It’s accepted that pretty much every team is going to take a big financial hit from the last year, so most important thing is to come up with a plan to bounce back.
Immediately the most obvious solution may be to get rid of staff and cash in on any sellable assets that you might have, but that can cause just as much damage in the long-term.
In a way you wonder if West Ham may have been tempted to sell the likes or Soucek or Rice this summer if they were just another mid table team escaping from relegation, but this season has shown what can be achieved.
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It’s so important that they look to build on the success and become a regular top half team as a bare minimum, but the latest financial results do make that a bit more difficult:
West Ham have blamed the COVID-19 pandemic for losses of £65 million for the year to June 2020, and have taken a £120 million cash injection from MSD Capital.@RoshaneSport and @mjshrimper make sense of the latest #WHUFC accounts… ??https://t.co/kSofU2dvnh
— The Athletic UK (@TheAthleticUK) March 12, 2021
The Evening Standard also looked at the results in a bit more detail, and there are some different ways to look at this.
The main takeaway is the loss of £65m which has been covered by taking the huge loan, but that will be spread over five years and it’s being used to pay off some other short terms debts, so you like to think the repayments will be manageable for the club.
It’s also pointed out that the club haven’t made redundancies and they haven’t used the furlough scheme either so that does reflect well from a human point of view, while it’s also thought that an extra £30m of income from a rights issue hasn’t been included in these figures.
Obviously it means the club aren’t going to be in a position to throw a load of money around in the summer, but there’s still a genuine chance of Champions League football and the finances involved with that would be an obvious gamechanger.
It feels like the club may have to tighten their belt a little bit but there’s no sign that a fire sale is needed or that there’s any big worries for the immediate future, so hopefully success on the pitch will be sustained.