Saintandy666

Hope that it isn't serious. I was looking forward to the return of Jack Cork.

Great stuff.

Seriously hope they can pull off the win for you!

When's the draw for the next round?

For sure. He can't be played on the wing, but at the same time you can't drop Lambert on his form. He may very well have to play apprentice for the next couple of seasons until Lambert inevitably fades with age.

I expect them to take it more seriously than a lot of teams though. A good route into Europe for them.

So pleased for him. He needed to get off the mark.

Well, it appears the Buttner deal fell through due to an excessive third party demand which couldn't be resolved. We know that Cortese spent ages negotiating over the third party in the Ramirez deal and we can assume that terms within his budget were met.

A one off payment which would have broken the budget perhaps?

Indeed. So he refused to break his budget for Buttner.

We don't know what went on behind closed doors during the negotiations. He certainly refused to break it for Buttner.

The only player who might have broken it was Ramirez. But I was inferring that he had a strict plan and budget from the amount of fallen through deals.

8000

Someone somewhere mentioned something about a hand or an arm or something. Where's Mayuka?!

I have no idea and you know that. I based my wage stuff on the typical total wage bill of an average Premier League club.

Exactly. Different strategies.

I based the sky income stuff off this article! http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/jun/13/premier-league-tv-rights-3-billion-sky-bt Says that it will add at least £14m to each club, could be more I guess if we do better. Apparently, the bottom placed team will earn more than Man City earned for winning last year under the new system according to telegraph http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/teams/england/9332446/Euro-2012-Premier-Leagues-new-3bn-TV-deal-means-that-footballs-rich-kids-just-got-even-richer.html And yes, so far Cortese has shown great restraint in not breaking our wage system or budget plans for anything(but we have been in easier leagues)... I do hope he keeps to that, but as you say things may need to be stretched.

We won't have that £30m to £40m this year... but next(once the big increase in TV rights comes into play), though our wages may be lower for this year than the average Premier League club. And of course, the estate of Mr. Liebherr will cover the difference, but I was saying within the next year or two. And I also included within my argument that some expansion would have to stop, but that we would be fine without the Liebherrs. Unlike Chelsea.

Thus far, it's been classified as the latter. It makes business sense really for when they sell us. If we are debt free, that should raise our price on the market.

Having looked into the figures in more detail, we obviously weren't self-sufficient in the lower leagues... but I was never claiming we were. I was arguing that we could be in the Premier League here and now(specifically next season). I still maintain that if Liebherr's left tomorrow we would be fine(albeit some expansion would have stop I'd imagine), and I still think that within the next year or two once the significant investment in training facilities is complete we will be completely self-sufficent.

I've just looked into expenditure for same season. What I have found is that the average wage bill for that season was about £50m. I also found out that last year, the average wage to turnover percentage was 70%, though this includes teams like Man City. The average for normal clubs seems to be between 55% and 65%. Assuming that our Turnover does reach that of an 'average premier league club season 2013-2014'(£90m), we could therefore expect to spending anywhere in the region of between £50m and £60m on wages each year, leaving between £30m and £40m for all other expenditure. We do know also that Cortese does have a wage structure in place.

Oh I know that! Now we have estimated figures on income, the expenditure will be interesting to see.

Well, apparently the average premier league wage is about 22k a week.

I've established that our income(and we were a big League 1 club) will have probably multiplied 7.5 times by next year since then and thus the statement that we were unsustainable in League 1 holds no relevance anymore. Edit: I see you added an extra question in your post. Our strategy is different from Chelsea as said by another poster already and me. We aim for different types of player and don't have significant write downs etc

So I actually decided to get some figures into this argument. In 2010-2011 which is the latest figures I can find, the average turnover excluding the big 6 clubs(Man U, Man City, Liverpool, Arsenal, Tottenham and Chelsea), all who had income way way way beyond everyone else, the average turnover per year was £70m. The total turnover for the Premier League was £2.28bn Just to emphasise how different the Premier League is to League 1, the Premier league took 78% of the £2.9bn the whole of the 92 club football league made in 2010-2011. Now, I don't have figures for 2011-2012, but I can tell you that total premier league income between 2009-2010 rose about 7% from that year to the next. However, there was a 4.2% increase in the TV deal which equates for about 2/3's of a clubs turnover... so 0.66*4.2 is about 3%... so that tells me that without the new TV deal growth of about 4% would have occurred. Assuming this 4% annual increase is sustainable growth for this year, we can assume that average turnover minus those exceptions of clubs much larger than us would be about £73m. There's also a new TV deal next year which should add £14m per club to turnover... so if we are aiming to be the 'average' premier league club, we can look at Turnover approaching £90m by next year. Will our operating expenditure exceed that? I do not know that answer, maybe someone with some figures could help on that. Just to add some context to the debate! Make of that what you will.