By Andrew Warshaw, Chief Correspondent
March 11 – Financial figures released by the Premier League’s bottom club, Queens Park Rangers, in their bid to remain in the top flight of English football will have raised eyebrows throughout Europe, not least at UEFA’s Swiss headquarters.
Rangers have disclosed that their wage bill almost doubled – from £27.6m to £56m – in the year to 31 May 2012, the club’s first back in the Premiership, resulting in a reported a loss of £22.6m with debts jumping 57% to an eye-watering £89m.
The figures, significantly, do not include the club’s latest spending spree and appear to fly in the face of UEFA President Michel Platini’s demand for prudence and stability via his financial fair play rules, designed to force clubs to financial breakeven and not spend beyond their means.
The capacity of Rangers’ stadium is a mere 18,500 and chairman Tony Fernandes admitted that spending needed to be “closely monitored and controlled”. But he was keen to add: “A critical driver of any club’s value is its presence in the Premier League and the club achieved its key objective for the 2011-12 season by successfully securing its Premier League status. The financial results reflect the club’s focus on on-pitch success.”
Since the end of the last financial year Rangers have embarked on an even more extravagant recruitment, both during the summer and the January transfer window, twice breaking their transfer record by spending more than £20m jointly on Loic Remy and Christopher Samba.
With a new and lucrative television deal kicking in next season, it has never been more important to preserve Premier League status and both signings were aimed at helping the club avoid relegation.
QPR are partly owned by Fernandes and partly by Malaysian business tycoons Kamarudin Bin Meranun and Ruben Emir Gnanalingam, who have a combined 66% stake. The remainder belongs to the Mittal family.
Although results have picked up under manager Harry Redknapp, relegation is still a likely prospect with only a handful of fixtures left. Even though the club have huge financial backing – Lakshmi Mittal is listed as the 41st richest person in the world by Forbes magazine, with a net worth of $16.5 billion – their situation will not be lost on either UEFA or English football authorities, with the realistic possibility of a return to the Championship substantially in the red.
There would then be the even more alarming prospect of going the same way as Portsmouth, the ailing League One club whose financial meltdown after going for broke has been well chronicled.
Fernandes is adamant the Rangers board know exactly what they are doing. “There are a number of potential risks and uncertainties that could have a material impact on the group’s long-term performance,” he said. “(But) these risks and uncertainties are monitored by the board on a regular basis.”
Former Welsh international Robbie Savage, now a regular radio and television pundit for the BBC, was quoted as saying: “It’s madness. You look at what happened to Pompey and it was really, really sad. I know QPR are funded very well … but it is a huge gamble.”
He was supported by former Bolton Wanderers manager Owen Coyle who told the BBC: “If the worst happens the financial position QPR will be in doesn’t bear thinking about. This feels like a club panicking.”
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