6 days to go...

[Lallana's Left Peg]

Going into the summer we owed ~£27m in unpaid transfer fees. So I think that covers much of the difference between the transfer fees we received compared to what we spent, even if every transfer will be paid over a different period of time.

 

In addition I suspect that our wage bill would have increased this summer too - whilst Lallana, Lambert, and Lovren would all earn good money I doubt Chambers or Shaw earn a massive amount (relatively speaking). I would imagine Forster, Bertrand, Long, Elia, and Alderweireld all earn very good money, whilst Tadic, Mane, and Gardos are all senior players who will have decent deals too. Plus many of our younger players will have accelerators in their deals which mean they earn more money for each year of their contract (assuming we follow standard practice). That said, we did also clear some bad contracts in the summer (Sharp, Bernard, etc.).

 

To offset this I think our increased revenue this season from league position and TV appearances would be ~£7.5m (and that is conservative), and I doubt that was accounted or budgeted for therefore I suspect there would be some wriggle room for a loan but not a big transfer, especially if we didn't want to compromise the potential permanent deals for our three loan players.

 

However, I still think finding a striker who will fit the profile of what we need and be comfortable to be backup will be hard and we'll sit tight.