With premier league clubs well outside the big 4 such as Sunderland spending between 8m to 13m on connor wickham and Stoke offering 16m for 2 Birmingham players, even wolves paying 5m plus for jamie o'hara - could or would Saints be able to compete with this if we reached the promised land. would our 4.1m record transfer fee paid on 1 player need to be shattered?
Not immediately, but if Stoke can afford to be putting in a £16 million bid (albeit for two players) i'm sure we could as well after a similar period in the top flight. The £4 million record would probably be broken during the first two years in the premiership.
The income is far higher in the Premiership, so we could compete with about half the clubs I would imagine.
Promotion to the Premiership with all the prize money, broadcasting rights and lucrative sponsorship deals alone is worth c.£90m. Additionally the club allegedly has a healthy amount of disposable income so I'd be confident that we'd double our record £4.1m Delap transfer fee within the first season back in the Prem.
NC wants to get the club onto a sustainable business model, and not just funded by the largess of its owners. This means if funds were needed short term, then they could be found, but long term we need to be self financing, with commercial income/sky monies and gate monies covering running costs, and building up transfer kitties. The academy will be instrumental in producing the talent internally, rather than needing always to buy big!
Yes also there is the new regulations about expenditure including players wages etc coming into force. So I think there will be a lot of changes re clubs competing for the best players because there is not that many clubs that will be able to afford those high wages that you hear about today. It may actually bring perhaps a more even playing field when it comes to players wages all though no doubt they will find a way out of the situation like they normally do.
Probably not if you are looking for Champions League, but it is possible if you have a decent size stadium, an excellent academy and are happy to settle for mid-table positions whilst playing entertaining quality football.
i like this quote especially about the academy. we need to regularly be finding the next connor wickham/jordan hendersons and hold on to quality so we dont have to buy it or if we sell then sell for really big money. It will be interesting to see how the promoted clubs do this time round, QPR could presumably spend a lot, Norwich limited finances as have Swansea, both very good passing and footballing teams - will that be good enough?
Well as most of them are spending outside their means it will be interesting to see what happens over the next few years. I think we could match the like of West Brom, Wolves and Wigan who don't spend too much on players. We seem to live in a debt crazy world where the only solution to problems is to create more debt, like in Greece with these new austerity measures. Sooner or later someone is going to say 'no more'.
This is one of the best and most insightful comments I've seen and pretty much sums up our future. There will of course be an initial outlay to build a team capable of staying in the Premier League, but in time we will see our own players being produced from within. I honestly feel that we we turn into the club with the business model that everyone admires and copies.
Self financing for me means high ticket prices, mediocre players and selling anybody half decent at the first opportunity. At the moment there aren't very many self financing football clubs. Its an incredibly difficult model to pull off currently. This makes intertesting reading http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2011/may/19/premier-league-finances-black-hole Looking at the report, only four premier league clubs made a profit, only two made profits above £1 million and only one had a profit above £10 million. Many clubs also had significant amounts of money put in by owners. Also, and I know i'll get slated for this, but Wasn't Rupert Lowe's aim to make the club self financing? Weren't Chelsea meant to be self financing by now? Aren't Man City supposed to be self financing in a few yars time?
i wouldnt be happy/able to afford a £1000 season ticket, id rather just survive in the premier league and pay a lot less than pay ridiculous sums for so called success, ie getting into the champs league.
Wisescummer has a couple of good points there, particularly about ticket prices. When we get to the Prem and stabilise there, the lid at St mary's will be raised and the extra seats put in. This will swiftly followed by higher prices and big corporate areas. The gooners are always noted as a high priced ticket club and the Emirates generates £100m in gate receipts each year. We may not have a 60,000 stadium, but if it's 45-55,000 we could be generating £75m with high ticket prices. This will be the target but will need success on the pitch to achieve it.
