I've just been having an interesting thought, although it's one I've believed for a long time, that we don't necessarily need investment to get out of this league. Take this summer's transfer activity as a case in point. Faced with the limiting financial fair play rules, we are forced to adhere to a system whereby we can only spend what we bring in. This means we've had to release players before we can bring in new faces. With that in mind, we've managed to bring in 3 players, 1 of whom was highly sought after and commanded a sizeable fee, one we've certainly not been associated with in recent years (at least on players joining the club) and another of whom was also in some level of demand. When you consider that this has all been done despite having had the first £3.5 million of season tickets go straight out the door, along with who knows how much more on unnecessary debts. My theory is that remove the poison, remove the unreasonable level of unnecessary outgoing money, and we may have a situation whereby we don't necessarily require outside investment to compete. All we need is for GFH-C to make sure outgoing money is minimized on non-footballing concerns and we should, theoretically, be untouchable in the Championship transfer market.
I have been saying this for ages. I think if money is spent wisely and we go about not just our business but individual games in a tactical frame of mind then there is no reason that good old fashioned hard work (I'm talking about as far as scouting and transfers go) won't get us out of the league. To me investment just seems to be a more lazy option and a quick fix rather than the club being built properly and being more sustainable once in the prem as well.
Did it though? GFH said when they purchased us that we were debt free so I assume this meant that they paid off outstanding loans etc...
Youve won 1 game at home with a last minute get out of jail free card. and suddenly you dont need investment Next week when you lose to Leicester youll all be crying out for Red-Bull
Good thread mate, but the underlying problem is the ruin that GFH have inherited. Everything that wasn't nailed down was sold to ensure bates and mates could carry on syphoning funds out offshore. Player sales and then the idiocy of borrowing another £6m to do up the east stand, something he we don't own ffs. So Bates nearly takes us into administration for a third time before being forced to sell. Witjhout having to pay back a million quid to GFH investors, £6m in season ticket sales and other sharp practice deals bates did, we would be ahead of the game easily, but too much debt to pay down quickly, plus the debt costs money to service and when it comes in it has to go straight out in wages and owings. If bates had left us alone before he borrowed that £6m, we would be in clover now and able to afford decent players to get us the fook out of here.
Fair Play is exactly that Fair Play!! means every single club outside the prem must live within their means no more big transfer fees no more over the top wages. the bigger your income the more you can spend Clubs like Leeds United will have a big advantage over little pub teams like Millwall But it will mean that there will be a lot of players out there looking for clubs because once your club has reached its limit thats it No matter who becomes available you cant have them. It will eventually become one out one in for just about every club.Its going to get extremely difficult for everybody But Marko every club will still need investment
Players will now have to EARN their contracts, and there won't be many five year contracts handed out anymore.
This is exactly what I've been saying, with FFP in place we have a big advantage over every other club in the league. Unfortunately that advantage is tied up paying for private jets. ken spent a lot of time and energy trying to convince us we couldn't compete because of parachute payments and big money investors, when in reality none of those clubs could even touch us for turnover.
It will make things interesting because although the bigger clubs will have more wonga power availability could prove more powerful than dosh and like said above big long contracts will be a thing of the past, But a major problem i think will be too many yo-yo teams to the prem,because the promoted squads will be so much smaller than prem squads and teams should be very weary of the fact that if you buy big expensive players on long contracts and get relegated you could be in big ****
We shouldn't have that much of an issue with that, in the Prem our turnover will be pushing £100 mill which puts us at the top of "the rest" straight from the word go.
You gotta get there first Marko and next year is going to be very very tough No amount of money will make you any better than any other team THINK ABOUT IT
Although investment would be nice, many of us maintained that if the chap who was in charge before had run the business of Leeds United in the RIGHT (many things were done wrong), with our huge fan base and really great attendances, we could have been very successfull without loads of money invested.
I started off not totally anti-Bates, despite his "unique personal style of communication". I lost it when it became clear the necessary team inmvestment was not going to happen, and then accompanying apparently misleading statements made it worse. Its impossible to know as an outsider, but one can't help but wonder if he miscalculated badly. The cash he invested in non-team items, even if some of it will pay off in the long term (its not all bad, the corporate seats will produce a lot of income) , really did seem to prevent us developing the team. And I don't believe he wanted to keep Leeds in the Championship, the reward if her got us to the Prem were (are) huge, as GFH are well aware. Maybe he thought the crowds would keep coming, come what may (they did, at first). As for this theory that Bates was syphoning off huge sums, and simply turnng off that pipe will provide the funding for GFH to invest - its an appealing theory, there is no way for us to know (even though some make confident assertions that what he was doing). However, even if is true (I have no idea), there's been so much mortgaging of future revenue streams that it would take a couple of years before that maybe-mythical surplus would be available for team spending.
One thing with McDermott IS positive: If he identifies a player he feels is what he's looking for in a promotion push, you feel more confident that it will be worth the owners lending their support to his efforts. That said.....we're waiting for the last one still. I'm really hoping that come the end of the year, McDermott has worked the miracle of getting us to the bottom fringe of the play-offs and that GFh can offer funds which can be used to tempt players to join us in our 'Promotion push'. But that's a long way off as we all know! As ever...a matter of patience!
It's simply the case that he wasn't prepared to sacrifice his own luxuries and risk the money on a shot at the big time. If it didn't pay off he'd have lost his luxuries and we'd still be no better off. He had a choice between definitely having a private jet and maybe getting to the Premier League, and he chose the private jet. Absolute scumbag of a man. Incompetent isn't the word, greedy, selfish, delusional.
lol, I don't think you can blame the lack of money solely on the private jet. Ofcourse that is money that could've potentially been spent on the squad but in the grand scheme of things it wasn't much, I heard the cost was 250k which is basically a free player who is on very very average wages for a year.
