I think there's a middle ground here. I don't think anyone wants to see us go down the route of Chelsea or City and throw obscene amounts of a billionaire's personal fortune at the problem, but also I think it's reasonable to expect our owners to invest in the squad when it's needed. Spurs did last year, the made a £7m loss and ENIC (Joe Lewis) pumped in £15m of their own money. I think our sustainable model is one to be held up as a great example of how to run a club. We built a new stadium and transformed our club using our own revenue streams to do so. We have a 60,000 stadium and the infrastructure in place and we did all of this because we knew that we would have to develop if we wanted to compete with the likes of Barca and Real. The thing is that our squad is nowhere near on the same level. The financial compromises that we've had to make have affected our results on the pitch and we are much further away from Barca and Real than we were 4-5 years ago. If we really want to compete with the best in Europe, we need more than just a fancy stadium in which to do it. We need a squad who match that ambition. I think a one off investment from Kronke or Usmanov (if he's brought onto the board) so that we can buy players like Goetze and Hazard is crucial if we're not to get left any further behind.
Interesting. It seems that Spurs now spend more on wages than we do. £131.2m for Spurs £124.4m for Arsenal http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/fo...-boost-financial-backing-for-new-stadium.html http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2011/sep/30/arsenal-annual-accounts Perhaps more crucially than this is the percentage of wages to earnings. Arsenal now spend around 55% of their income on wages Tottenham spend a whopping 70% - 80% if their income on wages
The club does'nt have to bankrupt itself in order to buy a few quality additions. It really does'nt have to be one extreme or the other. Wenger has never spent big on transfers yet we sold Fabregas , Nasri, Adebayor, Clichy etc.. (for considerable profit) That's money that should have been re-invested.
I don't disagree, but I still remain happy that my club is not getting into sill debt, paying ridiculous wages that they can't afford and has a bright future. Yes - I do believe that we should shift some deadwood and spend ~ £50M on several players.
We did reinvest some of that money though - we spent £55m on transfers last summer. I'd argue it was well spent and we got good value for money as we strengthened in several key areas. The trouble is though, that our squad still needs two or three top quality players in the mould of Hazard, Goetze ect and we're going to need to be spending £35m + and £100k per week if we want to bring in these types of players. That's where I think we need a cash injection into the squad. If we go another few years without winning anything, the likes of RVP, Wilshere, Oxo may not want to stick around - and then we are back to square one.
This is a step in the right direction. We have a host of players not good enough but on the books. If we can shift these guys on, use the money from the sales and wages AND put some money on top, then we should eaasily get 2-3 quality players, no probs. It's frustrating as we are developing a good core, we just need to add some much needed quality!!!
Back to the OP. Do we as Arsenal fans feel that our club needs some investment in the squad from one of our Rich owners?
If you looked at the actual accounts http://www.tottenhamhotspur.com/media/docs/annual_report_2011.pdf instead of relying on the Telegraph you would see that we do publish our wages and they total (all staff including social security payments) £91m. I still don't understand why you pay your players so much.
No sane investor would put extra money in to fund a squad which is clearly overpaid and under-achieving. That's not investing - it's throwing money down the drain.
I think there are a few players at Arsenal who have been given more than enough chances, but are not of the required standard. I still think we need to replace Fabregas and to be honest, we never properly replaced Vieira, Henry and Pires. The thing is that unless we can find another gem like Fabregas, then we are going to have to break our transfer record and wage structure to secure players of the calibre to replace these players and do to that I think we're going to need some serious investment in the squad. I don't believe that we're sitting on a £120m war chest. Only the club know how much is available for transfers, but I would expect that figure is closer to £50m. I also believe that Wenger is still the best man to take us forward.
Well that would be the point of investing wouldn't it? To improve the squad so that they are achieving.
Oh dear. £131m is out TOTAL spend. £124m is what you spend just on wages. Our wage bill last year was £91m, considerably lower than all our rivals. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/fo...5/Leos-London-Spurs-aiming-kings-capital.html
No. We need to spend the money we earn from gate reciepts, commercial interests, TV rights, and investments by the football club. I don't want sugar daddy payments. Over the years we have generated cash hand over fist and have a huge cash balance. We are simply not reinvesting money that we earn back into the squad. Frankly I am sick to death of hearing Gazidis go on about his sustainable model.
Those revenues are from your CL year - unless you have drastically reduced your wages, Piskie is about right... its running at between 70-80% of income.
"Tottenham have not specified their precise salary costs but the rise in costs appears to have pushed the wages-to-earnings ratio to between 70 per cent and 80 per cent, an uncomfortable level. " Unless the Telegraph have got it wrong ?
I suspect the Telegraph are talking about this year, where as SpursLegend was talking about last year.
