United healthy despite record €95m losses, Gill insists

MANCHESTER United chief executive David Gill insists there is no pressure to sell star players such as Wayne Rooney despite the club making losses of £83.6 million (€95.8m).

Gill said the fact the club would prefer to still have “Cristiano Ronaldo on the pitch than £80m (€91.6m) in the bank” was proof of their desire to keep players.

Although United’s group operating profit topped £100.7m (€115.4m), after player-related costs, interest payments and a number of expensive one-off costs related to the bond issue, overall there was a record loss for the club. Gill said the accounts released yesterday were “very good” with excellent revenues, and said there should be no concern about United going down the same road as Liverpool, whose American co-owners have struggled to finance their ownership.

The United chief executive did admit the figures could be confusing to fans who saw a record turnover of £286m (€328m) for the year ending June 2010 contrasting with the record losses of £83.6m (€95,8m).

For the previous year the club had returned a net profit of £48.2m (€55.2m) thanks to the sale of Ronaldo, but Gill said the Glazer family who own United had not pushed for that move, nor would they for any other player. He added that United’s balance sheet includes £165m (€189m) remaining in the bank if Alex Ferguson wants to buy new players.

Gill said: “We are not a club that needs to sell. We have money in the bank so there is zero pressure on that, no pressure at all to sell any star player whether it is Wayne Rooney or X,Y or Z. I can categorically say that.

“There was no desire at all from anyone at the club to sell Cristiano – he wanted to go and as a result we managed to extract a world record fee.

“These philosophy is to retain and attract the best players. We have £165m in the bank but in some ways we would prefer to have £80m in the bank and Ronaldo on the pitch.”

Gill said part of the losses related to one-off payments after bank loans were turned into a bond, totalling £47m (€54m).

He added that if ‘goodwill’ losses – an accounting practice relating to the original takeover – of £35.2m (€40.3m), and foreign exchange losses of £19m (€21.7m) (which should be recovered next year) and depreciation are ignored, United would have an actual profit of about £25m (€28.6m).

Gill said: “There are very good results for the club with records here, there and everywhere but they are complicated with non-cash items and exceptional one-off hits.”

United are confident that they will meet UEFA’s financial fair play rules despite the figures because not all the paper losses – such as depreciation – are included by UEFA when they calculate whether clubs are only spending what they earn.