By David Owen
March 5 – A hefty redundancy payment for former manager Brendan Rodgers looks to have been partly responsible for the deterioration in profitability at Liverpool in the 2015-16 financial year.
The Merseyside club, who got back to winning ways over Arsenal at the weekend, recently reported a pre-tax loss of £19.8 million for the year to 31 May 2016. This compares with a restated profit of £59.1 million the previous year, and was in spite of a substantial gain on the transfer of Raheem Sterling to Manchester City.
Now accounts for the Liverpool Football Club and Athletic Grounds Limited filed at Companies House show that the latest figures include almost £15.7 million in redundancy and associated costs.
There is nothing in the accounts to indicate specifically whether any or all of this money was paid to Rodgers, who left the club in October 2015 and whose current Celtic team have dropped only two Scottish Premiership points all season. But it seems reasonable to think that some of it, quite possibly a large chunk, would have been.
Other contributory factors to the Reds’ slump into the red included a £42 million jump in staff costs to £208.3 million and a £7.9 million impairment loss on player registrations. The profit on player sales, though still very substantial, dipped from £54.2 million to £42.1 million.
Net bank debt was little changed at £45.5 million, while intercompany debt more than doubled from £49.4 million to £110 million. This was linked to the recent stadium expansion, which was substantially completed last September and has lifted capacity of the main stand at Anfield by 20,500 to 54,200. The club is controlled by Fenway Sports Group of the US.
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