Bet365 have worked out that since the 92/93 season, Saints are the ONLY premier club to have made an overall profit on transfers. Just found it relatively interesting so thought I'd share
Perhaps it suggests that it is time the other clubs got their act together. It's not immoral to run a football club as a proper business.
I'm with Fran on this. It's surely sensible to run a club as a successful business. Why *should* they spend all the profit?
The club should spend what it can afford to maintain our position and do well in the Europa, but that may be less than we take in. Some fans seem to feel that you have to spend transfer income plus a sizeable sum of money on top. There are other outgoings as well as transfer fees. The club is running a tight ship and trying to pay off loans, keep players happy with improved wages, and hopefully building a nice nest egg for when we really want to spend it. Massive clubs can afford massive risks, but we can't cover debts with huge commercial income. Aside from TV income, our biggest income is transfer fees. We are still in the sorting ourselves out stage. And if you ignore the big clubs, it means we are doing far better than comparable clubs.
Just a couple of points LTL. First, the smiley at the end of my post would hopefully indicate I wasn't being entirely serious, particularly after some heated comments (for and against) in the last week or so. Second, I did say "some" of the profits not all of them. And thirdly, football fans have the right to be absurdly irrational and I'm no different. I want a big money signing and I want it now .
I'd change one word of the above. Let's substitute IMPROVE. Maintaining shouldn't be good enough for this club and I doubt very much that it is either. As to the income for the club, there are various revenue streams aside from the usual which are fairly small at the moment, but will grow substantially in the future.
Because most businesses don't have an inflection point like relegation which, if reached, will result in catastrophic losses. If you want to make a profit on a football club, and you don't have nine-figure commercial deals, there's pretty much only one way to do so without massive risk: sell it. Clubs are better related to successful investment vehicles rather than businesses in terms of where the money is made.
From 1992 until 2002 we bought players at the end of their careers for biggish money ( Les Ferdinand) or dross for big money ( Chris Armstrong) or decent players for big money and turned them to shine (Postiga) and sold them for nothing. Rebrov cost us £10 or £11 million in 2000 and we gave him away in 2003! The list is endless.
But I think we have the right balance...we don't spend so little as to risk relegation and we don't spend so much we risk insolvency. Not that I think avoiding relegation is seen as a target for us....we are ambitious and have achieved a lot in a short space of time, but this has raised fan expectation. We will not improve league position every season, but a small fall or period of stasis does not mean inevitable decline.
Most businesses won't continue to get more profitable as they're infuriating clients enough that they might leave though, heh. Though fair enough, I worked for one that did exactly that...they were heavily reliant on a single client with a fixed-payment contract, and decided to push the envelope on profitability while remaining (just) inside the contract terms by understaffing and cutting corners. It worked out just about as well as you can imagine.
Sure, but barring something very unforeseen we're not at a point where relegation is a particularly pressing concern. We're an improving club (to a point) without spending ridiculous sums of cash.
We have improved to this point while not making money on an annual basis, though. Now, we have still been successful as an asset, because the growth in the value of the club has greatly outstripped its debt, but that's different than making sizable annual profits.