Our new chairman has barely uttered a sentence that didn't include some variation on "we need to grow commercial revenues to remain competitive", and now we have a deal that likely amounts to pocket change relative to our overall revenues and other PL clubs.
Now put that £1.45m on the scale of this. please log in to view this image If you're worrying, there's no need. And yes, I'd take some regional techy business over Wonga bucks any day.
I'm not even slightly worried. I'm one of the ones trying to counter the mad hysteria on here about every single bit of news about our beloved club. We're eighth in the best league inthe world and people are still concerned that our board's rubbish, we're selling everyone, we aren't getting money in for this, that or the other, that our manager's leaving. It's laughable. âWe're so busy watching out for what's just ahead of us that we don't take time to enjoy where we are.â Hobbes. Not the philosopher, the fuzzy tiger in Calvin and Hobbes. Vin
I think you're taking "top 6 " as the highest deals in that table. I was working from the big 6 teams. And I did it in my head, so I probably got it wrong. Vin
i think if you exclude the top six teams the median would be the same as if you exclude the top six deals. didn't bother working out the mean. i trusted your guesswork.
To address this point about why people question the current board's ambition, the answer is very simple: the current board haven't clearly stated their ambitions. Cortese was very good at making clear, easy to understand statements of ambition along the lines of "We want to get back to the Premier League within 5 years." and "We want to regularly qualify for the Champions League with 50% of the team being Academy products." Fans and, more importantly, players can understand that even if some fans questioned how realistic some of those ambitions were. That's changed with the new board. I've looked for statements of ambition from them and all I can find are vague things like "We will continue to nurture 'The Southampton Way' by reaching for consistent growth in all departments to ultimately build a culture that allows Southampton to remain healthy and sustainable in the future."
You've missed the big one. I paraphrase (just because I, too, can't find the quote) but RK said something like "I'd rather do things than promise things". Which is just fine and dandy with me. Vin
Well that's not a clear aim or ambition is it? The problem with taking that approach is that until you actually do something (and as yet he hasn't done anything much... at least not publicly) people will question what your aims are. When you take over from someone who's made their ambitions clear then making a statement like that can be, and to some extent has been, interpreted as an attempt to distance yourself from those ambitions and lower people's expectations. If the club's ambitions now are the same as the ambitions Cortese publicly stated a year or two ago then what harm would it do to say so?
Spot on. In some respects I can see the benefit in not setting yourself up for a fall with the media, but its fairly obvious that a clear target/ambition hasn't been communicated to the manager or players as yet (hence Pochettino's recent quote regarding needing to be informed of the next phase in the project by the club). Hopefully that communication will happen sooner rather than later once the final game is out the way today (which, to be fair, is what has been stated all along).
I am not that fond of 'business speak' myself, but it was much easier to state ambition when we were in League 1. You will hear this five year plan stuff being spouted by any incoming new owner/chairman at any football club. Nicola went on to go for the Champions' League...that would be harder to deliver on and he is now not in the position to be called out on it. I want Southampton to be 'healthy and sustainable'...you can build on strong foundations...the new board seem to think that things were getting a bit shaky. They have the facts, we don't. If you are going over the top in a war, you need rhetoric and powerful leadership or you wouldn't go...don't always need gung ho leaders in peace time. I don't want to lose Mauricio or Lallana, but my desire not to lose SFC itself is stronger.
Fran, an excellent post. So many people are calling out the new board who have been in charge 5 minutes. I just wonder if they do and thnk like I do. Yes, I want Saints in Europe. Yes I want Saints I. The Champions League. Yes I want progression. But, I look up the table and then ask myself who we can overtake. Then that ambition starts to take a reality check. How many players and fans would be happy to jump 12 months right now to be facing our last game of the season, be finishing 8-12th and be worried about an injury with an FA Cup Final to play next week? I'm hoping this talk is all bs anyway, because I'd be a little upset if any players start to moan about ambition. I was not one complaining, however if the players hint at needing ambition, I'd like to know how many were banging on the door because we didn't go for the league of fA Cup. Fran rightly says that a 5 year plan from league one is a damn site easier to show am toon from than from 8th in the premier league.
Excellent points from both Fran and FLT, but surely the seeds of our ambition lie in the academy? If we can make the backbone of a top 8 side from homegrown talent, then we don't necessarily need to spend zillions to break into the top 4. The problem we have had this season is the lack of depth in the squad, with no cover for the likes of Boruc, Lovren, Shaw, and Rodriguez when they were injured. That has cost us, conservatively, about 15 points this season. Add those on to our current tally, and top 4 isn't so very far away. Yes, we need a 20 goal striker urgently, but once Jay Rod is back we will be fine. And a goalie of the calibre of Kasper Schmeichel wouldn't cost an arm and a leg either. The ambition of the new board will be measured, not by the amount of new players we bring in, but by the ones we don't sell.
The ambition question from the players is a good thing. It shows we no longer have journeymen who take the premier league wages and move from one club to the next. It shows they feel they are good players and they can play champions league football. The unique thing about us though is the team are a team - not a mix of great individuals. Every member of the team complements the others. Just think how effective we have been this year with our 'first eleven' playing. Teams like City/Chelsea etc have world class individuals who could play in any team - could all our first eleven? Is it team spirit and the 'together as one' that has got us this far? We undoubtably have great talent at the club, but team spirit is more important in my view. With that, anything is possible. Just my 2p worth.
Any incoming new owner/chairman except Ralph Krueger it seems! I'm not sure the club has ever been at risk but there's definitely some kind of question over the financial side of things and that's slightly confusing. Most people who've seen the published accounts seem to think we have no problems and one of the papers even called our finances "sensible" and yet the board are talking about the "burden" of outstanding transfer fees and saying things like "we don't need to sell players" when hardly anybody thought we did! Well I haven't been calling out the board, I was simply answering the question about why people question the board's ambition. People ask the question because they want to know the answer. Of course five year plans are easier when you're in League One but you don't need to have a five year plan to state a clear ambition. Cortese's stated ambition at the time he left was wanting the club regularly in the Champions League with 50% of the players coming from the academy. I questioned how realistic that was (especially the 50% of hoe grown players) but there was no time scale there. It would be very easy for the current board to say the same thing or at least something comparable. I don't accept the "they've only been there 5 minutes" line. They knew Cortese was leaving for months before he actually went so the board as a while have had more like 6 months to think about these things. It's pretty clear the players don't know what the board now wants because players are already talking publicly about ambition. Here's Fonte for one:
