Recent content by ravelston

The PIK loans had a positive, NOT negative, impact on our finances - weird isn't it. The interest was never paid - it just got rolled into the principal amount - but it did provide us with a tax offset which freed up cash for other purposes. Saved somewhere around £25-30 million over it's life...

Red and White Holdings were the Usmanov/Moshiri vehicle that owned 30% of Arsenal for a while. Not clear on their relevance here. From our perspective the source of the money has little relevance - it came in as equity and an additional share was issued to the Glazers.

Didn't the signings I listed constitute "aggressively refreshing the side"?

Remember that in that time period we paid the 50% of the Rooney and Ronaldo fees that the old plc hadn't come up with. Then we bought VdS, Vidic, Evra and the twins for defense, Carrick, Anderson and Hargreaves for mid-field, and Nani and Berbatov for attack (not to mention Tevez and ayone else...

Current dividends give them a 4% return on their equity investment (£520 million). That's the same as the old plc when it started. Compared to the current market value of their shares it's less than 1%. The old plc pushed the dividends up pretty rapidly as the value of the shares rose - they...

That's when the PIK debt was paid down. What he doesn't mention is that the owners injected an extra £250 million in equity to cover the cost. Swiss Ramble has always been very selective with his "facts".

Quite true, but they were the ones who took advantage of the PLC's mismanagement (which was why the stock price was so low) so we'll never know.

When the old plc went public, they set the first year dividend at about 4.5% of the issue price. Coincidentally that's roughly the same rate of return that the Glazers are getting on their total equity investment (52O million). For an investor buying stock in the new plc the return would be less...

How do you think it felt to support the club in the post Busby years? How do you think Liverpool supporters felt in the post "boot room" years? How do you think Arsenal supporters are going to feel in the coming post Wenger years? We were privileged to have a 20+ year run of unprecedented...

Totally agree with the last part - nothing like moneyball. Moneyball is a sustainable strategy - 2002 was a one year gamble.

Hired well is a bit of an exaggeration - they mortgaged their future to get Gruden - 2 first round picks, two second rounders and a bunch of cash. Basically meant that, from that season on, they had a coach but a rapidly declining player pool. Was a bit like our signing van Persie - bought SAF...

I'm here. What do you need?

Thanks for the post - found the piece I read very interesting. Good analysis. I'll try to get back to read some more later.

Amortisation gives us an offset against taxable income - so it reduces our tax bill - otherwise it has no cash flow consequences. (There's no tax relief at the time we buy players - we get it over the life of the contract by amortising the cost.) To get an idea of our obligations with respect to...

He's about the same level as Smalling and Maguire, but with a ton more upside.