It's realistic because it's happening Because we have wealthy owners it's easy to forget that our transfer budget for our championship promotion push was funded by the sale of the Ox. I can't be bothered to check with any research but i'm pretty sure all our league one signings also amounted to the one sale of Chamberlain. We essentially constructed a squad capable of back to back promotions on the sale of one player. Since our return to the premier league we've spent around £60m - Three players sold and we've nearly recouped that investment. Now we have the biggest managerial appointment in the clubs history with the biggest budget in the clubs history looking to take us up to the next level. Perhaps it would have been better to be sitting on a smaller budget but our team still together, but I see no reason why the club cannot continue to grow.
The phrase turkeys voting for Christmas comes to mind. I agree with what you say about the big clubs disregard for the cups but I think this opens up an opportunity for teams like saints to actually win something.
I often wonder if the end of the maximum wage for players, was a big factor in creating the situation we have now. If so Jimmy Hill is to blame for most of it!
After my negative spiral over the last week or so, I've finally chilled out. This morning I have realised that I never started supporting saints with the idea we would ever win anything anyway. As long as we keep playing attractive football, bringing through incredible young english players, we all have a club to be proud of. I am disappointed in the players for choosing to bail on us, but that is their choice. Regardless of how we do this season, after the last five years we have a club that is worthy of other fan's respect again. That's enough for me.
Firstly, welcome to the forum The name on the badge! I agree with everything you say there Osvaldorama. Our players have left because they are getting champions league football (maybe not Luke ) and mainly, a huge increase in wages elsewhere. We can not realistically offer them these things, although the thing that grates with me is that had they stayed, and we supplemented the squad, then who know's what would be possible. And therein lies the problem - in today's game (and life in general I suppose) people want success and all the trappings it can bring, as quickly as possible. So why hang around and see what happens further down the line when they get it right now. I completely understand that, as much as it annoys me, being a Saints fan! I guess it's a kind of catch 22. In order to progress and become really successful, we need our best players to hang around for a bit longer than they are. But because they can always be offered greener pastures elsewhere, then they will never hang around long enough for us to achieve the things they (and we) want, with us. So how the hell do you do it? As has been mentioned, the only real option is to give them so much money that they will forego Champions League football until you get enough of those players to then actually be able to get it. We will not be doing that, and whilst I wouldn't mind if that happened, I'm not at all disappointed that it's not. I have no say in how our club is run, I just take the rough with the smooth, and carry on supporting like I have since I was a kid. Yes, I'll be loving it if things go well, like it has been the last 5 years, and I'll also be pissed off if things go to ****! Let's just see what happens!
It's realistic to consistently get in the Champions League by relying on youth products and selling players? And that's happening? Really? The Oxlade-Chamberlain fee may be about equivalent to the League One and Championship spending but that doesn't mean it was needed. Even if you ignore the fact the Liebherrs were funding us, the increase in revenue from promotion would have covered that spending and then some. There's also a big difference between the lower leagues and the Premier League. It's possible to progress at a lower level by selling players because you can get disproportionately large amounts of money for them. At League One level the highest fee anyone's likely to pay for a player is about about £1m. At Premier League level the top players cost £30m to £40m and the highest fee anyone's ever paid is £50m. A very crude calculation tells you that selling Oxo for £15m means you have enough money to buy 15 top League One players. To get enough money to sign 15 top Premier League players we'd have to sell one of our current guys for about £500m.
That's short term thinking I agree the surest way to grow a football club and brand is success on the pitch Your question on the first post was whether this could be done without super rich owners? I was just pointing out that the blueprint is there at the club and that our progression could have occurred without major external investment. Progressing up the ladder naturally gets tougher the higher you get but that does not mean that the way you do it changes. It will just take longer to achieve seemingly shorter gains. It's reported we will have 70m to spend without selling either Dejan or Morgan. If we spend that over the next couple of windows then that's likely to be around 8-10 players who you would expect to be at least mid-table level premier league talent. Come end of January I expect us to have a better squad than we finished with at the end of last season. The team under a new manager may struggle slightly with results and we might not be able to have as good a season but the club will be stronger. This kind of cycle might repeat for a few seasons but if we become a regular top 10 club and get the odd European campaign over the next five years then that has to go down as a success and our fan base and brand will get stronger because of it.
We might, but to have a better squad by the end of January we effectively need all of our signings to come off, given that we're losing 3-5 of our best players, and that's not particularly realistic. That's really the biggest difference between the biggest clubs and the rest: they can afford to miss on some players, because they have the resources to keep going until they get it right and the depth of talent to sustain things in the interim. Most don't however, so a couple duds can easily mean a plunge into the lower half of the table, or worse.
Our progress couldn't have happened without significant investment though. We were the Man City of League One. We brought in 13 players in 09/10, were the first third tier side to pay £1m for a player (Lambert) in about 10 years and then we followed it up with an even more expensive signing (Fonte) in January. Even before all that I'm not sure we could have survived administration without being bought by someone prepared to fund major investment, but if we had then we wouldn't have had the mortgage on St Mary's paid off and we probably couldn't have afforded Pardew, the players we bought before Oxo was sold or the wages we paid the guys like Jaidi who came in on free transfers. Yes, some of the money came back when Oxo was sold but nobody could have known that would happen when the money was spent. Maybe, but I suspect not. They have a saying in America that relates to trades and that saying is "4 quarters don't make a dollar". We saw it with Spurs and Bale last season and we may see it again with Liverpool this season. If they turn Suarez into £70m and buy Emre Can, Lambert, Lallana, Lovren and a £10-20m striker with that money then yes, they have more squad depth, but I doubt they'll finish as high as second again until they replace Suarez with another star player. Star players aren't easy to replace and are worth more than a few extra squad players. I don't totally disagree with you because I think Lallana and Shaw can definitely be replaced but we need at least one striker to come in, settle and score goals and that's not an easy ask at all. If Lovren and Schneiderlin go as well then the task becomes even more difficult.
