It is the same when I replied to the point you made. Of course Man U missing champs league has an effect, a big one in revenues compared to had they been in the competition. Our will fall more yes, but both are still relevant. With parachute payments and an instant promotion wouldn’t be so bad. And thanks for the face palm. Not really necessary and you just made yourself look pretty dumb.
I'd rather Saints made a profit than a loss and the profit isn't so massive that we could have bought several players with it (if you count their wages). I'm more concerned that perhaps what we have spent hasn't been wise....but even then I accept that things don't always work out....even big clubs have discovered that. We needed a Rickie Lambert Mk II but sadly they are hard to find.
Many large modern company's treat customers as badly as they can get away with. If Banks had the same gross profit margins and paid as little tax as Starbucks then I think we'd have reason to be more agrieved. I think Football Clubs culturally do value their fans but they are all owned by rich ****ers. We were blessed by ML and unfortunately that ended when he went. Turns out KL is just another accountant and Gao is probably another EPL megalomaniac. However ... I can't change all that and I'm here for the football. They'll never get the pleasure out of their balance sheets and power-games I get from going to games with Mrs S and my mates ... and sometimes seeing Saints win games and get to Wembley
So some fans are worried when we make a loss and also when we make a profit. It looks to me like the club is on an even keel on paper. Just need the issues on the grass to sort themselves out, and I will be happy.
Plus the fact that the club isn't particularly forthcoming. At every stage, it's "well, we're just a small club and have to keep our belts tight, but all of the funds will be reinvested, we swear" followed by the release of numbers that belie both statements.
Yeah the face palm was maybe OTT & not necessary - accepted. You still didn’t read my response tho & regarding instant promotion that’s a massive IF. The parachute payments certainly help but there’s plenty of clubs who’ve been scorched & burnt, including us. Anyway, the real question remains; what Gao would do & no one has a clue on that.
Who's worried?, I just want the club to do right by the fans and employ the right manager and playing squad that will give the value for money that we have have not really seen in the past two seasons. The club have the money to employ better managers and players than we currently have IMO, which will help to sort out the "issues on the grass" that you speak of.
Think some people get too caught up in the overall figures. We have a competitive wage structure and playing squad has seen decent enough investment. More to do with bad signings/managers in recent seasons not suiting certain playing styles etc. Just have to look at the Promes deal in January...
I'd dispute the fact that we have seen 'decent enough' investment. Over the past four seasons, our sale of players has outstripped our purchases by about £60m; among the teams that have been in the PL all four years, the table looks like this (using Transfermarkt's figures): Man City: £542.7m Man Utd: £441.7m Arsenal: £187.6m Everton: £160.4m Palace: £133m Leicester: £116.9m West Brom: £101.3m West Ham: £85.8m Stoke: £77.2m Liverpool: £75.6m Chelsea: £69.8m Spurs: £34.7m Swansea: -£11.9m Saints: -£60.8m Goes without saying that spending badly will get you in just as much trouble as not spending (hi, West Brom!), but we're operating with a model that is utterly without comparison in the modern PL, and the fact that our squad has gotten more and more mediocre isn't the hardest mystery to solve.
You saved me the research, was just about to post something similar. Our performance on the pitch has reduced dramatically in the last two seasons accordingly. The style and quality of football has been the most depressing thing. 63 points and 59 goals in 2015/16, 28 points and 29 goals with just the 8 matches remaining this season.
£200 million+ has been spent on the playing squad in the last 4 seasons or so, which puts us around 7th in terms of expenditure. As I said, nothing wrong with the model itself, just bad signings and odd managerial appointments has been our downfall since Koeman left.
I agree...nothing wrong with the money spent, but how it is spent...I'll concede some of that could be bad luck, but you can't claim that for every signing. I would have stuck with Puel for another season, but entirely possible they would still have gone for Mauricio after that....as they thought he suited us. I consider MP2 the only truly poor manager in recent times....or at least a poor manager for our team (be interesting to see how his next move works out)..
Over £300m in player sales in that span. Our model is reliant on our ability to replace elite-level talents at borderline-starter-level prices. That's not easy to do...bad signings have let us down, but you're going to have bad signings. When any good signing is shipped out in a couple years, that churn is going to, over time, result in an ever more average squad.
Conveniently forgetting the massive amount of money we raked in from player sales. The net figure is negative. It’s negative investment.
I could sell my house for X amount and buy a new one for much less money, in a different area, but the house is bigger. I could be left with a profit and still have a bigger house. It isn't all purely about money spent if you know what you're looking for...
That was our argument for a long time: our scouting was just so remarkable that we could consistently sell top-quality players and replace them for a fraction of the price. That appears to have been oversold somewhat.
Or it’s not had the correct coach. Making too much profit has little bearing on either the scouting or the ability to appoint the correct coach, so are we moaning about the scouting system or the profit? Or just moaning? We know the model we use.
And how many of those player sales did we actively tout for sale? We all know that you can delay a player going by maybe a season but in the end, all you can do is to get the best price. And once we have sold a VVD or lallana, let’s assume you decided to spend every penny on a replacement. How many similar value players would want to come to Saints- aside from big names at the end of their playing days looking for a payday. I sometimes wonder whether there is any alternative to our present approach given Saints profile. It’s just that we haven’t been as good at executing the plan in the last couple of years.
Do we really think it's just the lack of a coach? I mean, Puel is getting goals from Leicester; he didn't get goals from this squad, either. Pellegrino was bad, but we have a deeply flawed squad, too. And being exceedingly cautious with funds absolutely has a bearing on player acquisition. If you're telling your scouts to go out and find the next Premier League star available for the price most teams pay for a backup, you're going to miss on many. Not 1:1. The beauty, if you are selling a player for 75m, is that you suddenly have the funds to fish in a deeper pond for multiple signings. That's the point: we aren't going for depth or breadth on signings. We have repeatedly sold players without replacing them at all, including VVD (and if we go down, the state of our central defense is going to have played a very large role). If that happens once or twice, you can chalk it up to missteps. If it happens every window, they don't actually want to spend the money.
