This is what I was on about though with Benitez constantly moaning in the press. If you tell players they are **** and need replaced enough, they get the hump. Our manager and fans made it sound critical and it wasn't.
I think it was critical, just look at the impact two loan players have had on our performances, had Rafa got the same impact from Slim that these two have brought we would have been through a far less nervy period, given some realistic funding for some quality players you can see some potential for the club under his management.
I think a lot of it will depend how serious the bidders are. If they really want the club, they will budge and do what is necessary. Football clubs are largely a sellers market at PL level. Unless you **** the bed, go for broke and spend beyond your means, get relegated and then plummet further like Villa, your club will generally have the ability to bounce back and retain its value. We've been smart in this regard, but the flipside is it doesn't allow us to progress because we don't generate enough and have missed out on the big money of the last couple of years. If the bidders aren't serious and Ashley has to stick around, I'm pretty confident he'll release whatever money we have available. I'm sure Rafa if he stays will want more than that but he'd have to be realistic. If a serious bidder comes in I don't mind which way they cut it to do the deal. If Ashley takes money out or they increase their offer to cover it, it matters not. Either way the buyer needs to be pumping money in or what is the point in making a change when we are finally being reasonably well run. The only thing worth changing for is an increase in buying power and infrastructure changes. This is the other thing everyone needs to be aware of we need to keep investing in the infrastructure etc which all adds up.
Another six points should be enough. Given our superior GD, the bottom teams would then need another 12 points to overtake us. Regarding GD, this weekend's results saw a big swing in our favour, we made up +6 on Southampton, +6 on West Ham, +6 on Watford, +5 on Brighton and +250 on the makems!
Our goal is simply to stay up this season and try to access the TV money. Our owner has made it clear we will not spend beyond our means, and we have invested heavily to the tune of 110m or since we went down to get to this stage. I can't see us having generated a lot more so while it would be nice to have money to throw at it, I don't think we do. Our squad was borderline for staying up, I think we all knew we'd be in a battle this year as with most promoted teams. The manager knew that and its how its turned out. However we had fans wanting 50m thrown at it in January, or thinking we should have just buckled and spent 20m-25m on the Danish lad in Holland. Mocking the club for not doing so and believing we were certain to go down because we didn't. Thankfully the club took a more measured approach, added to the squad while not over stretching and have been proven correct. I think it was critical we got players in and we did. Now we have people moaning about them not being permanent. I just don't understand how people can't see the financial rational behind all this. We don't have the money. I still think Rafa needs to stop using the press to put pressure on the owner. He was goading the fans with cryptic messages and our fans were taking on water. I understand his thinking but I think he ignored the overall picture of what impact his comments would have. It may just be coincidence our bad run came at a similar time, but I certainly think he can learn from that period and the atmosphere he helped create. However he learnt well from the Bournemouth game to Saturday with his subs, so maybe he is not as stubborn as he appears at times.
As I've said before the major tranches of TV money come in Feb and again in May. We simply didn't have access to very much in Jan, plus the transfer market went out of control as could be seen from Jorgensen costing upwards of £20m. This Summer, we have the stability of no extraneous outgoings (every other club will have a bunch of overdrafts to think about) and if we survive two months of TV money. If Mike's forced to stay, he may relent a bit and allow us to spend the next tranche, which would be paid in September. If new owners come in, I'd imagine we'll follow the usual model and spend over what we have in anticipation of receiving TV money. Either way things should be considerably better this Summer. With or without Mike, Rafa will stay because this Summer and next season would be his first real shot at properly stabilising the club. Dubravka's been an astute signing, Chelsea may allow Kenedy to stay for another season on loan freeing up a fair amount of cash. All in all we should have more or less all of the TV money, £100m or so, available. Obviously this is wages and salaries, so probs leaves around £60m free for players. Pouchy may well have been right, it seems hellish coincidental that we were worse leading up to and during transfer windows, then particularly good straight afterwards. Rafa may need to think about this in future - press comments won't do **** to Mike.
Been a disaster waiting to happen pretty much from Day 1 https://www.telegraph.co.uk/footbal...am-uniteds-request-for-officers-inside-stadi/
Ashley if he wanted to could have found more funding to allow for transfers, the simple fact is that he didn't want to because he wanted a contingency fund if we are relegated again this season, in the previous two relegations he has had to put in around £30 to £35 million to shore up finances himself, this time instead of releasing funds for transfers he has held on to the money so if we were relegated he would not have to put money in himself. Ashley has for the last 3 or 4 years been getting involved in London property deals through Mash Holdings, in 2014 he sold Sports Direct shares to the tune of £286 million to use to invest in property, he was at the end of last year involved in a £30 million bid for Brixton Market in an area where he already has property and land investments, all of this is being done through various companies he owns, as of today he is listed as a director in 218 different companies, personally he can stand there and say he has nowt but there's plenty buried in assets and money in those 218 companies.
What most businesses do when they need an asset but have a cash flow problem is they arrange a short term loan - Mike could quite easily have made available a short term loan sufficient to buy the players needed and take it back from first tranche of TV money. He played a very dangerous game with our club - it looks like it might pay off but I for one will be heartily pissed off if we get relegated again. I hope it works out and then he makes the money available or better still we get an owner who is willing to put a proper mangement team and infrastructure in place at the club to move us on to the next level. I dont think for a minute that Ashley will.
Can't wait to see what happens if West Ham go down like. From what I've read they contributed about £15m towards the conversion of the stadium from an athletics venue and agreed on a paltry sum of £2.5 a year in rent, this can be reduced if they get relegated ! Absolutely disgusting scenes from the hammers fans on Sat mind, especially as they were remembering Bobby Moore before the game as well, he'd have been turning in his grave. I watched MOTD and saw parents leaving with their kids well before the game finished which is a sad sight to see. The policing and stewarding at that ground is an absolute joke, i've never been but I've spoken to a good few people who have been and they've all said the same thing, both inside and outside of the ground.
He could do yes. But its a whole lot worse if we spend another 25m (fans were talking 50m) and still go down. We don't have the same sellable assets this time round. Then it will be "please sir can i have some more sir". Where does it end? Lets be honest the strikers and players available to us in the window were no great shakes. We were talking 25m to buy an average looking striker from Holland. The chances of him hitting the ground running were pretty slim. So how much impact would he have made? Southampton spent 20m on Carillo and he has made no impact whatsoever, struggling to adapt. Palace spent 9m on Sorloth. Zero impact. Pritchard to Huddersfield 13m. Zero impact. Stoke spent 22m on a couple of lads and things haven't improved. Hugill to West Ham 10m no impact. The only ones to really gain any traction was maybe Andre Ayew at Swansea, a guy who knew the league and club inside out. We aren't buying the Aubameyang's of this world. The guys with quality to just take you away from the zone. Sorry I don't think we gambled at all. We acted responsibly and got value. Someone like Southampton and Stoke can maybe afford more risk taking. They have value in their squad they can cash in on with Shaqiri, Bertrand, Butland, Shawcross, Allen, Wimmer, Martins Indi, Tadic, Gabbiadini, Boufal, Redmond, Lemina, Ward Prowse, Romeu, Soares, Forster etc. They can fund a return with big money sales like we did. I don't understand the desire to see us take massive gambles the club can't afford. Also consider that Ashley has had his fingers burnt. He gambled with 77m in one season with McClaren and got ****ed for it. The fans were actually happy with McClaren (why I'll never know) and the process put in place. They talked of progress. Then the nearly bald useless **** blew all the money and couldn't run a bath.
I don't remember anyone being happy about McClaren being brought in and what really ****ed us was Charnley's inertia in not sacking the useless ****er after the first ten games, as for players every transfer is a gamble whether it's £5 million or £50 million, Pogba at £89 million has hardly been a raging success as he's a lazy arsed multi millionaire but if we don't get out of the bargain basement crap then we are going to be repeating this season over and over as will all the others who try to stay in the PL with no ambition or squad development beyond that. Either we move forward or we can all shut up about owners because Ashley is the best we're gonna get because you don't want the club to gamble, Christ Michael Owen is still our record signing, how crap is that.
It's relative tho mate innit? If we stay up which is looking a lot more likely now than it did during the transfer window then people will quite rightly say that we did the right thing, especially when you consider the sums that were being mooted for the players we were rumoured to be interested in, Jorgensen, Sturridge etc. God forbid we go down (if we do then we deserve to given our current position) then of course people will start to question the Slimani deal (i'm assuming he's probably gonna have 3 games at best for us) and not bringing anybody else in to score the goals to keep us up...i.e. speculate to accumulate. Regardless of what happens, I absolutely think we did the right thing. The 6 points Dubravka and Kenedy got us against Man Utd and Southampton respectively will hopefully see us safe along with probably 6-8 more points depending on results below us. WBA are gone and i think 1 from Stoke/Palace will fill the next spot, the remaining spot will be filled by one of the remaining teams in the red box :- Personally I don't think 9th for us is beyond our capabilities given what I've seen over the last 6 games. We're starting to build a bit of momentum whilst others are heading the opposite direction, and at this stage of the season confidence can make or break you. The 6 teams highlighted above all have pretty tough run ins, West Ham probably the worst out of the lot. Palace only have 1 out of the top 6 to play but the vast majority of the rest of their games are against teams in and around them. Based on the above I think we'll be fine, probably even with 4 more points, given the remaining games we've got we should be aiming for 6-8 tho.
I'd be bricking it like if I was a hammers fan. I can see them probably only picking up another 2-3 points from that run of games. At least our home games we can hope to get some points out of, Huddersfield (3), Arsenal (1), WBA (3) and Chelsea (1), might be slightly optimistic but I think Arsenal are there for the taking and we always seem to get a result against Chelsea at home....we seem to play them a lot last game of the season at home for some reason as well .
I did this a few weeks back and just updated it now, Stoke, Southampton and WBA are ****ed by my reckoning, and if I remember rightly that hasn't changed since I put the table together 4 weeks back :-
