Clock ticks for Ron Gourlay to uphold financial promise to West Brom fans at Albion Assembly
It’s 30 June and West Brom still haven’t submitted their financial accounts for the 2020/21 season on Companies House.
Every other Premier League club from that season has publicised their accounts but Albion are set to be the last to hand in their homework as the clock ticks on Ron Gourlay keeping a promise he made to fans back in April.
Speaking to the Albion Assembly on 29 April, West Brom’s chief executive confirmed that the club’s accounts will be published before the end of June and that “there are no issues to report”.
It’s not to say that West Brom’s accounts won’t appear on Companies House before the end of play on Thursday (30 June), but at the time of writing (08:00am), Gourlay’s cutting it close to breaking his promise.
Albion’s activity on Companies House raised the eyebrows of football finance expert Kieran Maguire earlier this year.
On 31 March, the Baggies submitted a document that showed they had shortened their previous account period to end on 30 June 2021, rather than the initial end date of 31 July.
In doing that, West Brom were able to buy themselves an extra three months to submit their accounts for the 2021/22 season as they were initially due on 31 March.
When the accounting period was changed, Maguire took to Twitter to suggest that “a cynic might say this is a deliberate ploy to avoid showing the financial results as long as possible”.
If there are – as Gourlay put it – no issues for the Baggies to report, then why is it that we’ve had our deadline extended and we’re still sat here waiting, at the eleventh hour, for the 2020/21 accounts to be made public?
It’s purely speculation on our part but we doubt they’ll make good reading due to the COVID-19 pandemic and expensive outlays on signing the likes of Matheus Pereira, Grady Diangana and Karlan Grant. Sacking Slaven Bilic and replacing him with Sam Allardyce was unlikely to be a cheap manoeuvre, too.
We’re not expecting to be one of the most profitable clubs in the country and we are expecting to see that the club suffered a loss.
Why are they dragging their heels so badly on this?
* Less than an hour after this story was published, West Bromwich Albion published their 2020/21 financial accounts on the official club website.
In other West Brom news, Albion are also in advanced talks to sign another new player at The Hawthorns this summer.
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