You might see it as excuses but no other team in the Premier League is paying for a £800m stadium at the moment. When that stadium can’t even fund itself it’s gonna eat in to the club’s cash. Like I also said, so far we’re not even doing any different to any other club barring the two teams in the league backed by the big spending owners. We’ve got a net spend so far of about £17m. Utd are at about £35m and Arsenal about £20m. Liverpool, Leicester and Wolves have all sold more than they’ve bought.
my policy that we should dare to venture past a few mill above net spend? That stadium revenue isn’t there for any club...yet clubs with less riches than us are daring to spend a little bit more than 3 mill net spend The manager needs backing a little bit more than 1 in and 1 out a bit of adventure or all the fan base will be moaning at the manager again whilst the owners hide in the background seen it all before
First the window is not closed yet so even that comment is premature. Windows are no good for you Spurlock they always wind you up. Relax a bit, we have already made some good signings and there is time for more.
I’m not buying it that we should start having a collective meltdown and worrying for the future of our club if we dare to go above net spend Plus when I say spend money I hope people don’t choose to think because it suits their argument that I’m wanting a 200 mill spending spree or even a 100 mill...**** not even a 50 mill but it’s embarrassing that we are choking and stuck because we are around 3 mill net spend That’s ENICs philosophy filtering into our mentalities...I struggle to accept it unless I start thinking like a mid table to newly promoted outfit have a good day chaps...I don’t want this to get full blown quite yet...a few weeks left
FWIW I think it’s as much about numbers in the squad as it is numbers on the ledger. We need to shift Aurier and Rose, especially the former, so we can have more flexibility as to who we can sign.
What other club is paying for a new stadium though? Think you’re massively overlooking that. We've got an extra cost to any other club in the league with that and it’s likely a pretty big cost too. We’re honestly not doing much different so far with net spend to other clubs with the exception of Chelsea and City. Chelsea are also making up from a lack of spending last season too. Utd have spent about £18m more than us so far, Arsenal about £3m-£5m, whereas Pool are in profit. It’s really not that bad so far mate, lol.
I don't think that it's about money that we've missed out on so much as it's about potential losses in the near future. Clubs in general appear to be playing it cautiously because of the lack of clarity over the coronavirus. We've all got no idea when everyone will be allowed back into stadiums and whether it'll stick.
I tell you why I overlook it, because I remember many citing how it will affect transfers, like it did Arsenal. Yet...there were some who refused to acknowledge that possibility in their crusade to defend ENIC at all costs. So every time someone approaches our dealings in a pragmatic way...they get told they are wrong. Then we move on and brush it under the carpet in order to crack on with the narrative that ENIC is always making the right decisions for the benefit of the club. So now that is in the past and in the current climate it’s all ‘we have to consider the stadium’, the goalposts always changing and we have to keep on accepting or we look like we dont want what’s best for the team. I think these errors in judgement are too important to forget because we keep on allowing them to happen in various guises, why? Because it’s the DNA of our club now, it’s the blueprint dictated by the brains of ENIC I’ll give you another example...when we purchased Jack Clarke in summer 2019 for 10 mill, why? I remember asking exactly the same question then...what was the point in blowing that 10 million since these figures are big figures in our thinking. So why was that ok? Homegrown reasons? Where was the football knowledge coming from the ownership to make that 10 mill count? We tried skimping with Grealish when a spare 10 mill would have covered it and that 10 mill would have been better off used in trying to get say for example Dybala over the line...where the forward planning for the team financials? Letting players run down contracts because we too busy building a stadium..that’s ok then? Who’s to answer for this because all these ways of wasting money costs us on the pitch it seems. I dont like the fact that when something needs to take a hit then it’s usually the fortunes of the first team So for all the financial savvy ENIC keep on getting praised with by our fans...I see a lot of money wasting and then being tight all at the wrong times and it is costing us our signings have been good so far..because they improve our squad but by no means should we be done yet and if it all hinges on Aurier leaving then it sounds very small for a club of our ambitions, jus sayin.
im not comparing to Chelsea...I’m saying we are stuck on the Aurier exit whilst we are about 3 mill net spend that’s embarassing
I'm saying you're overlooking the fact that the stadium isn't able to help pay for it self at the moment and is therefore eating into club costs. Every team in the league has been prevented from earning money but NO other team is having to pay for their stadium right now like we are. I've also criticised our lack of spending in periods but this is an unprecedented time for all clubs and it's doubly worse for us because we have the huge cost of repaying a stadium on top of what others are dealing with. I don't get why you're so down on the Clarke deal, for sure so far it hasn't worked out but our bread and butter for years has been signing young English/ British talent with the aim of them either becoming first team players or going for a profit. Rose, Walker, Alli, Dier etc were all in similar boats to Clarke. It also never affected the Dybala deal, Fabrizio Romano himself confirmed Dybala rejected us, whilst it was also reported that Juve were reluctant to sell until they got a replacement in - which they didn't. Clarke in no way affected that deal, no way at all. You know I more than anyone berated the Grealish **** up, there were zero excuses for that and I criticise Levy/ the club to this day. I criticise the club in general for that summer too, not just the failure to get Grealish, the 18/19 summer where we signed no one was a complete disaster and it's still hurting us to this day because we're playing catch up. It depends how you define "letting players run down their contract" - you've literally watched the documentary like most of us, Levy tried keeping Eriksen, he said how the agent would refuse to talk to the club, he even asked Jose to try and have another word again (implying Jose had already tried chatting with Eriksen), it's there in black and white mate. There's nothing the club can do about that and if no one made a bid in the summer for him, I honestly don't know what you can expect? You can't force another club to buy our player just like we can't force a player to sign a new deal. We're not the only club who's been in that situation and we won't be the last, nor will it be the last time for us either. I think if is the key word there with regards to Aurier. Future signings may or may not depend on IF Aurier is sold. Personally I think we'll still sign at least a striker regardless of what happens to Aurier.
We've got roughly a £17m net spend so far, don't know why you keep saying £3m. Utd have a £35m net spend. Arsenal a £20m net spend. Liverpool however are about £3m in profit. Leicester are about £20m in profit. Wolves are about £28m in profit.
Do me a favour Hold your left hand in front of you and count the number of Premier League clubs throwing around cash like things are still like they were eighteen months ago and a global pandemic hasn't jammed a fist up the rectum of their finances and had a rummage Now subtract that number from 20 You'll notice that the figure you have is no lower than 16 Just because three clubs who are in a very different boat from the rest of the Premier League are throwing their money around to exploit a global pandemic to shore up their league positions for 2-3 years doesn't mean we're in their boat, because they are never, ever going to throw a ladder over the side for anyone else It's hardly unique to the Premier League, either: Barca - ****ing Barca - can't even rustle up the funds to pay what Juventus were asking for Pjanic and had to sweeten the deal by sending Arthur their way, just like Milan are baulking at us asking £20m for Aurier, etc etc etc One thing to chip in here: there's a misguided belief that the image rights that scuppered the Dybala deal were worth £14m, which has made Jack Clarke a scapegoat as the logic states that if we didn't spend £10m on him we'd have had enough kicking around to pay off the image rights Naturally, there's a problem with this: various Italian sources put the image rights at £30-40m, and for context the combined total we paid for Lo Celso in loan fee + making the loan permanent in January was £42m By that logic, they should be blaming the club for spending £55m on Ndombele for not being able to pay those image rights
On the subject of Aurier, something comes to mind... Reports are suggesting that Lucas Torreira is headed to Fiorentina for an £8m loan fee with a £16m obligation to buy tacked onto it, so while they're making £8m now they will have £24m in the bank this time next year Which brings us to Aurier, as Milan are unwilling to pay the £20m we're asking: why aren't we considering a similar deal, for the sake of argument an £8m loan fee with a £12m obligation at the end of the season? Not only would that freshen up the squad and free up a non-HG spot, but while we won't have the £20m in hand immediately it does offer us a safety net of knowing we can spend £20m as we're guaranteed to receive £12m of it next summer outside of some complete calamity that has me doublechecking that Milan is upwind of Mount Vesuvius
It's really quite simple. In any other year the Club with the ambition to build the best stadium in the world would be rewarded with an extra £75m to spend on transfers. But we had the misfortune to open it this year so instead of +£75m we are on about -20m cf WHL. In the real world a £100m difference has a real effect.
Mainly because there's not a whisper of it from anywhere Also, it has to be asked, have we ever taken part in a deal like that? Lo Celso was the closest to it, although the obligation was CL-reliant and we had the clause to make it permanent in January, while Italian clubs are fond of their loan + obligation deals
Kim Min-jae Watch I'll now hand you over to the Korean Fabrizio Romano...or the Korean Duncan Castles, **** knows which Abridged version - Back in July/August the talk of KMJ moving to Spurs was mainly orchestrated by KMJ's agent, but Beijing weren't budging on their valuation - According to a source at Sports Chosun, who this bloke is claiming as his source, we have shown a renewed interest in KMJ in the last few days - Sports Chosun Source Man also claimed that Doherty and Hojbjerg were the priorities we focused on - Sports Chosun Source Man also says that we'll be negotiating for KMJ through an intermediary to see if we can find common ground before the clubs and agents thrash it out when the ball starts to roll I'm going to assume this also means we can scrub Skriniar from the potential incoming list, and at the same time scrub Ndombele from the potential outgoing list
Well a loan with an obligation is exactly the same as a transfer with a reduced price and a partly deferred payment so you would only expect it to come up occasionally, but Levy will know these sort of structures very well. The issue is much more likely the one of valuation. All the evidence is that we have an internal valuation mechanism which we won't sell below and won't buy above.
