The Saints had to cut costs following relegation, and CEO Phil Parsons has given an assessment of where the club currently stand financially
A new head coach was hired by owners Sport Republic with Russell Martin coming in, and the ex-Scotland international had to deal with plenty of high-profile exits among his squad.
As many teams who fall into the Championship have to deal with due to the financial black hole that occurs, Southmapton were no different as they needed to cut costs.
How much money did Southampton make in player sales this past summer?
Inevitably, the Saints were going to lose some of their top stars, and that’s exactly what happened – mainly in August.
Long-serving James Ward-Prowse returned to the Premier League with West Ham United, who paid around £30 million for the Southampton skipper’s services, and he is already repaying that fee with goals and assists.
Tino Livramento meanwhile has moved to Newcastle United for an initial £32 million, which could rise if add-ons are triggered, whilst Chelsea paid £53 million for Romeo Lavia, with an extra £5 million potentially arriving in add-ons – Nathan Tella was also another big cash-in to Bayer Leverkusen at around £20 million.
Transfermarkt has Southampton’s total sales coming in at €183.34 million (£158.72 million), which means the likes of Mohammed Salisu, Moussa Djenepo and Mislav Orsic brought in around the £23 million mark.
What has Southampton’s CEO said on the club’s finances?
Despite the Saints making such a profit in terms of transfer fees this summer, there is a more complex financial situation at St Mary’s Stadium.
The money coming in from the sales of players are set to come over a number of years, which is common practice in football, whilst a hefty loan has started to be paid back, meaning that Southampton aren’t as cash-rich as some may expect following their summer trading, as CEO Phil Parsons has explained.
“Immediately, for us, we lost about 50 per cent of our revenue following relegation. For any business, that is huge,” Parsons told the Daily Echo.
“We had to make some tough decisions on certain redundancies and roles and we have had to scale back but we have tried to support the football as much as possible.
“We’ve got a squad with actually quite ‘healthy’ wages against other squads today. The obvious question that you want to ask is about how we sold a lot of players.
“There are fees to pay and you will typically only get the money over three seasons. It doesn’t suddenly cover the drop from the Premier League, even including the parachute payments.
“There is a huge amount of asset value in the players we have bought in the last couple of years but we want them to be playing here.
“It’s not something that we want to sell players, we will sell when we need to and if it’s the right money, as we proved this summer.”
The loan that Southampton now have to pay back relates to previous owner Gao Jisheng, who took out an £80 million sum from MSD Holdings in 2020 to help tide over the losses the club made from the COVID-19 pandemic.
Sales of individuals such as Ward-Prowse, Lavia and Livramento is set to go towards this, whilst the Saints also have to comply with the EFL’s Profit & Sustainability rules.
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