Finances out of control

Hi all,

I'm managing Derby County and doing OK (6th after 17 games) but I am very concerned about the clubs finances. Season ticket sales took the balance up to £4m but the club have since been making a loss of up to £1.3m per month! I am £10k per week over the wage budget of £170k but this makes no difference, even if I had no player wage bill then the club would be losing £500k per month.

Attendances are good aswell, the highest average in the championship at just under 30,000. Is there anything I can do to save my club from disaster??

Thanks in advance.

The financial modeling sucks... I've played teams with a 3.5M/yr payroll budget, been -under- that budget by 500K/yr or more and still lost money hand over fist to the tune of about 500K-800K a month depending on if I played any home games. The only time I'd have a positive month is with 5 home games in one month.

The biggest problem was the 'Other' expenditure category, it's anywhere between 300-500K/month for the team in question (usually 500K) and completely random in that range. I took the time to explore it, saved the game 2 days before the new month, crossed and had like 350-400K in 'Other', loaded the save and crossed again and it was up over 500K. Team didn't have any magical games or anything, scouts didn't make a trip around the world in those 2 days, I didn't change a thing, just tossed up another number.

And the worst part is one of the things it says is part of 'Other' is travel... ok, team travel is expensive... except I regularly have the same 'Other' expenses between months where the team has 4 road games vs no road games. Hell during the pre-season I'll see the big expenses there, team's not traveling, not even thinking about it.

I'm sure it works fine for some teams that make more money, but I highly doubt it's dynamic in any form at all. They probably just have different hard coded ranges for each playable league. So the smaller clubs in those leagues suffer worse.

I share your pain! I'm playing with Oxford in League 2, started the game with just over £1m.

Since then, I have been loosing up to almost £200k some months, and have not had a single month were I have been in profit. Under my wage budget as well.

Within a year or so I'm going to be bust!

With Farnborough I had to have a complete staff turnover in the Conf South to slow the financial bleeding. I was getting monthly handouts from the board, which is actually how many clubs work in non-league.

I didn't start making a profit until getting promoted to League 2 when the TV cash comes in. Even then I pray for that money spinning cup draw.

The team I have the most experience with this is actually Colorado in the MLS... far cry from the tiny L2 or lower clubs but they have this same problem. The numbers I gave in the first post come from them.

This is why I think it's a fixed ranges based on the league. Colorado is not a top financed club in the MLS, some make and have FAR more money, like New York and LA, the only income in the MLS is the gate (aside from season tickets and merchandise) and Colorado has a small capacity stadium compared tot he 'main' MLS clubs, so like I said the only time I bring in more then I spend is when I have a congested month with mostly/all home games. Again, this is while being well under the payroll budget.

You guys seem to be having the same issues, what is really frustrating is having such little control over it and the apparent randomness of "other expenses". I did have a takeover on the cards with the new chairman promising to pay off all debts but it fell through.

ive edited all clubs to have no debts, some may see it as cheating, but ive not added money to my club, just taking away there debts.

ive edited all clubs to have no debts, some may see it as cheating, but ive not added money to my club, just taking away there debts.

This seems like a good idea to Start with a level playing field but even my club debt is not so much of a problem cos the repayments are only £190,000 per month. I am losing over £1m a month!

ive edited all clubs to have no debts, some may see it as cheating, but ive not added money to my club, just taking away there debts.

This doesn't even matter in some cases... Colorado has no debt when you start them and they still lose money like they print their tickets on the stuff.

they just need to make a formula for travel expenses and do away with how 'Other' expenses is handled right now.

there was an old issue regarding 'other costs' and i think that it is being looked into, but in the short term, whenever you get free time try arranging a few friendlies to make extra money.