Summer Transfer Window 2021

[TWar]

4 minutes ago, supersonic said:

Long isn't going to Reading. They haven't got a pot to piss in 

Long would cost basically nothing, we'd probably loan till end of contract.

[Turkish]

23 minutes ago, egg said:

When £100m + of signings don't pay off, and have no resale value, its inevitable that we can't spend on new players. Had we been able to offload those signings at cost we'd be better placed, but we have no way of recouping what we've wasted. Throw payoffs to shit managers, Forster, no commercial revenue, etc in the mix and its easy to see why we're on a mess. It's been a shit storm for years and the current lot have got an unenviable job. 

Yet those transfer fees have been from sales, the only club that has done that. Everyone else spends more than they make from transfers. Which makes the shit show even worse. 

[supersonic]

Just now, TWar said:

Long would cost basically nothing, we'd probably loan till end of contract.

Apart from the fact they're under a transfer embargo and his wages are astronomical, it's almost believable 

[TWar]

2 minutes ago, supersonic said:

Apart from the fact they're under a transfer embargo and his wages are astronomical, it's almost believable 

Can't they still loan during the transfer embargo? Also, they could just cover a % of his wage in the final year to get them off our books.

[saint lard]

6 minutes ago, supersonic said:

Apart from the fact they're under a transfer embargo and his wages are astronomical, it's almost believable 

The embargo continues to allow Royals to sign players on a free transfer or on loan, but the club is not allowed to spend any money on transfer fees and players' wages must be sensible.

Clubs can also show that there is a bona fide need to strengthen and that there is room within the squad to add players.

[TWar]

2 minutes ago, saint lard said:

The embargo continues to allow Royals to sign players on a free transfer or on loan, but the club is not allowed to spend any money on transfer fees and players' wages must be sensible.

Clubs can also show that there is a bona fide need to strengthen and that there is room within the squad to add players.

Shouldn't be too hard to show, they have 14 first team players by the looks of things. They will definitely be making a few loans.

[egg]

9 minutes ago, Turkish said:

Yet those transfer fees have been from sales, the only club that has done that. Everyone else spends more than they make from transfers. Which makes the shit show even worse. 

Chicken or Egg scenario. You've seen the accounts, there's a massive black hole. If we got our cash back on that dross, we'd be OK. As it is, the money has gone and there is no way of getting it back. We're a bit fucked. 

[Turkish]

Just now, egg said:

Chicken or Egg scenario. You've seen the accounts, there's a massive black hole. If we got our cash back on that dross, we'd be OK. As it is, the money has gone and there is no way of getting it back. We're a bit fucked. 

The point being we are fucked despite being the being the only club in the premier league to make a profit from player trading. Which shows just how bad a job has been done. 

[egg]

2 minutes ago, Turkish said:

The point being we are fucked despite being the being the only club in the premier league to make a profit from player trading. Which shows just how bad a job has been done. 

We can't just use player sales money on player purchases. It all goes in and out of the pot. The accounts are in the public domain. We make a loss. Our wages cripple us. We therefore have to sell to a) keep going and b) buy / loan, and when you take £100m + out of the pot that you'll never get back, you have to duck and dive. 

 

[Turkish]

6 minutes ago, egg said:

We can't just use player sales money on player purchases. It all goes in and out of the pot. The accounts are in the public domain. We make a loss. Our wages cripple us. We therefore have to sell to a) keep going and b) buy / loan, and when you take £100m + out of the pot that you'll never get back, you have to duck and dive. 

 

Exactly. And we are in this mess despite being the only club to make a profit from player trading, what a shambles 

[JRM]

5 minutes ago, Turkish said:

Exactly. And we are in this mess despite being the only club to make a profit from player trading, what a shambles 

I know deep down you take some pride in the net spend trophy, still possible this year if we can get some decent fees for Vest and Ings 

[Turkish]

1 minute ago, JRM said:

I know deep down you take some pride in the net spend trophy, still possible this year if we can get some decent fees for Vest and Ings 

as its the only thing we’re ever likely to win we must measure success accordingly.

[Verbal]

51 minutes ago, SuperSAINT said:

Behind a paywall — Can you copy & paste it, please? 

It's too long to do that unfortunately.  Smith's starting point is that Giorgos Giakoumakis came out of nowhere but was top scorer in the Dutch league last season - for a failing club. Before that - practically nothing.  So was Giakoumakis a product of an easy league, or pure blind luck, or is he with a team that played to his strengths and hid his weaknesses? 

Smith broadly comes down on the third option but his analysis is a bit more nuanced than that.  If the Giakoumakis rumour turns out to be true, it does beg the question of whether Ralph can work out how to perform the same trick in a much tougher league.

[SuperSAINT]

7 minutes ago, Verbal said:

It's too long to do that unfortunately.  Smith's starting point is that Giorgos Giakoumakis came out of nowhere but was top scorer in the Dutch league last season - for a failing club. Before that - practically nothing.  So was Giakoumakis a product of an easy league, or pure blind luck, or is he with a team that played to his strengths and hid his weaknesses? 

Smith broadly comes down on the third option but his analysis is a bit more nuanced than that.  If the Giakoumakis rumour turns out to be true, it does beg the question of whether Ralph can work out how to perform the same trick in a much tougher league.

Cheers for that.  Pelle was a tiny bit like that, I thought.

[egg]

16 minutes ago, Verbal said:

It's too long to do that unfortunately.  Smith's starting point is that Giorgos Giakoumakis came out of nowhere but was top scorer in the Dutch league last season - for a failing club. Before that - practically nothing.  So was Giakoumakis a product of an easy league, or pure blind luck, or is he with a team that played to his strengths and hid his weaknesses? 

Smith broadly comes down on the third option but his analysis is a bit more nuanced than that.  If the Giakoumakis rumour turns out to be true, it does beg the question of whether Ralph can work out how to perform the same trick in a much tougher league.

Thanks. Interesting rumour, and an interesting sounding player. 

[supersonic]

2 hours ago, TWar said:

Can't they still loan during the transfer embargo? Also, they could just cover a % of his wage in the final year to get them off our books.

Cover a % of his wages? They're still over FFP and he's on £60k a week. They may have got some money in for Olise but his wages and those that have ready left aren't exactly making in-roads.

I'd be shocked if they get him on loan, unless we pay 90% of his wages which, if we do, is madness 

[Ex Lion Tamer]

2 hours ago, JRM said:

I know deep down you take some pride in the net spend trophy, still possible this year if we can get some decent fees for Vest and Ings 

We were only 7th last summer so we've got some improving to do

https://www.football365.com/news/transfers-premier-league-net-spend-table-2020

We actually look on course to have a similar net spend this year, maybe even a bit more

Edited 22 July, 2021 by Ex Lion Tamer

[verlaine1979]

2 hours ago, egg said:

We can't just use player sales money on player purchases. It all goes in and out of the pot. The accounts are in the public domain. We make a loss. Our wages cripple us. We therefore have to sell to a) keep going and b) buy / loan, and when you take £100m + out of the pot that you'll never get back, you have to duck and dive. 

 

Our wage to turnover ratio is high, but we're not an outlier by any stretch. For the most recent figures I could find, we're on 77% while Everton and Leicester are 85% and 84% respectively. Palace are on 78%, while Brighton and West Ham are also both over 70%. Post-promotion ratios for the likes of Villa and Leeds aren't available from what I can tell, but I wouldn't be surprised if they are on par or ahead of us.

Over the past five years, all of those clubs, apart from Palace, have a net transfer spend of over £100m (Everton being at the top with +£275m). Palace are more modest with a net spend of +£56.2m. Our net spend is -£2.8m.

It must be acknowledged that it is the ownership that is crippling the club's ability to spend on both transfer fees and wages, as we aren't even close to being a unique case in terms of our ratios and deficits.

[Ex Lion Tamer]

5 minutes ago, verlaine1979 said:

Our wage to turnover ratio is high, but we're not an outlier by any stretch. For the most recent figures I could find, we're on 77% while Everton and Leicester are 85% and 84% respectively. Palace are on 78%, while Brighton and West Ham are also both over 70%. Post-promotion ratios for the likes of Villa and Leeds aren't available from what I can tell, but I wouldn't be surprised if they are on par or ahead of us.

Over the past five years, all of those clubs, apart from Palace, have a net transfer spend of over £100m (Everton being at the top with +£275m). Palace are more modest with a net spend of +£56.2m. Our net spend is -£2.8m.

It must be acknowledged that it is the ownership that is crippling the club's ability to spend on both transfer fees and wages, as we aren't even close to being a unique case in terms of our ratios and deficits.

It's difficult when the stats are a bit out of date, but another way of putting this is that Saints had (comfortably) the 5th highest wages/turnover ratio in the league. 

Transfermarkt currently has five teams with lower net spend than us over the past five seasons, though it could be skewed by the fact we're part way through this window 

https://www.transfermarkt.co.uk/premier-league/fuenfjahresvergleich/wettbewerb/GB1

Clearly our owner is not putting money in but I'm not sure we're any better or worse than other clubs with owners that can't afford to invest their own money

[Turkish]

6 minutes ago, verlaine1979 said:

Our wage to turnover ratio is high, but we're not an outlier by any stretch. For the most recent figures I could find, we're on 77% while Everton and Leicester are 85% and 84% respectively. Palace are on 78%, while Brighton and West Ham are also both over 70%. Post-promotion ratios for the likes of Villa and Leeds aren't available from what I can tell, but I wouldn't be surprised if they are on par or ahead of us.

Over the past five years, all of those clubs, apart from Palace, have a net transfer spend of over £100m (Everton being at the top with +£275m). Palace are more modest with a net spend of +£56.2m. Our net spend is -£2.8m.

It must be acknowledged that it is the ownership that is crippling the club's ability to spend on both transfer fees and wages, as we aren't even close to being a unique case in terms of our ratios and deficits.

 But even before Goa and precovid we had to sell to buy. We only employed out of work managers so we didn’t have to pay compensation. It’s been this way for 7 years now, the only club to make a profit from transfers. All clubs make crap signings, all clubs appoint crap managers, only us seem to be on our arse. No doubt about it the well run club mantra that was trotted out is bollocks. We’ve been a shambles for years, unfortunately the current lot have to try and scramble through. 

[DT]

Kane to City for £160m means you can add 20mill to Ings valuation Mr Levy. And vestergard for that matter. 

[Cartman]

21 minutes ago, verlaine1979 said:

It must be acknowledged that it is the ownership that is crippling the club's ability to spend on both transfer fees and wages, as we aren't even close to being a unique case in terms of our ratios and deficits.

Utter bollocks, unless by ownership you mean the plus size Paris Hilton and her incompetent minions, we have spent almost 3 years trying to undo the damage they did between 2014 and 2018. Here is the net spend table up to and including summer 2019, so it excludes the Van Dijk money distorting ins or outs and includes the collection of duds bloating our wage bill. It looks about right considering our wage to turnover ratio was 77% (5th highest) in 2018/19 and 90% (6th highest) in 2019/20. Leicester and West Ham are only slightly above us and Chelsea and Liverpool are even below us.

[egg]

11 hours ago, verlaine1979 said:

Our wage to turnover ratio is high, but we're not an outlier by any stretch. For the most recent figures I could find, we're on 77% while Everton and Leicester are 85% and 84% respectively. Palace are on 78%, while Brighton and West Ham are also both over 70%. Post-promotion ratios for the likes of Villa and Leeds aren't available from what I can tell, but I wouldn't be surprised if they are on par or ahead of us.

Over the past five years, all of those clubs, apart from Palace, have a net transfer spend of over £100m (Everton being at the top with +£275m). Palace are more modest with a net spend of +£56.2m. Our net spend is -£2.8m.

It must be acknowledged that it is the ownership that is crippling the club's ability to spend on both transfer fees and wages, as we aren't even close to being a unique case in terms of our ratios and deficits.

This net spend focus is a flawed approach. The clubs finances, like any business or even household, has to be looked at as a whole. Whether our revenue comes from player sales, gate receipts, sponsorship, TV, equity injection, or anything is irrelevant. If we spend more than we receive whether on players, wages, agents, anything, we make a loss and become unsustainable.

Too many fans seem think that player sales money goes in a little jar to be used pound for pound on new ones. It doesn't work like that, and it's not helped when £100m + gets wasted and we have no obvious resource from which we can draw more revenue. 

[Saint Garrett]

The wages / turnover ratio is partly distorted view, as clubs couldn't "recognise" all the TV money in the last accounting period due to the season being pushed out into the summer.

Whether we like it or not, the club plans to be self sustainable, which is basically impossible for a football club unless you're scouting is on point and you sell on players for large fees and recruit for low fees.  Unfortunately, not many other clubs are run self sustainably and rely on owners throwing money into the club.  It's clearly not helping us compete, especially with the £100m we spunked up the wall on the unsellables.

[Roo1976]

11 hours ago, Cartman said:

Utter bollocks, unless by ownership you mean the plus size Paris Hilton and her incompetent minions, we have spent almost 3 years trying to undo the damage they did between 2014 and 2018. Here is the net spend table up to and including summer 2019, so it excludes the Van Dijk money distorting ins or outs and includes the collection of duds bloating our wage bill. It looks about right considering our wage to turnover ratio was 77% (5th highest) in 2018/19 and 90% (6th highest) in 2019/20. Leicester and West Ham are only slightly above us and Chelsea and Liverpool are even below us.

If that's how the table finished for the coming season it would be interesting.......... minus Bournemouth obviously.

[beatlesaint]

We are like a corner shop going to the same market as Harrods and Fortnum & Mason, we try and scrape together loose change to raise a bit extra to be able to afford a Blackburn player or Man Utd player on loan. Depressing.

[tajjuk]

18 hours ago, Bob76 said:

Don't forget the wages it would free up.

 

Yeh it's wages more I would reckon.  

Have to remember we are still probably accounting or budgeting for, I would reckon around £100k a week offer for Ings.  I would reckon another £70-80k a week is also on the table for Vestergaard and someone like Armstrong probably got a pay rise to around the £70k a week I reckon, probably from around a £30-40k a week salary coming out of Scotland.  So those contracts offered to those two players can't be offered anywhere else until they definitely decline them and the players are probably gone. 

Then I would reckon the likes of Hoedt, Lemina, Carrillo, Forster, Long, Boufal etc. all these players would be on wages of like £50-70k a week, so relative high earners in the squad that basically haven't contributed much to the squad at all. 

Even with some of those gone, I reckon we are or have been contributing some wages to get rid of them, as certainly the likes of Anderlecht, Angers, Getafe, etc. can't come anywhere near those wages, so it wouldn't surprise me if we weren't subsidising the wages of some of those players.

Basically we are repairing the damage of signing multiple players for around £15-18 million, probably on 4-5 year contracts of £50-70k a week, which as a total package going to be something like £25 - 35 million PER PLAYER over the length of their contracts, and we've done that what 5 or 6 or even 7 times, back to back pretty much with basically ZERO impact on the club.

If you add up the fees and wages of Boufal, Carrillo, Hoedt, Lemina, Elynoussi, Forsters new contract, Long's new contract etc. and then consider that we have got very little back in fees, loan fees etc. AND they have offered basically nothing to the team over that period, so we have had to have actual players as well doing a job for the team.

Then we have probably wasted around £150 - 180 million on transfer fees and wages on basically nothing over the last 3-4 years. 

Yes other clubs have transfer duds, I doubt other clubs have had so many transfer duds back to back, on high wages, that they then have not been able to sell on. 

Yeh there is one, on a much more massive scale, it's Barcelona and they are royally effed. 

16 hours ago, SuperSAINT said:

Behind a paywall — Can you copy & paste it, please? 

Stop the page loading before the pay wall thing comes in, you can just read it then. 

Edited 23 July, 2021 by tajjuk

[Saint Mikey]

2 minutes ago, beatlesaint said:

We are like a corner shop going to the same market as Harrods and Fortnum & Mason, we try and scrape together loose change to raise a bit extra to be able to afford a Blackburn player or Man Utd player on loan. Depressing.

Depressing? Time for a bit of perspective maybe? I think it was depressing when we signed garbage like Anthony Pulis, Jordan Robertson, Romain Gasmi and Tommy Forecast. Players that were never good enough for us, barely played (if at all) and showed we were utterly desperate. Looking to sign a promising young player from Utd and a player who scored 28 goals in the Championship is not in that bracket.

[Toadhall Saint]

2 minutes ago, Saint Mikey said:

Depressing? Time for a bit of perspective maybe? I think it was depressing when we signed garbage like Anthony Pulis, Jordan Robertson, Romain Gasmi and Tommy Forecast. Players that were never good enough for us, barely played (if at all) and showed we were utterly desperate. Looking to sign a promising young player from Utd and a player who scored 28 goals in the Championship is not in that bracket.

Quite. 

[Lighthouse]

19 minutes ago, beatlesaint said:

We are like a corner shop going to the same market as Harrods and Fortnum & Mason, we try and scrape together loose change to raise a bit extra to be able to afford a Blackburn player or Man Utd player on loan. Depressing.

Remember in 2014 when we had to sell players just to get a loan from Athletico Madrid and sign a player from FC Twente…

[Smirking_Saint]

16 hours ago, Turkish said:

Yet those transfer fees have been from sales, the only club that has done that. Everyone else spends more than they make from transfers. Which makes the shit show even worse. 

This basically

I appreciate our transfer strategy allows us to be financially viable and stops us from stretching beyond our means, but football finances are, and always will be intrinsically linked with on field progression

At some point you need to stretch in order to ensure your PL survival, especially in a season such as this where we are so obviously calling out for reinforcements

It doesn't matter how careful we are financially if we end up in the Championship as that event has the potential to decimate any financial plans we have.

[alehouseboys]

44 minutes ago, tajjuk said:

Yeh it's wages more I would reckon.  

Have to remember we are still probably accounting or budgeting for, I would reckon around £100k a week offer for Ings.  I would reckon another £70-80k a week is also on the table for Vestergaard and someone like Armstrong probably got a pay rise to around the £70k a week I reckon, probably from around a £30-40k a week salary coming out of Scotland.  So those contracts offered to those two players can't be offered anywhere else until they definitely decline them and the players are probably gone. 

Then I would reckon the likes of Hoedt, Lemina, Carrillo, Forster, Long, Boufal etc. all these players would be on wages of like £50-70k a week, so relative high earners in the squad that basically haven't contributed much to the squad at all. 

Even with some of those gone, I reckon we are or have been contributing some wages to get rid of them, as certainly the likes of Anderlecht, Angers, Getafe, etc. can't come anywhere near those wages, so it wouldn't surprise me if we weren't subsidising the wages of some of those players.

Basically we are repairing the damage of signing multiple players for around £15-18 million, probably on 4-5 year contracts of £50-70k a week, which as a total package going to be something like £25 - 35 million PER PLAYER over the length of their contracts, and we've done that what 5 or 6 or even 7 times, back to back pretty much with basically ZERO impact on the club.

If you add up the fees and wages of Boufal, Carrillo, Hoedt, Lemina, Elynoussi, Forsters new contract, Long's new contract etc. and then consider that we have got very little back in fees, loan fees etc. AND they have offered basically nothing to the team over that period, so we have had to have actual players as well doing a job for the team.

Then we have probably wasted around £150 - 180 million on transfer fees and wages on basically nothing over the last 3-4 years. 

Yes other clubs have transfer duds, I doubt other clubs have had so many transfer duds back to back, on high wages, that they then have not been able to sell on. 

Yeh there is one, on a much more massive scale, it's Barcelona and they are royally effed. 

Stop the page loading before the pay wall thing comes in, you can just read it then. 

And to think, just a few years back we were being lauded as the blueprint for ambitious mid-table PL clubs (including Leicester when they got promoted...look what happened to them!). What a shitstorm.

[egg]

2 minutes ago, alehouseboys said:

And to think, just a few years back we were being lauded as the blueprint for ambitious mid-table PL clubs (including Leicester when they got promoted...look what happened to them!). What a shitstorm.

And we still would be if we'd bought players who could improve the team, and then be sold at a profit, or even moved on and the wages offloaded. The blueprint in itself was/is ok of we didn't/don't sign duds. 

[Ex Lion Tamer]

34 minutes ago, Smirking_Saint said:

This basically

I appreciate our transfer strategy allows us to be financially viable and stops us from stretching beyond our means, but football finances are, and always will be intrinsically linked with on field progression

At some point you need to stretch in order to ensure your PL survival, especially in a season such as this where we are so obviously calling out for reinforcements

It doesn't matter how careful we are financially if we end up in the Championship as that event has the potential to decimate any financial plans we have.

But if we keep stretching season after season then we'll go bust. Unless you can find a wealthy benefactor then the only option is to live within our means. What we do do is invest for future growth by focusing on young players with resell value - one biggie and everything will change.

[Neef]

In an ideal world, I imagine the club, the manager and the CEO would want to spend more money too. 

But unfortunately we have an owner who for whatever reason isn't investing into the club, and who is actively trying to sell. 

Add to that, we've had no matchday revenues for the past 18 months and had to take out loans to get by during Covid. 

And then add to that the heavy wage bill and the line of high-paid deadwood on the books. And factor in a failed transfer / managerial peroid  a few years back, meaning that we haven't been able to buy low and sell high like we used to. 

Basically, I don't know where the club would get the money from to splash out like pretty much every other team bar Burnley & maybe Brighton. 

[Ex Lion Tamer]

1 hour ago, Saint Garrett said:

The wages / turnover ratio is partly distorted view, as clubs couldn't "recognise" all the TV money in the last accounting period due to the season being pushed out into the summer.

Whether we like it or not, the club plans to be self sustainable, which is basically impossible for a football club unless you're scouting is on point and you sell on players for large fees and recruit for low fees.  Unfortunately, not many other clubs are run self sustainably and rely on owners throwing money into the club.  It's clearly not helping us compete, especially with the £100m we spunked up the wall on the unsellables.

How many of the 92 professional clubs in England do you think have owners that invest their own money? Only a fraction I'd suggest. Our problem is that it is becoming harder to compete in the Premier League but getting into unmanageable debt is not a good alternative

[Saint_clark]

16 hours ago, Turkish said:

The point being we are fucked despite being the being the only club in the premier league to make a profit from player trading. Which shows just how bad a job has been done. 

It's false that we've made a profit, since being back in the Prem we've spent more on transfer fees than we've received.

[Turkish]

4 minutes ago, Saint_clark said:

It's false that we've made a profit, since being back in the Prem we've spent more on transfer fees than we've received.

I think you'll find most of that was in the early years when in the first two seasons after promotion we have a positive spend of about £65m. Since 2014/15 season we've pretty much spent what we've made, with a small profit. Exactly the same model we had under lowe we have now under Shanghai Leisure Holdings. 

Edited 23 July, 2021 by Turkish

[Wade Garrett]

I like this self-sustainable.

We could be self-sustainable in the Prem, then the Championship, then League 1.

Masterstroke Mr Gao.  I will be forever indebted to you for lining Kat’s pockets and setting us on the road to self-sustainability.

[Turkish]

2 minutes ago, Wade Garrett said:

I like this self-sustainable.

We could be self-sustainable in the Prem, then the Championship, then League 1.

Masterstroke Mr Gao.  I will be forever indebted to you for lining Kat’s pockets and setting us on the road to self-sustainability.

 

Our new club anthem to the tune of Mel and Kims Respectable

Sell to buy, dont ask questions why

we always gotta be sustainable 

 

[Ex Lion Tamer]

21 minutes ago, Wade Garrett said:

I like this self-sustainable.

We could be self-sustainable in the Prem, then the Championship, then League 1.

Masterstroke Mr Gao.  I will be forever indebted to you for lining Kat’s pockets and setting us on the road to self-sustainability.

Or we could spend beyond our means like Pompey/Bolton et al and also end up in League 1

[Turkish]

2 minutes ago, Ex Lion Tamer said:

Or we could spend beyond our means like Pompey/Bolton et al and also end up in League 1

There is no middle ground. It this or certain relegation, bankruptcy with a future playing in leagues 1 and 2 forever 

[Ex Lion Tamer]

2 minutes ago, Turkish said:

There is no middle ground. It this or certain relegation, bankruptcy with a future playing in leagues 1 and 2 forever 

Looks that way doesn't it. To be fair, it's equally hysterical to say we'll definitely end up in League 1 if we spend within our means

[Smirking_Saint]

10 minutes ago, Ex Lion Tamer said:

Or we could spend beyond our means like Pompey/Bolton et al and also end up in League 1

This is what I'm saying though, we don't have to go hell for leather, its unnecessary... but when required we need the funds available to ensure we are comfortably able to remain in the PL

This is one of those situations, Id happily nail my colours to the mast here and suggest without spending more than we receive it will be a miracle if we have a season outside of the danger of relegation

Like you followed up... we're stuck behind a rock and a hard place.... overspend and we go bust, fail to secure the right playing assets, we are relegated... and probably go bust

[Saint Garrett]

The sustainable model is likely to only keep us treading water, until we get some transfers wrong and get relegated.

[Ex Lion Tamer]

8 minutes ago, Smirking_Saint said:

This is what I'm saying though, we don't have to go hell for leather, its unnecessary... but when required we need the funds available to ensure we are comfortably able to remain in the PL

This is one of those situations, Id happily nail my colours to the mast here and suggest without spending more than we receive it will be a miracle if we have a season outside of the danger of relegation

Like you followed up... we're stuck behind a rock and a hard place.... overspend and we go bust, fail to secure the right playing assets, we are relegated... and probably go bust

We stayed up comfortably last season and are one of the longest serving teams in the division, certainly outside the big clubs

[miserableoldgit]

25 minutes ago, Turkish said:

There is no middle ground. It this or certain relegation, bankruptcy with a future playing in leagues 1 and 2 forever 

Presumably the middle ground could be Leeds Utd after their "adventures" in Europe.....?

[Ex Lion Tamer]

12 minutes ago, miserableoldgit said:

Presumably the middle ground could be Leeds Utd after their "adventures" in Europe.....?

Our own club gambled on future revenues and ended up in administration. Amazing that fans want to go down that route again

[Saint Fan CaM]

4 hours ago, Turkish said:

I think you'll find most of that was in the early years when in the first two seasons after promotion we have a positive spend of about £65m. Since 2014/15 season we've pretty much spent what we've made, with a small profit. Exactly the same model we had under lowe we have now under Shanghai Leisure Holdings. 

Almost. Lowe had a cushty little number so didn’t want to sell even as the club was dying on its feet. By contrast if Goa had a decent offer to buy the club, I think he’d sell in a heartbeat.

Edited 23 July, 2021 by Saint Fan CaM

[S-Clarke]

59 minutes ago, Smirking_Saint said:

This is what I'm saying though, we don't have to go hell for leather, its unnecessary... but when required we need the funds available to ensure we are comfortably able to remain in the PL

This is one of those situations, Id happily nail my colours to the mast here and suggest without spending more than we receive it will be a miracle if we have a season outside of the danger of relegation

Like you followed up... we're stuck behind a rock and a hard place.... overspend and we go bust, fail to secure the right playing assets, we are relegated... and probably go bust

I think that's exactly it. I'm not seeing anyone calling for Man City levels of investment here, all I'm seeing are fans who'd like the club to be able to bring in the odd loan or a couple of £10-15m signings to 'improve' the squad without having to make strategic sales first. We don't know for sure, but it does feel like we are strangled a lot more than many clubs in this league and it feels like we cannot do anything until we sell first.

The only way we move forward without a struggle every year is a change of ownership, but seeing that happen in this current climate is hard.

Edited 23 July, 2021 by S-Clarke