Indeed. I don't have any argument with the accountancy aspect of the past and the present. But then we have two particular points which are more subjective. 1. Why did it go wrong? 2. What happens next? 1. I must say I agree and have said before that Kat had her eye on the finances and thought she could get away with it football wise. She couldn't have ignored the football as that would have just risked crashing the club's value, but she got it wrong and I hold her responsible for that 2. We are now back on track and need and are trying to do what we did before. We were badly managed, but the signs are we are now making good decisions again. i.e. A good manager, Optimisation of our current players, Academy working again. We now need to prove we can recruit players in line with our model again. Of course the financials say we are in a period of recovery and need to build again, but we did it before so maybe we can do it again. I must agree that the message on Commercial Income and FFP was probably accepted rather readily before as we were on a roll and im such an optimistic place. BUT, we can only plan in the relatively short term and as long as we are improving in all aspects in the short term whilst doing all we can to build that on a sustainable strategy then that's all we can do. Each place higher in the table can bring direct and indirect benefits and we need to build on that
Cash flow looks ok, but as we know this is a snap shot in time 9 months ago and a note in the accounts stresses that money had just been received prior to money going out. Focusing on just transfers: 57.1m in the bank (40.8) due out on players this year 30.4 due in on players this year ——- 46.7m - Still looking healthy, but it now gets little speculative based on the information provided (12.1m) is due on players transferred after 30th June. Using Saints algebra that’s (Vestergaard + Gunn) - Tadic (33.1m) is also due, which is stated as creditors over 1 year old(nice deferring Saints) Only 4.6m is due in over 1 year. So although 46.7m looks strong we have a big bill of (40.6m) on the horizon. 6.1m is still positive, but we’ve got a couple more factors to add. Danny Ings is noted as being (18.7m), but the sale of Gabbiadini was done after these accounts were signed off, but is rumoured to be around 10m. Therefore on player trading alone, the cash is around the break even mark. To add more ambiguity to the mix, the accounts don’t have to factor in the bonus elements of transfers. There is a note in the accounts to say that saints have around (19.2m) potentially due out based on first team appearances etc This maybe another reason for us kicking out Hoedt(should we need more incentive) The club doesn’t have to(and they haven’t) put a figure out on what bonuses maybe due to come in. The failure of Liverpool to win a trophy this season would bring me a smile, but may well see saints lose out on a welcome windfall.
Yeah, I've been low-key hoping that Liverpool would win something for that reason. It probably isn't a fortune (and a portion of any bonuses for Lallana/Van Dijk will be owed to Bournemouth and Celtic, respectively) but if we're in the business of loaning players out to save a few hundred thousand, we can't really turn up our noses at a few mil.
One way to look at the above: we've gone from a team that sells because we want to, to a team that sells because we need to.
Such is the rollercoaster ride as a Saints fan I guess but I much prefer our situation now than the latter days of the Lowe years. It's unfortunate that us fans can't choose who owns the club but i'd still be there cheering them on even if we did a Luton and dropped out of the league altogether.
Have I missed something, or maybe I should read some more detail?? The snapshots read like we borrowed to improve the cash balance. It’s early.
Unless we join the top 6 we will always have to sell because we want to reinvest in other players, because we need to generate income to invest in new players and because we can’t keep our best players if top 6 are willing to pay massive fee and wages We have to accept the inevitable and plan accordingly making sales and purchases part of our strategy as much as we can So chicken and egg, if we’d kept VVD we would be higher up the Prem and wouldn’t need to sell him but we would have had to anyway Wouldn’t have mattered if Wesley or Jannik were the new VVDs ... that’s where we failed
Yeah but there's a huge gap in between not selling anyone and doing what we did in 14-16. I still believe that you can't get away with selling your best players every window without it coming back to bite you. Mainly as it requires your recruitment to be at (or damn near) 100% which isn't really feasible and also because it can slowly erode morale which counts for a lot in football.
I also think that the club (management, directors, players and fans) need to realise that whatever the strategy, it doesn’t always result in an upward movement from your last position. This is especially true with the Premier league and the top few places virtually blocked out each season. Judging when something is just a blip (up or down) is difficult. * * clearly we experienced something that wasn’t a blip. Or * in three seasons time, with finishes of 7th, 7th and 5th, we’ll all look back on this last couple of years as a blip
Exactly. It's not that we sold at all, it's that -- in a span of three and a half seasons -- we sold about a dozen regulars. There is no club in the world whose recruitment is sufficient to just keep replacing its best players annually without any problems, and that's particularly true if you aren't actually reinvesting all of that money. And we weren't; we were paying Kat back prior to the sale so she could maximize the amount of cash she took out of the club.
At the risk of re-opening old chestnuts, we had our blip with Claude and no one coped well. Uncle Les has paid the price and now the re-build is underway
We bought Cedric, Oriel and VVD in 2015, so not so bad Losing Mane, Pelle, Wanyama, Fonte in 2016 and then effectively VVD in 2017 I think was the crunch point because we didn't replace properly The fact is they all went to offers of far higher wages so how could we keep them? Same story for Morgan, Lallana etc We can't keep players who get dazzled by Money and Champions League Football so we have to keep them for as long as we can (e.g. Morgans extra season) and then replace with similar. It may not be easy but there is no alternative You say "selling your best players every window" but that is just a bleaker way of saying "getting the best deal you can when your best players are determined to move" its just a fact. And yes it may come back to bite you, but you have to keep buying well. We got diverted by corporate matters and need to get back on track. There is no alternative Alongside this we can obviously generate good academy players, but the best of these will also get snaffled The higher we get up the league the more we will be able to retain better players
The Macquarie Bank loan is used for the day to day running of the Club and is funded through the anticipated income from Sky e.t.c funding. As this is likely to be less than expected there may a shortfall in the long run?
I think you might have missed the point of my post. Some of the points you make as in we have to sell at times and getting the best deal etc. are true on an individual basis but my point is what we did was an extreme which I don't believe is sustainable long term and isn't something we 'have to do'. Those 3 Summers were completely unprecedented for a club in our position.
That's my point: we're now at an operating deficit. We now have to sell even if we don't buy, if we do not wish to lose money. That wasn't the case previous.
I do get your point and agree I would prefer not to sell. But I think our discussion is more about what is inevitable and what is avoidable Who could we have kept from those summers? Certainly not VVD and Mane. Morgan and Victor we managed to keep for an extra season. Lallana I got the feeling saw it as an opportunity he couldn't risk missing out on My opinion is that the higher we rise the more we will be able to keep The trouble is that its a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy when players we can't keep, leave, meaning those that are wavering may feel we are unambitious and so follow Yes, selling too many good players is risky or even unsustainable but I'm not sure there are many instances when we have the option Maybe the Kat situation tipped the balance further than necessary though, so we can now develop better, buy better and sell less (So, that question again) If that's true then who could we realistically have kept in that period?
I'm not sure I picked up this specific point before Will there be an operating deficit in the next financial year assuming no more transfers in or out? If so, is this because of our increased wage bill? Can we increase our income without transfers? i.e. Finish higher up the league and get more TV income Possible if Academy keeps producing and Ralph is a magician Can we improve the squad to facilitate this without any net expenditure on transfers? Possible, if we can sell some of the misfits and therefore remove some high earners from the wage bill i.e. Carillo, Hoedt, Boufal Can we finance some short-term operating losses to produce the long-term benefit of increasing income?
