 Welcome to Toffy TV. I am joined by John Blaine, the Chairman of the Shareholders Association. Before we begin this video is sponsored by One Football. One Football's app makes it easy to keep up to date with all the latest transfer venues, stats and scores all in the one place to download the One Football app. Click the link in the description below. John, it was the AGM last night. Obviously in years gone by this has been people's chance to vent for frustration and you know it's a lot of times it's been perceived as bad news, meetings and things like it. No, not by yourself of course, by fans on the wider scale, that's how it's been viewed. But lately, certainly since Far Have Machiari's coming, it seems to have got better year on year. Last night's one, I personally perceive there is quite a positive meeting. I would say what's your take on it? Well I'd agree that it was positive. I mean the format changed a little bit. I mean the association, we meet regularly with people like Denise Barrett-Bachsendale as the Chief Executive, some of her team. And we spoke quite a number of months ago about expanding the general meeting a bit more, making it a bit more inclusive in the sense that you could almost make it a bit like an expedition or exhibition. So there was stands there up in the bar area for shareholders association, former players, fans forum, heritage society, that sort of thing and that encourages people to mingle and the like. And then Denise herself had changed the format in the sense that clearly she does like the keynote speech bit because it's the CEO's show. Anyone remembers the previous CEO, he did most of the talking, you know. But the way Denise did it, she actually spoke for quite a long time really, you know, with all the fancy technology of those screens with the speech on it and you can read those and what have you. But then she also got the key members of the board to stand up and talk about their portfolio, which are clearly and most notably, and I guess you'll talk about it later, people like Sasha on the finance and commercial side and Keith on the stadium. Of course, there'd be no show without punch. So Bill was quite to the forefront as well. Clearly it was the mean because it's the chairs meeting really. But the double act of Bill and Farhad always produced some quotations and the like and last night was no difference. And of course, which I don't necessarily wholly agree with because it's supposed to be a business meeting, we also had the team manager there and of course the director of football who was elevated or the announcement of his elevation to full board member yesterday of myself. So Darren Griffiths interviewed those two guys as two double acts and that was good as well. And like you say, it is about asking questions. So there was a free form, ask questions, but at the end there weren't many, to be honest, because it was reasonably comprehensive and having Sasha and Keith doing a little bit more of the detail and Denise doing all that oversight stuff and talking about the strategy and the vision and all those good things. But probably wasn't a lot of questions for people to ask. So that was good. That's good. It's good that that if they are given the information that people are wanting to know. Well, clearly, the annual reports and accounts have already been published. So that was goodness. On behalf of shareholders, I had a meeting last week with the finance director and asked some questions that are a bit too detailed for an open forum like that. Of course, the answers are secret just because they're technical questions and you'd be there all night if the poor finance guy had to answer them that way. So yeah, I think it's quite a material sea change in the style of this thing from the previous chief executive who did it under sufferance to somebody in Denise who sees it as an opportunity to talk to the shareholders and inevitably the wider fan base behind that and do it in an as open and transparent a way she can. Do you mean in a way that like proper businesses work? Yeah. Yeah, let's go on. It's good to see the club. There's plenty of listed businesses out there. There will be. But we're talking about our club. Absolutely. And to give a little bit of respect to the previous chief executive, he often gave more detail on the things he wanted to give more detail on that was necessary. But it was far more encompassing last night. That's what I meant. I'm not saying the previous CEO didn't do that job well at that time in terms of portraying information at what he wanted to, but there's a lot of things that were omitted where there's what we'd like to see is all of that addressed. I don't like silence from the club on things that they might perceive as difficult questions or difficult. Well, that's right. And one of the things we try to advocate to the previous chief executive as the shareholders association, perhaps that's the infamous questions and the like, was that if you get the stuff behind you, you know, you've fronted it up. You've either said, this is the answer or we're not telling you because. And that's an acceptable answer. You know, you don't say what how much money does Richard listen to and expect to get an answer. And the club shouldn't get uptight because you've asked it. You say, well, we're obviously not going to answer that one. That actually gets you some respect because you will face up to any question. And that certainly seems to be the way Denise is trying to operate, which is ask any question you like. And if I can answer it, I will. And if I can't, I'll probably explain why. Well, that's what listen to. And if you do a really good speech to start with, with presentations and the like, I mean, what cracking numbers and accounts are really boring? Sorry, Paul. Some people really like them. But there's only so many questions that you can ask, which is why probably a bit of brevity of having the team manager there and someone asking about zone unmarking and stuff. Just lighten the load a little bit as well. Well, I think you have to do that because then it does make it all encompassing, doesn't it? It gives you everybody a more rounder picture of it because, you know, like Michelle, I'm really only interested in the football side of things, but I do like to know that my club's getting run, you know, better than what it was doing because that's the challenge for every every department that I look at it, but I haven't thought up every single department has to do better than it did. That's my chance. Absolutely. And Denise did say last night that, you know, when she'd done her Root and Branch review of the business when she became the chief exec and laid down a 90 day plan and started to fundamentally try and change, I suppose the atmosphere, call it culture if you want, then she said last night, and I believe her, by the way, whether the individuals do because they'll get reminded if they don't actually deliver, won't they? But she says every single person at the football club now knows what they have to do to contribute to the delivery of that vision. Yeah. And that's all you can ask, really. I know how I make a difference or not, if the case may be. I know what I'm supposed to do. If I perform, I'm rewarded. If I don't perform, I'm told you're not performing and I've continued to fail. I move on. I'll select or someone has a curly finger with me. And I think that's with that's where the, you know, all those cliches around that's where the rubber hits the ground and walking the talk and all that sort of stuff comes about because it's really cool to have that vision and have that strategic plan. But as everyone listening to this would would recognize, you know, the devil's in the detail. And if we carry people who are not performing, then that drags the whole team down. And it's the analogies are all really. It's the analogies are all really appropriate to the football team. You know, we can't carry one or two passengers in the team. We can wait for players to come back into form. But ultimately you have to make hard decisions. And I'm sure they'll get made. So it was really good. Yeah, excellent. I mean, you touched on it in your opening. You're opening statements almost with Marcel Brannis being a being moved up to to becoming a board member personally from from my perspective. I think it's a good thing. You know, we've, I think we all said earlier on in the summer or just after he was appointed when you were in, we thought that potentially a place on the board for him was important because I think it's important football side of the club is represented at that board level as well. And so I mean, what's your take on that? You know, me and my mates on business matters. I think that's the very first episode we did. We talked about this is what the board should look like and there was a place there for the director of football. Clearly, it's the director of football that we think Brannis is not the director of football that we think Walsh was, but you've got to support that that's the right thing to do. And the way I like to visualize it is, and you know, even though she's the chief exec and is accountable for holistically for all this stuff, if we think that the non footballing side is all Denise's challenge, if you will, the footballing side is Marcel's challenge. And I don't suppose anyone's going to get hung up and start going into detail, but for those people out there, it probably means Marcel is Marco's boss sort of thing, you know, because all the footballing side is under the director of football. But hasn't that been hasn't that ever tried to deliver that impression from Daemon with the opening press conference that was just Marcel and Marco? There was no bill or far had. It was Marcel and Marco. And that's why, you know, and I always say this, but, you know, the music we have on business matters, you know, at the end, it's not the way that you do it, you know, if you're Marco and Marcel, you formally work for me, but we can work together. Of course, there's no hierarchy there. And the trick really in organizations is to, to give the impression that the structure is really quite shallow. No one, you know, it's not deep, no multiple layers, no one down in the organization feels they're not allowed to talk to the gods. Up in, you know, on the seven floor in the Royal Library building or whatever it might be. But you have to have structure. You can't have people just walking into the chief sex officer, the coffee machine is not working, which you respect. I'm trying to buy a player here or something. So so that relationship needs to be, you know, work colleagues almost peer to peer, but a recognition there is a structure. Yeah. And clearly, as you say, and I think I said on the beep this morning, you know, when, when things are, Merseyside, Radio City Neck, but when, you know, the board a meeting, and they're setting objectives for themselves as a company, and they're setting budgets and all those sorts of things, then the director of football now is going to be sat in those meetings. And the rest of the board will hear his opinion firsthand, not filtered or exaggerated or anything firsthand. And by the same token, he will hear what the others say, you know, and that's really, really good, I think, and really appropriate and let's see how it pans out. But we've all understood that Marcel's accountable for the playing side. And as we know, you know, we were talking about the finances, but, you know, player trading, the acquisition and retention is critical to any Premier League football club. And if you think that that can be a profit loss account, you know, in the sense that we're going to make money from players we sell, I'm going to cost us money to get players or to develop players, then all that has to sit in a business model. That is a black number in the bottom right hand corner, not a red one. Yeah. And it's an awful colour. And it is important that he's up to speed with that, but also for the flip side of that, if he's saying to the board, we want to sign X in Germany for 75 million. This is the reason why they can get that as well. And how far that ultimately will be. Yeah, and that's the point, and all these guys have to work together. OK. So, so, I mean, take a very, you just said we want to buy somebody, you know, if you start the year with a budget and we know what our revenues are going to be because we have contracts with Sports Pacer or we have contracts with, you know, a tyre company or a coffee company or whatever it might be. And of course, we have money coming in and so on and so forth. So we know what the income is going to be, the stadium will sell out when all the ticket prices are blah, blah, blah, blah. But we also know that some legislation we have to comply with. You know, we have to comply with the cost control measures that the Premier League put in place and we have to comply with the infamous financial fair play and so on. So you've got to keep on top of that. So when Marcel, you know, says, by the way, I had a meeting yesterday with Marco when he wants a new centre back and he's quite like that one and he's 75 million pounds, then he has to look at the numbers and say, well, have we got the money? If we have got the money, can we spend it and still comply with financial fair play? You know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And all that needs to be holistically controlled. And that's why I think last night when he was getting interviewed and particularly when you might come on to Fahad and the Bill show later on, is all that needs to be joined together. And so if anything came out last night, which was both positive, negative, almost in the same moment, was Denise saying that she'd done a written branch. We're going to, you know, review the business and then restructured it, brought in people to head up compliance, brought in people to head up operations and so on and so forth. But none of that had happened before, which is crazy. And when I met Fahad a couple of years ago around the time Walsh was arriving, I asked him, is Steve going to go on the board? And Fahad quite sensibly said our intentions to director of football will be on the board. Yes. Now clearly Walsh dropped the ball and didn't make it, did he? Was not to it. But clearly Marcel's given a good enough impression over the last six, seven months or wherever it's been, a bit longer, isn't it? But I think he's impressed everybody since he's coming, hasn't he? And he's, I think the thing with Marcel Brand is there's an air of authority when you look at him that he's a straight talker, he's Dutch, so he will be, but he's got a proven track record. And I think that's for me, that's the key thing in all of this is that it's great getting people in, they were bright and they look like, you know, this is the next best thing you've got to prove in track record. That's in business, that's King, isn't it? I agree, but as is always the case, you know, if you were in business and you were the manager of X in a certain company and then you moved to a different company and the different company is bigger or it's a more challenging environment, you have to demonstrate that, you can step up. Oh, of course, of course. But you're also going to go with me rather than the bright young thing? Absolutely, there's no substitute for experience. And of course, the man has great experience in the Netherlands, in Holland and stuff, but the Premier League is a different beast. But I mean, just we did a podcast this morning, they have it in business, and I think that's how you check it out. Well, yeah, it'll be out soon, it's out now by the time you guys sit. And we go into a bit more detail about this. So one of the things I said to Paul was he's got the tag about the tail, though. I mean, if you look, and we could probably do it now, but we shouldn't because it's really anorakish. But if you look at last whatever it is, 15 or 20 players that we've acquired in the last couple of years, and then you look at what you go to some independence and say what's their current market value. We've got maybe 10 players, curiously, mostly acquired since Marcel turned up, where if we were to sell them now, we'd make a profit. And we've got another seven or eight players, where if we were to sell them and one of them, we have so like classic, for example, we would make a loss, and they're the ones washed, and overall, we'd make a modest profit if we sold all of them. Well, actually what we want is more like the Marcel ones and less like the, because we've probably drained away 100 million pounds in losses, not on what we've spent on losses. Under the wash, cumin, stroke, aludais axis of, you know, tosons too expensive. Well, we're not going to make belasses and the asses and so on. We're not going to get money back on Walcott and say money back. I mean, we're not going to make any profit on either of those players, are we? So that's from just aludais alone. So that's really where the families have to think, you know, Roma wasn't made in a day. It's certainly not work, not made of its full of water and you've got to drain it first. Well, exactly. And that's what's where we're at in allergy with the football club is, you know, it's from a playing side perspective of what's happened over the last couple of years. Is it's a bit like the dark? It's full of water. It needs to be drained before you can put some foundations down and build. Well, I mean, once you see if you just sold it, brach yn dias ddysgu. So it's the 13th player they've sold. The be made a hundred and thirty seven million pound off those 13 players and collectively they have 33 appearances from the 50th players. And that's where Sasha went when we spoke to Sasha a couple of weeks back or before Christmas, whenever it was, we need to be smarter. Clearly, we can't compete yet with those big six on revenues for match day income. Broadcast is broadly neutral, albeit there's going to be merit awards going forward, isn't there? But we're going to be smarter around using the academy or player trading as a profit loss account, almost. And what we're really saying is that Marcel is the MD of that P&L. And going back to what you said when he sits down and done all this, you know, on the podcast, when he sits down with the manager and the manager says, I want that's fine, but that makes this number red. So what are you going to do to make it black? Here's the ones you can sell. It's got to be one of these. And this is where I know some people have, you know, nearly had meltdowns when Marcel Branseth will plan a long term. He might not buy anyone in January. You said it again yesterday. He did. But for me, that doesn't mean ever now I'm going to buy anyone in January because he's made it quite clear it's won out on it. I'm not even sure it's that. Well, I'm telling you now that Everton will look into our flow three. I'm sure. And if Everton off flow three, Everton will bring it in. Yeah, but what the fan, well, hang on a minute, what the fan base go with is sell to buy and all that sort of stuff. Yeah. Yeah. And that's what people get up tight about. This belief that we have to sell price to buy to buy them. Now, each time I've heard more talk about this offline, there's the words and there's a read between the lines. OK, what he said last night on stage was, and again, these are not the absolute words to use, but the sentiment is there's no value in January. Yeah. Yeah. You don't get the best players in January between all looking even. I'm really looking towards the summer. That doesn't mean to say if the right players become available that we won't go for that. Yeah. Not once last night, did he say, but I've got to sell some first. No. No, but he has. That's trading is going on all the time. It has to. I mean, if you look at, we will get back to the ADM just very briefly. If you look at all part of it, if you look at Snidlin, Nias. Just as two. There's what 200 almost 200 grand a week or 180 grand, I would say a week in wages roughly. You've also 150. Now, you could sell them. You could sell them and create that money back of whatever you get for Nias. It's wages as well. Whatever you get for Snidlin, it's wages as well. That enables evidence to bring in two players totally of that wage. But it's not so much the money that you get in because as far as I'm away, actually buying the players isn't an issue, but it's being able to pay the players is the issue because, again, of percentages with financial fair play within the Premier League. So I can understand where we're at. We're also still at 27 players, which is probably a bit too much. If you're looking at Morgan Snidlin, who man Nias? They haven't really been involved at all in any. I know Nias got on a Brighton, but he was very quickly back off the bench. You know, you're looking at that James McCarty was on the bench against Lincoln, but will he be on the bench against Bournemouth? I doubt it because a couple of players like Luca Deane, he wasn't in the 18th of the weekend and people like that will come back into it. So there's room for editing to move a couple of players out of a decent money and bring in a couple on lower wages spot on spot on. And again, I don't want to keep quoting the business matters stuff, but we've covered lots of this stuff. And the educational side of it is exactly what you just said. You know, I think it's not as simplistic as the transfer fees on a problem. Yeah. But if you buy a play of 25 million quid, I'm sure we've covered this before, but 25 million quid and give him a five year contract, then he's going to cost you five million quid a year through your accounts. If he's on 200 grand a week, it's going to cost you 10 in wages. Now, if you can get a player for maybe a big fat, relatively fat transfer fee, but relatively modest wages, like a young player, yeah, sort of thing, and then that young player will increase in value during the life of his contract. Yeah. Then then you get yourself into an interesting situation, don't you? I mean, if you look at me, people may or may not know, but you know, I sponsored a couple of players and one of mine has gone out on loan, which is Hullgate, so I'm having John Joe Kenney now. But previously, the reason I had Hullgate was because of Barnsley, because the guy he replaced with me sponsoring was John Slones, where John left. You know, John probably joined football club on, I don't know, three or four grand a week. Then we gave him a massive pay rise to 20 grand a week or whatever. And we sold him and he gets 200 grand a week. And so that inflation on the wages side is what you can try and control. And I get the impression, particularly from what Farhad said, and he's a bit of an anorak on understanding the workings of football. So I should imagine he spent a fair amount of time talking with people like Bill and Marcel and maybe less so Marco, I don't know, around the strategy around this because at the end of the day, he's the man with the pockets at the moment. And you could logically overplay, overpay a transfer fee for a young player, a younger player, as long as you look at the deal in the round, it's transfer fee and wages. That's what he's going to cost you. And this is why players who are allegedly free under Bosnians end up with huge pay packets. So you look at Chelsea, if I can't remember his name, but he's played four or five games with Chelsea and Bayern Munich. That's like Hudson and a Dakey. Yeah, it's a very 35 million for him. But I bet you he's going to go there on compared to modernity. But they're seeing him worth 100 million in three years. So so that having Marcel, which goes back to your original question, as the P&L holder for the playing side, which basically means the players. Yeah, and the trading arrangements as the director of football, sitting down with the team manager, head coach, whatever Marco's called, and saying, well, we've got these financial things we have to comply with. You want to replay a new right back or whatever it might be. We have to balance the books, you know? And when I met with the finance director last week, I asked him who owns that big fancy spreadsheet, which keeps track of all that. And it's him, him being the finance director. But clear, that means he has to work with Marcel and Marco and people like that and say, if you do that, we'll fail financial fair play. So but not if you fix something in a year's time. So that they're planning horizon becomes the three years of the rolling of the rolling financial fair play. It's got too much. So we're OK at the moment. So yeah, we'll see. It'll be interesting. Obviously, the niece then got up and spoke and you've already said. Yes, she spoke really well for 45 minutes. She said she's got three strategic objectives, football, business, fan base and the community. That last one being one. Yeah, fan base and the community. I mean, evidently, the community is fantastic. And that's a really important thing that we do. I think it's one of the best things we do if we can get everything else up to that of success, then we'll be doing OK. The business side of things, you touched on it before when you were talking about tyre companies. And yesterday, I haven't decided to be a bit money cop and we've got Britelli, the meat thing, you know that as well. So, you know, everything we're seeing more and more of these smallest, I guess, smaller sponsorships deals or smaller partnerships. It's something certainly Liverpool do very well if they partner everyone. Everyone's copying what Man United did. United did years ago, they've done this, they've got. So this means this again, another positive step that you'll see. It is, absolutely. And it's one of those things. I mean, you just called out the three pillars, you know, fundamentally what Denise was talking about, which is as I said, and I tweeted about it, she did it really, really well and was very compelling and stuff is you've got football. Well, we just talked about him, Marcel. Then you've got the business, the commercial stuff, that's Sasha. Yeah, of course, Richard Kenyans doing the other stuff. And Richard's the only one of those guys who doesn't sit on the board, isn't he? So maybe there's a job there for you to work hard. Maybe get yourself on there. But yeah, you know, if you can't get massive contracts because of your exposure, we're not in Europe every year without fail and so on, then it's a bit like there's only two ways to do things, isn't it? It's a bit like extracting money from people, you know? Either get more money from you or to get another one of you. Yeah, yeah, and that's what we're doing, you know? And that's what, you know, it seems it's one of one stuff, really, but no one really did that until Man United started saying, well, we'll have a sponsor of our training kit, training kit, you know, the colours of the balls, you know, whatever it might. Anything that someone can be associated with the Manchester United brand, they have to pay for it. So, but there has to be a twin track thing in my view. It's great. And I think again, business matters, we called out, you know, a year ago or more, how few we had and great progress has been. I don't know what the count is at the moment. There was a slide last night, I should have counted them. But the count's far greater than it was. It was shot again. Inevitably, we also have to get the money from it as well. You can't just, you know, having 50 sponsors to generate 10 million quid, isn't as good as one sponsor who generates 11? Of course, yeah. So actually what you want is a bit of both. It's a twin track approach. Those sponsors, which will have lots of and probably have very little access to the club if you like, but want to be associated with it, official partner of this, official partner of that. Maybe they're spending hundreds of thousands, maybe not even millions with us per year, but you still have to have those anchor ones, the big ones, which are going to be the shirt sponsor, perhaps the retail partner and naming rights, whatever. And do both. And what you can't do for any length of time is talk at a general meeting and say, oh, look, we've got another 10 partners. If your revenue number is still lower than the competition. So we have to do both. If you mention that compared to the top six, we can only spend 41 pence. Yeah, I mean, that's a great way to express it because what what that does is allows, you know, the man in the street who doesn't necessarily want to pour through accounts of 10, 15 football clubs to and it's almost like similar to Elstons, 85 pence in the pound and all that stuff. But it's better to the day and half he spends on us. Yeah, I guess so. Yeah, but it's better. What Denise has done is better because it shows the relative, you know, buying power between us and the others. You know, ultimately, they can spend twice as much as we can. Is this is this generally because of therefore we have to be smarter? Is this matchday revenue reasons or is this just over? Is this because they're in the Champions League? All of the above, all of the above. I mean, one of the things that came out last night was a big hike in percentage terms of commercial performance. You go, hey, but that's because we account for the Europa League in there. Yeah, and that'll go away. And that's gone. So next year it'll be back to where it was, so to speak. So you've got to be careful about how numbers are represented. But yeah, it's all of the above. But no, that's it. I mean, that is a real basic thing that you can go. Wow, less than 60p, basically less than everyone else. I mean, they have twice the buying power. Therefore, we have to be smarter. Exactly. And there's no thingy but I mean, less the city approved that you can win the league with, you know, with having two really good players. Well, yeah, what goes around comes around. Doesn't it? At the end of the day, I mean, we look and we think to ourselves, well, if a player of a certain quality has a choice of coming to Everton or Arsenal, he'll forget the London thing for now. You might default assume he'll go to Arsenal. Now, if you're selling Everton to him, you might want to talk about, well, are you going to get game time? Are you just going to be a squad player? What opportunities will you get here? I know people don't like it. We could be a building block to a bigger club. It's harsh to say, but it's a reality check. Or you say, but we'll pay you more. Yeah, yeah. And so you get into that funny little situation of because we don't have the buying power and because we're not we're therefore not getting the so-called better players, therefore we're not in Europe. Therefore, we don't get the money. Yeah, we have to break that somehow. And the way you break that is by logically overpaying to buy players and get players to come to you who wouldn't normally have come. We've got to give them plus people or players or people, because that's what they are today, do it for non-financial reasons. I'm going to Everton because Marcel's there. Yeah, yeah. I'm going to I was looking to say Marco. He quite likes Marco. Yeah, he does. Because of Marco, you know? So if you keep a player because of the manager's ability to put his home around that player and convince them to stick around, you know, maybe you'll look at who's might have stayed. Who knows? Well, let's see how we only got to see how some because of Marco. We got Dean and we got Meena because of Marco. So all the people who know that it's probably about nine people who are saying, get rid of them. Don't realize that all of those players. And that's the being smart a bit. Yeah, you know, and there is a huge thing when these guys are in so much money anyway, that the community side of it, you know, whatever, I mean, Denise said last night that everything in the community is the heart and soul of the football club. Yeah, and I know what she meant. Yeah, we are a football club first. Yeah, but if we can use things like that and a new stadium is coming and we've got the best director of football around and and and then if that just tips a player, of course, yeah, but then other people then other players because that because he's there because he can all build them. It's it's joining the dots together, isn't it? So matter how you get there, you've got to get the first one in some times. And it's like the rest of the making one of his mates come to Goodison and then buggering off and leaving him here. Well, yeah, exactly. And getting a new mate who then he fell out with. But now we think he likes again. What did you make of Denise's, you know, Evan's vision is to challenge at the top is to win the Premier League. Well, you can't say anything else, can you? No, I'd listen. I like that. But I've never heard the previous chief. I've never ever said so. Listen, we're bound to we're bound to get stick for it. And I've already seen it. Well, the stick from who does we know who, right? But so what? So what? You've got to puff your chest out and go, that is the aim. Because if that isn't the aim, what's the point? What is the point? If your aim is to be 10th in the Premier League, come out and say it and then we'll all just go get it. It's on the radio this morning. It was on Snelly and I said, you know, can you imagine level south those answers to that question? You know, if you're not trying to win, what's the point? What is the point? So you're going to have those ambitions, aspirations. Then you have to do the walking of the talk behind that. So what have we got to do to achieve that? To achieve it. And the answer is boys and girls, we need to be able to compete financially as best we can. With those above us. And that means play trading needs to be profitable. We have to have better commercial performance and better match day income. And that last one requires brand new more or higher ticket prices or both. Denise, obviously talked about the dozen investment £4.5 million gone into the academy in terms of another redoing that a new end or pitch for the academy. And it's good to see that expanding as well because that, let's be honest, that is a key. I think we're pushing more numbers to the academy as well, because we've seen quite a significant increase in the number of staff as well. Coaches and the like. So, yeah, these are like hidden investments that people don't readily see. You don't think about it, do you? And it is an investment by the club. I mean, there's an 80 percent increase in academy spending versus three years ago over the last three years. So, you know, and this is something, obviously, that Marcel Brands will be a big advocate coming from because Dutch football, the Dutch model, the Dutch model, which is different to ours, but the Dutch model very much is developer player, get them in your first team, selling. Yeah, and selling for high and be happy that you've sold them for high, because this is why, when they're like a Davy class and left Ajax, they're captain. He got a massive send off, he brought them back, he took them on a pitch because they, in Holland, they celebrate their players moving on. We don't hear, we hate our, we hate players when they want to leave, don't we? But in Holland, it's different because they, they realise that moving to say the Premier League or something, it's a better league. So it's a player taking a step up. They get the glory of we created this player and now you're taking him. And that's why you need a director of football because it's holistic. Yeah, because you imagine, you know, I'm Marcel Brands and I'm sitting here and what I'm doing is I'm looking down this track here. What's right in front of me is the first team player behind him to the under 23, behind him is the under 18, 16, 14, whatever is right down to five year olds. And I'm thinking to myself, this guy's kicking up a fuss about a big fat new contract. But he's limiting this guy getting in the team. Can we take that chance to sell him and he can come for it? And everyone moves up. It's like in the, it's like in, as you said before, in the business world, isn't it, you know, if someone leaves and the number two gets promoted, you need a new number two and like five people get a good feel factor because they've all got closer, they've all got closer. So they're the decisions they'll be making. Marcel and Marco will be thinking, you know, this thing about right backs, do we need to buy a right back? Yeah, well, actually that guy who's in the under 18 is 18 months away from being in the first team. Are we really going to go and buy a right back for 15 million quid and put him on a five year contract on 200 grand a week? And in 18 months time, he's going to take his place. But the only sort of the only caveat to that is then, but then distance still for 18. No, no, that's the point. And that's that's why that might not be a right answer or indeed a wrong one. And those guys, in this case, the director of football will stand and fall on the judgment calls that he makes. And the same applies to all the other board members. And, you know, I would really say to people that, you know, the more we see of the board members, the more they're on their feet talking, the more they do things like the podcast we do and stuff like that. And people can get confidence in them. Yeah. The less you'll get or they will get challenge from people about the decisions that they make because you say, well, buzz is an OK guy, you know, if he thinks that's the right thing to do, I believe him. Now, if he gets it wrong, I still reserve the right to say you got it wrong. Well, of course. But I don't kill him before he's even started. No, that's the thing. Denise Barrabach and I also said commercial income grew by 91% between 2014 and 2018. I know that that was received with a little bit of skepticism. And it's absolutely correct in the sense that was the skepticism because I'm actually reading the Everton Business Matters Tweet, which followed with a. Well, it is because it's like any form of ultimately part of what a general meeting is as public relations. Yes, of course. And of course, the board itself or the cost of the board has gone up significantly and part of what they have to justify is what they've done. Yeah. Yeah. Now, what's interesting that when you do things like that, you can you can disentangle it, you know? And the point I would make is if you said OK, that what was it? Ninety something percent of 91% you said, OK, let's exclude. Europa League from that. What's it then? I don't know because I'm right. So what you get, you know, business terms, what you're talking about is run race organic growth, i.e. growth that's going to reoccur every year. Of course, if I do a five year contract today with a million quid and I'm going to get a million quid for the next five years, if I'm in the Champions League for one season and this year I make three million quid, am I going to do three million next year? No. And that's it. So that's the reason organic growth, which is repeatable and sort of one offs. Yeah. So the underlying performance is quite modest. OK. Yeah. So so when the accounts come out next year or actually will come out this year, but the general meeting probably, I guess, will be next year, then what they need to do is the same four year analysis. Yeah. OK. And see what it is because it will move 15. I don't know why they picked four or whether it's three years, but three years will make 2014 to 2018 show. But three would make sense because that fits in with the financial play cycle and stuff like that. But if you move it all to the right, then Europa League's year will fall off. Yeah, that's right. There won't be one this year and therefore there'll be less impact. Yeah, so we'll see what it is. But what I would expect to see because of the numbers of deals that we've done. Yeah, even though we don't know how big they are. No, no, it's commercial revenue. There'll be a commercial performance increase in revenue terms. And those let's call Europa League an exceptional. When they're taken out, it will still be growth. It will still be growth. That's key, isn't it? Yeah. But I think the point we would make on business matters is not fast enough. I mean, if you've listened to it and I talk about the foot race, you know? You know, we're in a race. Notwithstanding what's happened in a couple of years, you know, we're the seventh of the top six, aren't we? Yeah, basically. That's what we're inspired to be. Well, that's what we're trying to do. They're all running faster than we are. Yeah, yeah. So they're already in front of us and they're running faster than we are. So the first thing we have to do is start running faster than them. But even when we're running faster, it's going to take a while to catch up. And that's the point that people like Denise and Sasha are making. You know, that 41 pence versus 100 pence is the key, isn't it? You know, that's the key. You just, you know, you're not going to get the massive windfall. So it's going to take time. A couple of big things. Season ticket renewal, 94% season ticket to catch the 31,300. Fantastic. 25% of season ticket holders under 18. I think that's marvellous because it shows a real growth and a sustainability, I suppose, of of Evertonians. She also said. It also deflates revenue. Well, it does, but we're talking about having people. Listen, the one of the key selling points for Everton in this city, I think is the ability to go and watch plenty of people. We know the other crowd that are more interested in if you come the distance you travelled rather than actually where you're from. So that's what we can do within this city. And 25% of our season ticket are under 18. I think it's terrific. And going forward, that is going to be the conundrum, of course, for the board. Yeah, because Sasha, what do we do? You know, Sasha, when he did his financial bit, showed the matchday income, which is clearly highlighting how much we need Bramley Moore. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And have you seen this slide that he did? I didn't see the slide, no. So in the pecking order, what number do you think we are on matchday income? That's 10th, maybe. OK, better than that. Yeah, but the point. Better than that, 8th. Yeah, 9th. 9th, OK, that wasn't. So who are the two outside the top six who are bigger? The matchday income is West Ham, maybe. That's so they're the 7th, yeah. Yeah, well, like that number for 60,000, don't you think? Newcastle problem, no? Southampton. You know what? Southampton, I should have said that because they've been above us for years in matchday revenue. Yeah, and it was quite interesting that Sasha made the observation. And this is what he said, and they've got a smaller state. Yeah, 32,000. Already. So don't work it out, guys. It's not rocket science, you know. The ticket prices are higher. Or they're extracting, as you'd say, in business terms, more of the wallet share from the, you know. So either people are spending their money in the ground, on food, beer, whatever. Because anyone who's been to Southampton, stays in the middle of nowhere anyway, yeah. Bus. So the devil is in the detail. But I think that was a little bit of a glint of an observation about that conundrum that the people face. I suppose, listen, I think Milatys, what is it? 90 quid. 90 quid, 100 quid, whatever it is. So Leviton said, well, it's going to be 130. I'd say, OK, that's still, for me, I think that's still a fantastic deal. Yeah, pricing, and the like for Bramley Moore, is going to be critical. Of course it is. Cos you've got to, you are finding the balance between overpricing it and, you know, totally cutting people out of the ability to be able to go because everything else is rising. There's a cost of the living's rising, but people's wages, you know, there's a crossover with wages are coming down, but everything else is going up. So you do have to try and find that media and that's going to mean that people can go on pay. Cos a lot of, this is a lot of fans will literally be scraping the money together to go to the game. Yeah, absolutely. You know, fantastic, the ones who go up and down the country. There is no doubt that, particularly as generations change and have less interest, because they've gone to the station. Of course, of course. X-box is this, that, and others. Yeah, and therefore you've got to start coming up with product offerings that appeal to those people, which is going to be more things going on inside the stadium, you know, some decent Wi-Fi's and all those sorts of things. But clearly that one of the best ways to try and secure that the future of match attendance is to get these poor sods addicted at any early age. Yeah, like we were, yeah. And so I think that's really laudable and the challenge then is how they do that growth of revenues whilst maintaining those low prices. But let's not forget that there will be, and maybe someone who's listening, there'll be a fan out there right now in one of those age groups that gets the lower price who will fall out the age group next year. Of course. And I'll have to find. Can they still afford it? Can they still afford it and will they still keep coming, yeah? And no doubt, as will our data scientists start analysing this in future years, they'll say, X% stay with us when they have to make that big leap in their price. And trying to increase granularity of the pricing on age groups might be one of the creative ways they could try to ease the way into it. Dease the difference. Still keep it on mobile phone though, sir. Well, of course.