Over the weekend I heard that Grabban is here with Bournemouth paying two thirds of his wages because we could not afford him otherwise. If this is true then on the one side it's good business by Bain but on the other side it shows how far we have sunk. Players like Danny Graham are out of our price range. Going back to Sam's run in, I felt at the time we were 2 decent players away from mid table premier league stability and with the possibility of becoming a regular top ten finisher. Events, as we all know, ended that, but from being 2 players away from a mid premier table team we are, in my opinion, now, about 14 players away from a championship mid table team. We've lost our two top players plus around 12 or so returning loanees, sales and whatnot like Borini. We've spent a little over a million compared to sales of £36 million plus. You can't do that to a squad and still expect any kind of promotion challenge. Usually, someone comes on and says wait until the end of the window to see what we get in but I've heard that quite a few times and usually we get nothing in or maybe some minor squad player. Currently, these players are reasonable for a championship challenge. Cattermole. Karzi, McGeady. Oviedo and possibly Watmore and N'Dong. Maybe I've missed one or two. I doubt if Lens and Kone will be still here. Some players might improve, Gooch. Honeyman. Love. Matthews etc but it's more hope than expectation. Some will be ok squad players such as O'Shea and Jones. Compare this to 'Borough who have kept their squad together and spent £35 million improving it. Even if we sold Lens and Kone I don't think we would see much, if any, of the money. I think any money will disappear into the club somewhere. I wonder what the finances are really like. We must have received about £100 million tv money. We have £36+ million transfer monies. Gates monies. Merchandising and other sponsorship deals plus other revenues. Our wage bill must be a fraction of what it was before losing these players during this break. The ones brought in must be on fairly low pay and the rest of the squad except Rodwell all took a pay drop. In short, we must have a massively reduced wage bill and with all the money coming in, we surely must have reduced the debt substantially. I don't profess to know how it all works with monies in and out but from an outside perspective we shouldn't be in a bad financial position. I seem to have gone off subject a bit and I expect to be called a doom monger, glass half empty or something but I didn't feel like this before Sam left. Am I right about the state of our club or can someone give some realistic good news. I think we are going to struggle in this league as we are now. Getting thumped by a bunch of scotch reserves didn't help.
Not doom and gloom at all Charley...just saying it as you see it. I see so many similarities to what is happening at Sunderland and what happened at Leeds, both Sheffield clubs, Forest etc etc. I genuinely fear the worst, but I hope for the best.
Similarities are clear - however Leeds owner didn't convert their debt to him into shares - Ellis has done this - he's not been good generally of late but this means we cannot go into administration as his debt is only settled if the club is sold for over a certain amount (think it's £120m but am guessing) From speaking to my solicitor friend (who is also a season card holder) he says that adminnistration is a long long way off mainly due to the sway Short has managed the club's debt to him! I know small mercies!
The club shouldn't have debt to an owner regardless, he wholly owns the business and it's therefore his financial responsibility. He's a prick.
The club shouldn't have debt to an owner regardless, he wholly owns the business and it's therefore his financial responsibility. He's a prick.
It's similar at a number of clubs in all 4 divisions. Liverpool's owners have "written off" debt by turning it into shares - similar to what Short did for us - they've been lauded for it - we've been lambasted! I'm not a fan of Short by the way but I certainly don't think he wants us to fail - he's just overseen a poor time for SAFC - only being called the worst due to the financial state of the game - things were far worse from a football perspective back in the mid to late 80's but there wasn't £100m in prize money for finishing bottom of the top division back then.
Debt is down to about 86 million after the pickford sale. Only 60m to be picked up in Para payments. Still have to raise about 26m from sales and be running in the black to be debt free by year three of Prem relegation. The debt of course is to our owner, created by his own mistakes, but he's decided we should be the ones who suffer and pay for it. He intends to to get a full return on what he's put it and we'll suffer on the pitch while he makes sure everyone but himself pays for his mistakes. People who're defending him should remember that. Getting in all this debt wasn't malicious, but the way he's recouping is pure cut thought business shark evil. It's cost people their jobs. His true colours have come out and the man is indeed a grade A ****.
I pretty much agree with this especially if you do the comparison when fat sam got us organised. I also thought at that point we were only a few players short of a team that would sit mid table.. Mid table and no more, at the time I was happy with that after the previous 4 or 5 seasons. I wouldn't say this is being a doom monger at all, just a realistic reflection of where we have been and are now in the last 6 years. Basically you can say we built a house with sh1te foundations..used all our money on a rubbish builder. . Now the house is starting to crumble and we don't have much money to fix the problem... We need a to hope Grayson has the man management and is able to motivate average players; to a level that makes us competitive and at least finish mid table to play offs.; from that point hopefully we've got stability. Then we can rebuild the house properly.. I'm the optimistic type and as much as it would be easy right now to be negative. I will support the team (from afar now) . I remember when we got relegated to the old Third Division, Lawrie McMenemy days, Howard Wilkinson days... I don't thing now is worse than those times, the difference being our expectations may be different.. Who knows. Anyway always KTF and FTM.... I hope there is a big support on Friday night and we pull off a win, it will be immense for confidence within the squad
Its a strange one that canny lad because although we were s hite then I enjoyed going to every match now i couldn't give a toss whatever the result is its forgotten 5 minutes after the end of the match.
