I have just bare minimum squad. Bare minimum management. Bare minimum board. Bare minimum scouting network. Sold land behind the club. Selling our best players year in year out. Not replacing players sold with equal quality. I could go on and on.....
Nah it’s just living (well) within our means. It’s very simple, really, I don’t think mike is a deeply conniving man. We remain hamstrung on commercial income because of SD, which is within the owners rights. If he had ambition he’d simply overpay from MASH holdings for the advertising, like City/Etihad. He doesn’t so he wont. Just means we have a few limitations but we can still aim to finish 7th which is the highest of any club outside the rich. In a way Mike is running a model every club should adhere to. No borrowings, spend only what you make but no sugar daddy cash either. We are really unfortunate that the current climate - which in itself is ****ed and destroying the game - doesn’t allow it to be a successful model. I’m not absconding him of all sin, by the way, 90% of his ownership has been disgustingly bad. But lessons have been learned and we’re in a decent place right now. It’s the rest of football that isn’t.
I half agree. Firstly (and most importantly) so long as we live within our means we will survive as a Premiership club as others around us go bust. It feels inevitable as once big clubs, when threatened with relegation, begin by spending above their means and then if they go down have to strip back to avoid administration. Clubs coming up often over-spend to get in the Premiership and then again to survive first season so are in a weak position financially. If we can hang around for another year or two without blowing money we can't afford we should rise to comfortable mid-table and perhaps even 8-10th. That is the realistic aim and it's just a matter of holding firm. Secondly, Ashley has not been afraid to make big calls but many of them have been bad. His overall idea I have no issue with but his cost-cutting with regard to who he puts in place to make big decisions is a false economy and has been for years. It isn't bad luck, it's the culmination of lots of little cost-cutting initiatives which results in us getting in cheaper players who aren't as good and ultimately being financially worse off for it.
The only thing could meet the definition of asset stripping there is selling the land but it hardly constitutes an ongoing trend in behaviour. I have read somewhere that he actually compensated the club for that but I'm not sure if it's true. He's blatantly not asset stripped the club of players. He's made some poor decisions and got a lot of things wrong but he hasn't asset stripped the club.
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/com...se-of-fraser-stake/ar-AAyqOW4?ocid=spartanntp Mike Ashley loses £11m in House of Fraser collapse. That should cheer him up!
An interesting article on the value of the Club based on logic and economic logic at that. https://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/sport/after-amanda-staveley-ended-talks-14767143 No doubt some Ashley Fanboy may try and dismiss it as coming from the Ronnie Gill but the only concession i would give is that just as much as anything is only worth what someone will pay it also is only worth that if the Seller will sell. At a price of £400M Ashley is simply saying he doesn’t really want to sell unless he finds that one in a million nutter who will pay anything to get the Club. On the basis that Ashley still owns the Club it just shows that Sunderland got that nutter first.
It's worth about £250m and there's an outstanding debt of around £130m. It's really quite easy to see why it's £400m (or thereabouts). If someone has to scrape the coin together to buy the club, we'll be no better off. If someone has a spare £400m behind the sofa (are you reading, Mr. Radcliffe) and fancies it, then that also works. Football is not for profit, there's very little to be gained from the actual revenues. All revenue MUST be reinvested, it's inescapable. If you want to win stuff, you've got to spend - as per the Man City figures - another £100m a year ON TOP OF what you're earning. We may get a US or Chinese sports investment type at some point, but it's looking less and less likely. There's already 6 trying to fit into 4, Leicester/Everton have decent backing so for investors it's gotta be a "what's the point?" scenario. We missed the boat when we got Ashley, not Mansour, the rest is history.
But that’s my point. The Club may be worth £250M but that’s partly because of the debt. To get it’s true value you then don’t add on the debt. It’s still worth £250M partly because of the debt. The debt is a false debt in that it existed at the time (or most of it did) Ashley took over and he paid too much for the Club simply because he didn’t carry out due diligence. He now wants to get the value of the Club ( no problem with that ) but also the debt (do have an issue with that). A business doesn’t go up in value because it’s got debt it actually goes down in value. That’s probably why we are worth £250M or thereabouts and not more.
I know where Groot is coming from but it is wholly unrealistic to expect a billionaire businessman to just accept a loss out of the goodness of his heart. Therefore we need to move on and not whinge about it. Hopefully it puts off the owners who can’t take us forward anyway. We need someone who is quite happy to throw good money after bad. There is not that many ‘great owners’ outside of those pissing money up the wall. Ashley ain’t that bad all told. He isn’t great and could do better but there is a lot worse out there. I don’t want to jump from the frying pan into the fire. Some want him out at all costs. I look around and there is carnage everywhere.
An interesting scenario actually. I believe if we went bust there is so much passion in the area for the club and the sport that we would be reborn as other, albeit smaller, clubs have done and in time would be back at the top end and hopefully run by supporters in a German model type way. A lot of pain in the short term but the journey would be fun unlike the permanent dull existence we seem to have in view now.
The discussion has got a bit lost in a MA FS comparison. I think the reality is that both had/have their faults and the ideal is somewhere in between the two short of some sheik taking a liking to us.
We know and agree that the club is - by the writings in that article - worth £251m give or take. That's the economic calculation based on previous earnings, future potential, assets, etc. But as the loan is a loan and not a serviced debt of £130m the true cost of the club is shy of £400m. That's not to say it's valued at £400m. I'm not an accountant by any stretch, but most clubs (I think) have something like an operation debt that's on long term repayments. We're not - fatty loaned the money, and wants it all back. Even his "structured payments" mean he'd want the full £130m in three years. Man U have a running debt of something like £700m or whatever. I'm not saying it's a good thing to have, by the way, just we're a bit different from most clubs.
