Post of the week, mind there is still plenty of time for someone to eject another… I’ll get me coat !!
But Ehab said we were the best run club in the EFL! (Hence the reason for the emoji). Though to be fair there a number of better supported clubs than ourselves in far worse messes than we were,
If 'balance sheet' was the sole parameter used to judge 'best run' then we probably were in his eyes. Unfortunately a football club is also judged in terms of football.
Have city ever been successful at championship level or above without the aid of additional investment? It's why this dogma that we can't take financial risks drives me mad. Its all about risk and reward and owners aren't being inherently flagrant by putting money in per se - they've just got to be able to afford it and then hopefully they can be successful and recoup it.
Tbh I don't think any football club has been successful without a modicum of investment. It's the old addage though, don't buy a football club if you're sole intention is to make money
Quite. In normal business practice you've usually got to spend some money to make some money. The trick with football is, its a limited market so you've got to be smart. Aside from the academy, its something the Allams forgot when we came down.
There was a lot of money spent of the parachute payments on players who proved to be over-valued. I'm sure I saw somewhere the wage bill of the relegation season was still a top 6-8 wage bill. Shows exactly how incompetently we'd recruited and were being run from 2018 - 2020. We didn't get anything like value from the vast majority of those players - yet there seems to be more bleating and bed wetting over this years recruitment for some reason.
Aside from players who featured in the PL, wasn't Bowen the only player the Allams sold for a profit once we were relegated? Lopes possibly?
Too many like Kevin Stewart who worked out at costing us something like 40k a game in the end then left for free with nothing like the expected contribution on the pitch. He got a nice property empire out of it though.
And they're an outlier. An exception to the rule. Can they really sustain it beyond the evolution of the current management/senior pro structure? Scunthorpe also had one of the smallest budgets in the championship a few seasons ago. The lower leagues and non-league are currently littered with ex championship clubs who have given it a go with a small budget in living memory.
Luton only have a squad of 26 recognised senior players where as the average is 34...imagine if we only had 26
Perhaps they just use their squad spaces a lot more smartly rather than having ten wingers/number 10s. They were just an example. QPR have rebuilt their squad on player sales and a smart recruitment policy, Huddersfield made the play-off final last season on a shoestring budget, Rotherham who everyone was gushing over the other day have one of the smallest budgets too. Point being that budget can be used a lot more smartly than just 'splash the cash at it and we'll get success'.
