Are we getting a little ahead of ourselves.

Howdy all,

Been away for a while (still reading when I can) but have a day off to come back and bug you all (my Birthday and the missus has banned me from doing anything useful).

My last thread said a bit about the demise of NW but I don't want to linger (love the guy and all the Ipswich fans up here would love him at their club which would suit me more than fine).

I've been impressed with Mark hughes, the cohesion of the displays (Chelsea match aside) and the quality of players we're aspiring to get but I have a major concern - are we overstretching ourselves?

I read a post recently that said, if all goes well, a preferred line-up would have Onouha on the bench. With the club stating, from the outset, a desire to build sensibly but progressively, have I missed the part where we have a wage structure on a par with Spurs for example and have 80K/week players on the bench?

We're in a tough situation where we need to gamble in order to survive (anything up to 50M - parachute payment - the amount we were losing last year = something around 25M in fees and wages by my best estimate.

This means that we have to "bribe" players to come to us and pay over the odds for them (in wages too) but doesn't this create a situation where we will find it problematic trying to claw it back to a realistic wage structure if and when we establish ourselves. When do we realistically see ourselves challenging for the extra revenue that Europe offers with the top 8 or so clubs a million miles away from us?

I assume there will be huge marketing in Asia in the next year or so but I still can't see us being in a sustainable position and remaining bankrolled for a long time yet.

Love your thoughts and I will be looking in all day (I will withdraw again after since I am helping my (now) fiance cope with undiagnosed Fibromyalgia, looking for a better job and starting a masters degree simultaneously so time is very precious).

Matt

 

I think the Mittals are financing us short term until we get a news stadium and then the club can pay for itself.

Theres no way we can break even with what we are doing, the good thing is that we arent in debt and they are doing it out of their own pocket.

 

At one stage early last summer, Lakshmi Mittal opined that football is not a business, it's a form of entertainment.

Quite what he meant by that is open to interpretation but suggests to me that investors at his level can benefit in other ways, e.g. association, advertising etc..

Might explain a few things though - albeit a bit cryptically!

 

That's fair enough - I don't think it's possible to get rich from owning a team but you most certainly raise your profile and the uber rich are competitve, if nothing else, so want that status symbol.

If Mr Mittal will spend anywhere near as lavishly as he did on his daughter's wedding then I think we'll be fine.

We do need these owners to hang around though because we're now contracted into a few hefty deals (although there is some shrewd loaning and probably a few clauses for a worse case scenario).

I do think there would be a lot of pride in supporting a well-run, self sufficient club and I just hope that's us soon (but probably not in the next 5 years the way we've set our stall out).

 

Thanks 9s for your kind words. Look forward to your post.

 

Well said Matty. Happy Birthday btw, and good to know you're still around, if a tad busy.

 

Indeed, happy birthday matt

 

My hope and prayer is that Mittal is secretly funding us but keeping as low a profile as possible so the vultures do not descend too readily.

 

I've said it before, the key man in all this is Phil Beard. We aren't looking to build a stadium just for us to play football in. We'll be building a multi purpose stadium around the 40k mark so we can fill the gap in an entertainments venue Between the O2 at 20k and Wembley at 90k.

Beard is the man that made the O2 the worlds number 1 entertainment venue, but hasn't a clue about football, so I'd say it's a fair bet that the plan is for him to make the money for the club through our new Stadium/Entertainment center.

 

I'm certain you're right about that although I hope we don't end up with a Wembley style fiasco where we need to relay the pitch every other Saturday and don't design the stadium for optimal football performance/play (a la the Emirates).

That's still a long way off I'd guess and we are being bankrolled with overblown wages in the meantime with little to no chance of easily instilling a sensible wage structure.

Don't get me wrong by the way - I have two heads - the sensible/cautious brain and the romantic, isn't it great that we're signing .... (insert anyone previously linked in here). I just rest easier when those two are complimenting each other.