Their owner was prepared to write off £50m to pay those wages, we'd already run up a £50m bill we couldn't repay, I'm astounded that an accountant would suggest the answer was to blow another £50m that we didn't have. We overpaid for poor players, if we hadn't blown all our money on £28k a week for Kilbane, £30k a week for Sonko, £20k a week for Halmosi, £20k a week for Ghilas etc, when we could have easily bought more ambitious talent for £15k a week, then we wouldn't have got into the mess we did. The amount we spent was absolutely enough to stay up, we just spent it on the wrong players.
All good meaningless discussion. We got promoted and it stunned the owners, it went to their heads and they both wanted the success and limelight and the dosh. The property market had crashed, there was no money to invest so they borrowed, wheeled and dealed (very poorly). Bullard was a serious gamble, it did not pay off - but at one time, most thought . . . Egos took over at the club and good sense was out the door - but the fans were the same - every board had idiots asking for huge salries to be paid to bring in players who had no intention of coming. It was a clusterfuck, simple as! We need to work hard to mitigate the remaining high earners, weed out the current failures and bring in some new blood. Paying decent money for a striker is a decent investment if he scores, but who the **** knows what will come out of anyones potential. Most posters have it a bit right and a bit wrong; I certainly don't have the answers, but I can see very good reasons for a bit of investment in the squad - let's hope old man Allam can too.
None of them have survived for long. Wigan are still struggling after having a rich benefactor. What is the point of trying to get promotion if you then get relegated within two or three years. I agree with you on investment except the stadium. That is the key whatever the current position is. The council won't sell now but if a deal could be worked out then that is the future. I agree that the council has to consider the original spending and not give the stadium away without sensible guarantees.
OLM said: "I'm astounded that an accountant would suggest the answer was to blow another £50m that we didn't have." Feign astonishment as much as you want but simply misrepresenting my position does you no credit. The key to our future is ensuring more income and that can be achieved by investment in the stadium to generate more income and more sound. Fez has hit the nail on the head when he says: "Paying decent money for a striker is a decent investment if he scores". The strikers that have been traded recently have paid off. Fryatt could pay off if we played to his strengths but our present system seems to give a striker very little opportunity. My main point is that we should play to our advantages. We have a good catchment area and very little opposition. I know it may take time to sort out the stadium issues but that is the way to go. As it is if we do get promotion we most likely wont have the income to keep us there unless we are very lucky with players and managers. How likely is that given our recent experience?
Not important but one reason I post here instead of city mad is because some people still supported duffen after all that happened.
I just can't understand why people think this makes sense. Why do anything then? Why do we have a team if we are to stay in the same division or go down. Why do people go to earn money if they are only going to spend it?
Doesnt it make more sense to invest in a stadium so you can generate the income when you get promoted so that you can stay there? We missed out on a lot of money when we got promoted because we couldnt earn the money from tickets, hospitality and merchandising. We had a good start but didnt capitalise on it. I really believe that with a bigger stadium and more passionate crowd we will be able to attract better players without having to overpay. Does anybody disagree with that? We have to sort the stadium problems out but medium/long term that is the way to go. Players and managers are short term. The fans seem to be in a stupor and think either nothing can be done or it will happen by magic. If we dont show progress the best players will leave and wont be replaced.
I suppose your idea is to just get promotion and not think about what to do to make you stay there. Don't you believe in any form of planning? A plan doesnt mean it will happen but businesses who plan sensibly work towards the same goal and have a better chance of being successful than businesses who tread water and have no direction. No matter what people think about Nick and the Allams - what did we do in January that gave you any confidence that we had a plan and were trying to carry it out?
You stated that the previous regime shouldn't be blamed for the overspending, that it was unavoidable and that we should be paying £25k a week for Championship players and £40k a week for Premier League players. I simply don't accept this premise at all. Half the clubs in the Premier have average attendances below 30,000, the average attendance in the bottom ten clubs in the Premier League this season is 23,068 and they're the clubs we're competing with. Though it would great to have a bigger stadium, there's no guarantee we would fill it, indeed the evidence is that most clubs can't sell out their grounds as it is. If the stadium position changes in the future, then all well and good, but there's little sign of that being likely and while that's the case, signing players for the Championship on Premier League wages is not the way to go.
I said: "You need to pay up to £25k a week in the championship to attract a few good players to enable you to get promotion and pay up to £40k a week to stay in the premier league." That is not the same as what you said: "we should be paying £25k a week for Championship players and £40k a week for Premier League players." We wont get promotion and stay there if we pay a maximum of £10k a week in the Championship and £20k per week in the Premier League. I think we need to pay "top money" - enough to attract very good players - to get promotion and reasonable money to stay in the Premier League. I'd estimate that means paying 4/5 players £15k to £20k in the Championship and paying £25k to £30k in the Premier League. It's no good saying that some good players can be got for less if they will then leave for more money. If we can get the players and keep them for less then it's great. I'm saying we need to have a plan and not stagger from one defeat to the next.
The problem is that a football club doesn't achieve success in a vacuum. You can't plan to have one or two seasons where you invest in the stadium and not the playing squad because that leads to bad results, loss of confidence by players and supporters, a reputation for being unambitious and eventual relegation. After a club goes down the revenue dries up anyway and plans to complete ground improvements are shelved. Apart from money the most vital form of currency in football is success because it makes everything else happen smoothly. With success (defined as promotion) you can keep your best players, attract your targets and maintain or increase crowds and gate money. The starting point is success on the pitch not off it.
We moved into the KC and then started to have success on the pitch. If we expanded the KC even a little and included an end with good acoustics we would have a more intimidating atmosphere and players would be more psyched up than when the sound drifts away.
The easiest way to self-fund a stadium development project is to get to the PL and take the money and run. Invest in the infrastructure and build the club so that if relegated the resources are there to mount a more successful attmept the next time. Bolton, WBA, and Charlton (under Curbishley) are examples of how to became fairly stable PL clubs. How you push on from there is a different matter entirely.
No, you don't need to pay high wages to any players in the Championship. It kills team morale and doesn't always py off. Leicester put Mills on wages of £20k+ and that hasn't worked. I don't think you need to even pay big fees, you just have to sign good, young players with a resale value. If you look at Swansea for example. Scott Sinclair £5400k rising to £1m Leon Britton £44k rising to £400k Nathan Dyer £400k Neil Taylor £FREE Ashely Wiliams £500k Angel Rangel £90k I doubt that they paid any of those players over £10k when they signed them. When they got promoted they paid out a little more. Danny Graham £3.5m Leroy Lita £1.8m Wayne Routledge £2.5m Michel Vorm £1.5m I wouldn't expect any players to be on over £30k at Swansea yet. It took time for them to build a quality side but they did it over a few seasons with no massive expense. There is no reason why we cannot do something similar.
I read that the highest paid Swansea player is on £20k per week. £1.5m transfer fee for a 3 year contract costs the club £10k per week even before paying wages.
"It took time for them to build a quality side but they did it over a few seasons with no massive expense. There is no reason why we cannot do something similar." Brendan Rodgers has 20 years in "management". Nick Barmby has about 20 weeks or so. Rodgers hadn't been at Swansea very long either but he's had a lot of varied experience. I'm sure Nick will point to a lot of mistakes he's made when he looks back in a few years.
