We were £5m in debt? Where did that come from when Black wiped the debt out.
And according to the accounts we were virtually debt free before we sold those players
Because in most cases it costs more to run a football club than the revenue they generate. Black did not leave it debt free, he's got a debt secured against the club that has to be paid when it is sold.
He did however forego most of the debt he'd ploughed into the club.
We then get the next gang who had a go at running a club, and they ran it a loss of about £2m in a year, same as the year Power then took the reigns, hence the accumulated debt again.
Historically we run at around a £1m-£2m loss per year, with the odd year of player sales covering the losses.
Luongo and Byrne both had huge sell on clauses from Spurs, it's the reason we got them on the relative cheap - Luongo for £400k when he'd been on loan at Ipswich. Given we sold a few players though there is a fair chance we more than covered the running costs this year, so made a rare profit. Power has paid back some of the loans he made to the club, maybe a fair chunk of them.
The biggest issue you can lay at his door is not trousering cash, more it's allowing all of them go without a plan to replace them - clearly we didn't have that as we made some last minute deals and ended up playing players who had previously been PR'd as being ones for the future (like Barry). The test is what we do this summer - unlikely we'll see big departures of anyone significant, so we can judge our in-comings on whether they improve us or not. If we hit late august and look like we do now, we can probably begin to justify complaints from the fanbase, but if we see a couple of signings that on the face of it create greater depth and strength in the squad, Power will have shown he has learned.
