Not sure that I want us to do a chelski.......or a Man city for that matter....but I really want to be able to compete on an even playing field. Keep hold of our best players and buy to improve rather than replace would be a good start. Do you think we could ever do that no matter who takes us over?
Sadly, in the way the present business football world is structured, you have to do a Chelsea or Manchester City to quickly get up the league. They had to do that simply because they weren't in the ideal position when the Premier League and Champions League were formed, so they had to do some leapfrogging. But ManU and Arsenal have done exactly the same in their own way, with Liverpool and Spurs playing catch-up too. So what do we want to be.? Cannon fodder or one of the cannons.? Honestly, I'd prefer the latter.
Me too.......However you have to be competitive....our present board does not have the presence of mind to stop the outgoings. If they did that we would have been in that enviable position. I don't mean we could be champions, although that would be nice. We do though have to be able to compete and improve season on season. Then who knows. For me though it is a chicken and egg situation, we have to speculate to accumulate and by having to replace rather than improve we will be lucky just to survive.
Doing a chelski is the least of my concerns. I think our current model, although it appears to be close to ending or hopefully continuing with new ownership, is close to perfect for what I would like as a fan. The missing bit as you say is keeping (some) players and adding rather than always having to sell them. Sent from my SM-N910F using Tapatalk
I don't think it's presence of mind. They are limited because they have to live within a budget dictated by Kat Liebherr's policy. Although she has been proud as punch to own the club, she has placed limits on the club's ambition, whereas I believe her Father and Nicola were prepared to really take the club to the Champions League on a regular basis, and if they couldn't do it on their own then they would have brought in more business partners anyway. That's what they said anyway. For example, Cortese's policy was that if you stop shooting for the absolute top then you go backwards. So, this may be the right time for Kat to step aside or become a minor shareholder. Of course, we should never forget that her association saved the club and put it back together possibly stronger than it has ever been. When there is significantly more money available I think we'll see just how well the Board copes with it. I don't expect them ever to lose the value of a pound, but I expect the seasonal exodus of players to slow.
The plan must be to keep trading up by buying well and selling high, replacing with a lower priced equivalent. (The seasonal exodus should slow evidenced by the long term contracts being signed by key players and if any of these are going, they will be sold at above "market value"). This has to be the way in view of FFP as we cannot expect to generate enough sponsorship revenue until much later, we have to "churn" the playing staff to get to the top.
We are very, very far away from FFP limits. If the FFP limits were the pitch of SMS, we'd be on an offshore platform in the North Sea.
You keep saying this, but Saints say the reverse. They say they would love to pay players more money but can't due to FFP.
Carry on for as long as you fancy, but start from 14m 17s. Les Reed's view of FFP and how it limits SFC:
Note that, as he always does when discussing FFP, Les speaks somewhat obliquely...at no point does he suggest that it is actively limiting us. Only that it could, and that it's unfair. It is a means to allow the listener to draw a desired conclusion (that we're right up against the FFP limits) even if that conclusion doesn't wholly square with the facts. The math is far clearer than Les' statements. And given that we're currently batting our eyes at would-be buyers, it doesn't exactly take much sleuthing to figure out why we've been so adamant about cost controls.
What I never do is try to make a conspiracy out of something when the sparsely available facts could actually point to him telling the it how it is - ie, that Saints might indeed be limited by FFP.
Nicola was a finance man and he voted against FFP because he thought it hampered clubs of our size, so am willing to accept that Les is not speaking with forked tongue.
Les is not lying when he says FFP limits our spending. It limits every clubs spending. Whether you are Real Madrid or Manchester United, you are still limited by FFP. It's just different clubs have different limits. The main question Les must answer isn't whether Saints are limited by FFP, but whether or not we are actually pushing or even reaching that limit.
