That is on the assumption that Bruce spending 20m would still have seen us relegated. It might have kept us up and lead to another 100m a year coming in. You have no idea, I have no idea we are all speculating. Personally I would have backed Bruce to keep us up. On another note the value of the club. Our place in the Football League pyramid is worth a lot. We are one step away from Premier League riches, some foreign owner could easily see that as a great opportunity.
Yeah I made this point in the no owners thread when people carried on about what we had of value. Our place in the football pyramid is perhaps the most valuable.
We're getting to the point whereby it's actually irrelevant whether they want to sell, who would want to buy? we're ****ing damaged goods. Few assets and no goodwill.
When we were relegated under Bruce we had the 19th highest wage bill in the PL. so hardly astronomical. Then what you are saying is the pl Is not achievable without an owner willing to write off his own money to sustain it. The vast majority of those players Bruce signed made the Allams a bloody fortune.
Bruce's relegation was an absolute freak in terms of injuries. To his credit, he never raised it. At the time, as any self respecting peripheral ex City psycho/ honorary member of the English cricket statisticians association would do, I did show that it was indeed a freak season in terms of injuries. At the time, it seemed many had had enough of Bruce, so not especially interested in defending him
We had a freak season with injuries every year under Bruce, and he was always moaning about it. I think comments from players who moved on are the biggest clue to why we were so ****, Steve Harpers in particular.
I looked back the big push was Bruces first season which got us promoted. Other than that looking through other clubs our wage bill was at the lower end of the league table. Championship 2012-13 - Wages 152% of Turnover - Loss before tax £(25)M EPL 2013-14 - " 51% " - Loss " £ ( 9)M EPL 2014-15 - " 67% " - Profit " £ 12M Championship 2015-16 - " 72% " Loss " £ (20) M EPL 2016-17 - " 52% " Loss " £ (36)M
In 2014/2015, Snodgrass got knackered in his first game at DQPR - out for well over a year, all the silly ****s on here saying his career was over, he would never play again etc We would be relegated by the time he played again, halfway through the following season in the Championship. Similar with Diame, scored on his debut v WHU, the soon after out for many months with a long term injury. Again we were relegated by the time he played again.
When Ehab said no we had just been relegated and he was planning on borrowing £20 million from a bank to pay for the second promotion push under Bruce. If Ehab had said yes we'd have had to borrow extra money from the bank to pay the transfer fees and wages. I wouldn't have backed Bruce to have kept us up but it would have put us even further in hock to the bank or banks. As you say we are just speculating.
I would say the fees we received for Maguire and Robertson were hardly a bloody fortune. The Allams insistence that we only offer fairly short contracts meant that Leicester and Liverpool got absolute bargains. especially as we had to sell. The accounts show that we couldn't afford to sustain the wages we were paying, including the relegation clauses) without borrowing more money so we had to sell. To have kept Maquire, Robertson, Snodgrass, Clucas, etc we'd have had to borrow millions from the bank. The Premier League is achievable without breaking the bank as Burnley have shown. How long they'll stay there is another matter.
Interesting. So the Allams were not as attentive as they should have been when giving contracts to new players.
