Saint86

And who can blame him. A huge part of their fanbase are now mobilised against "the despot" chansiri, the players aren't getting payed on time reliably, and the chairman behaves like he's unstable (blaming fans, the manager, and "declaring war" on saints... In a forum that was called last minute and went on past midnight 😅). Big fan protest planned for them this weekend I believe, and Simon Jordan is pimping them out to potential foreign owners... A good reminder actually - as shit as things can be as saints, we don't have the Wednesday chairman for an owner 🥳

I haven't given up home that we keep ramsdale. As mad as it sounds, I think financially we aren't too badly off re relegation. Profit last season, likely a profit this season. And a rebalanced squad with almost certain relegation wage clauses in them. Surely the only way we sell ramsdale is if it's considered to be worth it by the club? Which means we get a good slab of profit, and we have a goalkeeper considered both good enough for the champ and who can step up to the prem.

Based on the Wednesday presser. Rohl is deffo the hell out of there 😅

If he gets them promoted this season I think a lot more clubs will be looking at him. Would be a very respectable one club run in football manager, let alone the real world.

There are some really disappointing names on that list.

The owners have provided cash injections to fully underwrite the losses, so as a business they're basically debt free, and they're within the loss PSR rules. The following is for the 23/24 reporting period - so not this season, although i would imagine they're fine after a year in the prem. https://www.twtd.co.uk/ipswich-town-news/49240/town-accounts-show-�39.3m-loss-and-turnover-increase-by-71-per-cent Town's accounts for the year to June 2024 show a total loss of £39.3 million and turnover increasing by 71 per cent to £37.3 million. The loss, an increase of 116 per cent on the previous year (£18.17 million), was wholly expected in the season in which the Blues, newly risen from League One, climbed into the Premier League at the first attempt with £16.3 million of those losses promotion costs. Without those promotion costs, bonuses etc, the increase in losses is reduced to 26 per cent. The entire loss was covered by cash injections by the owners of £39.2 million with the club having no external debt, aside from the £391,000 in loan notes issued in the years following the club’s spell in administration just over 20 years ago. The 71 per cent increase in turnover to £37.3 million - £21.8 million the previous year - was led by league, retail, commercial and ticket incomes. 
As was the case last year, Town have published their Profitability and Sustainability (P&S) position - Financial Fair Play limitations - with eligible losses £34.9 million over three years and the threshold £39 million, giving Town headroom of more than 10 per cent. EFL per season losses are £13m per season (giving the £39m limit). After a year in the premier league, they can replace one of the £13M per season loss limits with a £35M (premier league) loss per season. So their allowable losses at the end of this current season's reporting period will be £61M. I also doubt whether they'll have made much of a loss this season with a largely EFL squad and premier league monies. So with owners that are seemingly prepared to underwrite losses, i would imagine they can spend a shit load of cash by championship standards with minimal concerns over balancing the books. Conversely, saints made a profit of £5M last season due significantly to transfer sales - and within that paid down our debts by a significant amount (think it was like £20M or something). I assume we'll have done the same again this season re the debts. But like it or not, Ipswich are gonna be spendy spendy for the championship i suspect next season (subject to the owners continuing to back them), and unless Dragan wants to back saints, i doubt we'll match them.

I wonder if we'd go totally left field and check out Dave Challinor at Stockport... Rasmus and co are always going on about untapped potential... Challinor has managed for 14 years across 6 divisions and he's never finished lower than playoffs, so there must be something there and he seems destined to get to the championship sooner rather than later. He's taken Stockport from 9th in the national league to the verge of the championship in 4 seasons in that time... Look how much money Wrexham have spent to do similar... I'd say he's got at least got a comparable pedigree to McKenna had before Ipswich's championship promotion season (especially given their league 1 bankrolling). Would be a ludicrously ballsy appointment for sports republic and a hell of a gamble for saints generally... But I reckon he's one to watch for the next few years to see where he gets to. Also, from a Saints / SR perspective, he's already had some successes and bettered selles this season in league 1, so that probably rules him out of being "unrealised potential" 😆

Depends if they lose McKenna to a prem side, which could happen. They're bankrolled to the hilt by their ownership group unfortunatley, right on PSR loss limits last season and the owners paid all that off to keep them debt free. Its a very good job for McKenna.

For comparison, here is a selection of Bournemouth's business over the past 2 seasons, Huijsen (19 years old) cost 15M euros, Kepa was a loan, Kluivert (24years old) was 10M euros, Alex Scot (19) signed for 23M euros. Similar Southampton signings, THB (22years old) 23Million euros, Ramsdale (26) for 21.5M euros, Fynn Downes (25) for 18M euros, Fernandes for £15M euros. In themselves, these aren't bad signings comparatively. Bournemouth also spent nearly 40M euros on evanison for example, whereas we spent 17.5M euros on Archer... The issue for me is that we got relegated and had to sell sell sell to meet PSR restrictions (we got relegated and turned a £5M profit). But the squad is now threadbare with regards to depth for premier league, and far worse than the last squad that got relegated. Players like those listed above were required, and we'd have struggled to make significant savings on them. The issue is where we've tried to build squad depth across a large part of the team with bargain basement players (BBD for 8.5M euros, Sugawara for 7M euroes, Wood and Edwards for 7M total (not in themselves bad buys for the future, but not for this year). In a lot of ways, saints were damned if they do, and damned if they don't - yes, these players aren't good enough - but trying to get good prem players for the sums of money they cost was always going to be a hard ask. In that vein, there were also some bad loans and freebies (cornet, Gronbaek, Fraser, taylor) etc. Although Lesley hasn't been too bad in the end. Having no real DoF at the club meant were always destined to be up against it recruitment wise, in what was a compacted and crucial summer window - and that is on Sports Republic!

Martin played good football badly. He will likely develop though, and he may prove ultimately to be a top level manager. Time will tell whether we'll ultimately regret binning him off. He was not keeping us in the premier league however, and the decision to sack him when we did, with no clear plan in place was a poor one. Either we should have done it far far far sooner, or we should have committed to him knowing we'd be in the champ anyway. What we actually did was just an almighty mess.

In addition to these figures, they've also just posted a £19.4M loss for last season (2023-24), which means the latest rolling 3 year loss is £201.6M. If they don't get some kind of sanction this season or next season PSR is dead in the water. The joke of it is we ripped the squad totally apart to raise money and make a £5M profit last season.

Leicester's rolling 3year loss is in excess of £200M... even if they hadn't been relegated they'd have had an allowable loss of £105M - i'm not sure what the year in the champ reduces that down to. I know they get away with cheating, but surely they're in for a points deduction on arrival? On top of that, if Vardy is still there he'll be 38next season, and they've tied a load of older "past it" players on to long contracts (they gave vestergard a 3 year deal aged 32 ffs). I think they're actually in trouble, especially if they finally get done for cheating.

Most of the goals against came in 6-7 matches, most of which were in the first few games when we had huge player turnover and a complete change in playing style to "martin ball". Outside of those games, we averaging just over 1 goal against per game. Baz was doing alright, even with the suicide football in front of him. The bigger issue now is that rather than having a year to develop, he's had a year out with a nasty injury that will certainly have impacted his sweeper keeper play (which was one of his main strengths). Subject to what manager/style Sports Republic bring in next, i think its quite possible Baz won't have a place at saints beyond the summer regardless (i'm sure many will rejoice at that).

Is it reasonable to condemn Selles for the mess he inherited at Saints in an awful relegation season? And isn't assistant manager to manager quite a common career progression? Within it there will be both good and bad examples... Top of my head i am pretty sure there are some very prominant examples of assistants/coaches that managed it at the same club: Zidane, Mourinho Eddie Howe Liverpool have a bit of a history of this - Bob paisley and Joe Fagan Joachim Low - successfully made this transition both at international and club level Also, didn't Di matteo win both the champions league and fa cup as chelsea caretaker? 😅 Outside of that, there are plenty of managers that have gone from being an assistant manager to a manager... two fairly quick/prominent examples in recent history would be Maresca and Arteta...

If Ralph is available and interested, he is the best name mentioned so far. Sadly I think there is no chance of him coming back to work under sports republic. Would like to see him with a competent DoF behind him. He had us competitive in the prem with an absolutely horrendous squad and nearly kept us up, I'd have no concerns over him getting us promoted out of the 2nd tier with one of the strongest squads in it, and similarly - he knows exactly what he needs to stay in the prem when building his side.