Here we look at the financial side of the transfer policies of Ajax on basis of the published yearly figures by Ajax. To get a good understanding the following concepts are important to understand.

Balance Post Compensation Sums: When Ajax purchases a player the costs associated will not go to the profit and loss. At first the complete amount will be added to the balance post compensation sums.

Write Offs Compensation Sums: For the duration of the contract a transferred player has signed, each year a pro rate amount will be written off.

Example 1: Assume Ajax purchases Vincent Janssen from AZ on Juli 1, 2016 with a total cost of 10 million and Vincent signs a contract for 5 years. This results in Vincent being placed for 10 million on the Balance Post Compensation Sums on Juli 1, 2016 and from season 2016-17 each year 2 million will go from the Balance Post Compensation Sums to the costs Write Off Compensation Sums on the profit and loss statement.

Results Compensation Sums: This amount on the profit and loss accounts is made up out of several components: the amount players are sold for during the period minus the amounts they were still on the balance post compensation sums, education compensation, solidarity compensation, income from players that were resold for whom Ajax had agreed on a reselling percentages.

Example 2: As a follow up on example 1, assume Ajax sells Vincent Janssen to Liverpool for 25 million on July 1, 2019. In this case the sale will contribute an amount of 21 million (25 million from the sale minus 4 million for which Vincent Janssen was still on the balance) to the Result Compensation Sums.

Estimated Expenses: This is an amount that is not directly coming from the yearly figures. We make an estimate of the transfer expenses in a season by looking at the difference between the balance posit compensation sums that season minus the difference between the balance post compensation sums of the previous season and the write offs compensation sums of that season. The idea is that if there is no transfer activity at all in a season the balance post at the end of the season should be exactly the same as the balance post at the end of the previous season minus the write offs in the season. The difference can only be explained by transfers. We do not consider the amount any sold players are still on the balance for this estimate. Because of this it is a very rough estimate, but we think it is reasonable because there is a large amount of players that are not on the balance at all (own youth, transfer free players, and we assume also players that renewed their contract beyongd the original contract period) and players are normally sold when most of their original contract has already expired. Also consider that the estimated expenses are a minimum. If there are actually players being sold that were still on the balance, it means the actual expenses were higher.

For the current season we made an estimate for the various financial figures assuming that there will be no more players sold or purchased before the end of the season (Juni 30).

If we look at the first graph we see that the first seasons under Frank de Boer the balance post compensation sums is going down, but that this pattern was already started before Frank de Boer came and that during his time the balance post also increased again to almost the same height as the top in 2008-09.

The Write Offs Compensation Sums support this pattern, these also first decreased and later increased again.

If we look at the second graph we see further support of what we saw in the first graph, namely that the transfer expenses during the period Frank de Boer after first having decreased later increased strongly. This graph shows more ups and down, because it is more influenced by moments. Whether or not a player was purchased or sold just before or after the start of a season has a large influence on the figures. This does not explain the 31 million estimated expenses for season 2014-15. The players who have been purchased during the season (Sinkgraven, Gudelj, Milik, Dijks) do not add up to this amount, looking at the amounts that were suggested in the media. Unfortunately Ajax does not give further insight in the composition of the balance post compensation sums, so we have no further explanation as to why this has increased so much.

These amounts indicate Frank de Boer, looking at the financial value of the squad, leaves it behind the same as it was when he joined, which could mean that a new coach might not be allowed to spend much money on attracting new players.