How much will Saints spend this summer?

[Bewildered]

I noticed today that the Guardian has a transfer window preview of sorts for all the PL teams, going through what each team will want or needs and how much money is available. Here is the section about Southampton, written by Paul Doyle, their chief football writer.

 

Southampton may have to replace much of the rearguard that excelled last season. Toby Alderweireld’s loan from Atlético Madrid expires so the club will either have to activate their option to buy the centre-back – who may prefer to join an even bigger club – or find someone else. The right-back Nathaniel Clyne may move on too while a new goalkeeper could be on the cards, with Fraser Forster injured until the new year. If Morgan Schneiderlin is sold, another central midfielder will be a must while a striker to relieve the reliance on Graziao Pellè is also sought. PD

 

Top targets Toby Alderweireld (Atlético Madrid, £7m), Idrissa Gueye (Lille, £7m), Jordy Clasie (Feyenoord, £12m)

 

May end up with Some relatively unknown gem from the Dutch league

 

Transfer kitty Around £30m, plus income from sales

 

Already signed None

 

The main body of the writing is fairly obvious, but what is interesting is the speculation that the club is willing to spend 30m plus income from sales. This would mean we could have

 

Base budget: 30m

Schneiderlin: 25m (speculated worth)

Clyne: 15m (speculated asking price)

 

Giving a total of up to 70m plus whatever we can get if we can shift overpaid misfits like Ramirez and Osvaldo. Obviously if there are sell on clauses and the like involved in the two big sales it could be somewhat lower, but it could be that there is a significant budget to replace what is lost and then some.

 

Do you think this estimate will prove accurate? If not how much do you think we will spend in the close season?

 

In my opinion, I would be shocked if we end up with a 30m net spend. My guess is it will be nearer 10-15m plus sales as I think the club will be playing it safe.

[Red]

http://www.dailyecho.co.uk/sport/12974713.Southampton_s___80m_cash_bonanza/?ref=ar

 

£30M is easily affordable if you believe the above link. That's even allowing for the surplus from last year's transfers funding contracts, agents fees, existing debts etc.

[fez]

If you look at the entries for the other clubs in that Guardian piece

http://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2015/jun/01/premier-league-transfer-window-clubs

you'll see that most of them have an estimated transfer kitty in the £20m - £30m range (and of course the 'big six' have more)

[Lallana's Left Peg]

Independent of departures, I can't see us spending £30m. As per Les Reed's comments in May:

 

The Saints' sporting director believes that bringing through their own youth products will be more important than making new additions to the team.

 

Reed wants to see a number of Southampton's brightest talents break into the senior squad and he insists that the club won't block their progress by bringing in high profile stars.

 

"You want a bit more strength, but what we've built is an academy that supplies players to the first team so we'll get our strength in depth from that," he said.

 

"We'll tweak the team in terms of balance and we've got loan players we need to convert or replace, so that's more likely to be the type of activity we have in the transfer market."

 

I don't think we have the money to do so anyway - and we need to shift Ramirez and Osvaldo which won't be easy.

[Mattio]

Independent of departures, I can't see us spending £30m. As per Les Reed's comments in May:

 

 

 

I don't think we have the money to do so anyway - and we need to shift Ramirez and Osvaldo which won't be easy.

Can't see us getting rid of them without needing to pay off a fair wack of their remaining contracts.

[Dalek2003]

We need to spend about £40 million on some good quality players, you cannot stand still in the Premier League.

[Batman]

considering we never touched last years TV money.......

 

reckon about £45m

[Window Cleaner]

considering we never touched last years TV money.......

 

reckon about £45m

 

And with what have we been paying the players, staff and diverse operating costs since then?

[Batman]

And with what have we been paying the players, staff and diverse operating costs since then?

 

I thought it was at about 60% of our turnover in relation to wages. that still leaves a whopping wedge left over.

[Minsk]

My prediction:

 

Ins:

 

Stekelenburg - Loan

 

Virgil Van Dyke - 10m - (Our annual 10m purchase from Celtic)

 

Byram - 3m

 

Classie - 12m

 

Djuricic - 7m

 

Elia - 3m

 

Austin - 10m

 

Total - 45m

 

 

Out:

 

Clyne - 15m

 

Morgan - 25m

 

Gaston - 3m

 

Mayuka - 2m

 

Osvaldo - Loan

 

Total - 45m

 

Net spend - 0

[Redslo]

Remember that looking at profits is misleading. Income from player sales is included in profits, but the costs of buying players are amortized over the lifetime of the player's contract (everything is in pounds even though I am American):

 

Thus, if we sell 100 Million worth of players (assume no remaining unamortized cost for those players), buy 100 million in players, and sign them to four year contracts that yields a player trading profit of 75 million minus this year's amortization for players already with the club. Yet, there is no inherent positive cash flow to show for that 75 million. Depending on the salaries of the outgoing and the incoming players their might be a cash flow negative from the transactions.

 

In the year ending June 2013 Southampton had 13.2 million in player amortization plus an additional 2.1 million in impairment costs (which I assume is a hodgepodge of lost value for players not deemed good enough.) Total salary costs were 47.1 million.

 

In the year ending June 2014 Southampton had 20.7 million in player amortization plus ad additional 6.3 million in impairment costs (which I assume is mostly the cost of Osvaldo head butting Fonte.) Total salary costs were 63 million.

 

Very likely all of these numbers (except maybe impairment costs) will be up again for the season that just passed and the season yet to come.

 

The remaining book value of our players as of June 30 2014 was 41.1 million. The value of players bought after June 30 must be added to that. Likely there will be additional impairment costs as well--in fact, if Ramirez and Osvaldo are sufficiently impaired they might be sold at a paper profit since the bulk of their cost will already be off the books. Of course, the paper profit does not change the reality of the real loss their purchase entailed.

 

My point: we do not necessarily have lots of money to spend unless we sell some players for big money. That will change next season with the big new television contracts but all of our competitors will have more money too.

[sadoldgit]

I don't think the amount we spend this summer is important. It is who we spend it on that matters.

[SuperSAINT]

I think we will spend very close to what we make on sales.

[Goatboy]

£8.27

[Donatello]

I thought it was at about 60% of our turnover in relation to wages. that still leaves a whopping wedge left over.

 

You're joking, right?

[Doctoroncall]

I don't think the amount we spend this summer is important. It is who we spend it on that matters.

 

Need to also consider Les Reed's comments on strengthening the first team so A replacement to any important players leaving (so thinking first team players). I cannot imagine a youngster like Reed being lined up to replace Schneiderlin, whereas Osvaldo I can see that happening too with Gallagher.

[Hodgey]

Les Reed would certainly be earning his crust if he can get anything at all for Mayuka Osvaldo and Ramirez given their spectacular failures (be that abilily, attitude, fitness, simply mental etc). I would see it as a massive bonus if he could manage to send them packing as that alone would save us c £7m in wages. Thinking about that it does completely vindicate KLs removal of Cortese - I wonder how many other vanity projects we would have been lumbered with if he had continued to operate unchecked. On which basis I would say that we would be looking at spending £20m on a GK, Att Mid and Striker due to our increased income, with any income for sold players used to replace like for like (but at c 1/2 of the amount). So assuming Clyne and Spiderman do go for £40m - I would predict another £20m to add to the £20m. That certainly seems to be how it panned out last season (we spent c £52m and sold c £90m). I like this idea of predicting sales however as fun so here goes

Out

Clyne £12m

Spiderman £22m

Gardos £4m

 

In

Austin £15m

Claise £12m

Byram £5m

Janmaat £10m

One of Arsenals 3 keepers Loan

[hasper57saint]

This is almost as impossible as predicting results.Who would have thought we would spend £12 million for Long? Charlie Austin? Have no idea.We can only wait and see.Les and Kat are quite shrewd when it comes to spending money. We'll not go down the Osvaldo road again that's for sure.