 

Bloody hell! No wonder they are running at such a huge loss.

It's examples like that which undermine the whole concept of FFP. I really hope the EFL take action against them. After the sanctions they took against Birmingham, there can't be any excuses for not doing something similar with Charlton.

 

21 of the other 23 in our league produce full accounts - P&L, Balance Sheet, Cash flow, Earnings statements, etc. We only produce a balance sheet and even an abridged version at that!

That isn't a change under the new owners; ML & JR did it in previous years