Yeah I’m fully expecting a couple to leave in the summer. We are skint and wouldn’t surprise me if they took the attitude that selling 1 or 2 of our valuable players to bring in 4/5 new players to fill out the squad is seen as the best option. Just hope the recruitment is good
They really need to re-brand that station and I'm not thinking that the word sport is the word I had in mind. They talk, but sport? Stopped listening years ago.
I take rumours with a pinch of salt so we’ll never know for sure but I did see reports of Liverpool asking about Vesty, arsenal about Bertie and of course multiple teams linked with Ings
That’s exactly my point. If Gao was the evil Mr Chow so many make him out to be he would be looking to sell our best players and take as much money as he could out of the club before selling. And January is the time when you can overcharge (which is why we generally don’t buy in January). The reality is he sees a club well run both on and off the pitch and is happy his investment is not at risk of losing a great deal of money. Whilst that continues, he will be happy to be a silent, non interfering, owner until such time as the economy is right to sell.
We could quite easily be relegated this season , yes I know I am a glass half empty person , but though i don't think we WILL go down , we can . I doubt he gives a flying fk about the club , but if he turns into a Mike Ashley , get ready for years of **** .
Well run off the pitch You're surely joking? The bloke's a complete crook btw, and is quite evidently an awful owner.
Depends on what your hopes/expectations are really. It's great to be like "we are self sufficient aren't we awesome" but if this is what you want then your expectations have to be low. Without bothering to look into it I would guess that we are alone in that category in the PL, other teams will be spending money on players/wages they don't have to remain competitive. Whilst this isn't sustainable it gives them a good chance of remaining on the PL gravy train, there is a huge correlation between league position vs money spent. If we continue to just spend what we make through player sales/the left overs from the TV money and revenue we generate after wages etc then it is just a matter of time before it goes tits up and we go down. I have no idea if we would be in a good financial position if that were to happen due to not spending much/anything but from the little snippets I've seen we wouldn't be. The only thing is if the reason we are doing this is because of **** transfer/contract decisions in the past few seasons then hopefully we are beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel after this season with hopefully clearing a couple more off the wage bill which could free up some money to invest.
I think we’re as skint as the Chinese government wants us to be. Our owner can be as rich as Croesus in China, but if he can’t get his money out...
I think Ralph is looking at the long term. We are relatively safe this season and injuries/lack of finance for signings means that we are unlikely to get to the European places. As such both players need regular game time and we are not going to give that to them unless we have to. A loan and play time will help them develop and make them more first team ready. Valery is less explainable as he does have first team experience, but I'm guessing that glandular fever probably took a lot from him physically and potentially the game time is what he needs to get back to the shape he needs to be in
We've gone from safely mid-table and actually playing pretty well despite an horrific injury list to relegated and '****ed'? Have we also gone from Not606 to SaintsWeb and I didn't notice?
