Gao and Championship football?

First of all I believe with the current manager and set up we are relegation bound. But is this really what Gao wants? Consider this, all the EPL payments, a clear out of best players recouping £100m in transfer fees, no longer paying big wages and together with the VVD money Gao would be well on the way to owning a club with a very healthy bank balance, little ougoings and still a squad of Championship level players. A pretty good outlook for his investment, being able to either directly or indirectly pay back loans that constituted his initial outlay for the club. KL with her 20% would also turn a tidy profit. I'm sure his bean counters have already looked at this and weighed up all the pros and cons. If he doesnt have money to invest in the club or is unwilling to, surely this would be a good business opportunity? Is this just me being paranoid, is this even viable, thoughts?

 

Absolutely no idea whether this stacks up financially.

I suspect not, but if it did, I'd be happy with it. **** the PL.

 

More games, cheaper prices, interesting grounds.

 

Yep


Just don't mention Sunderland.

 

Value of the club would fall dramatically. Revenue and profit would also suffer due to missing out on premier league football.

 

I don’t want that.

 

Very true but wouldnt that be offset with the lower wage bill? With the owner not having any debts and only credit surely the books would be balanced and a much easier prospect to sell the club in its entirety? Remember the difficulty KL had finding a buyer for a PL club, not so for a cheaper championship club especially as essentually he'd be making a clear profit?

 

Do you suspect like me that alot of fans are tired of the EPL and its bullshit and would rather go back to a more genuine league where fans actually support their local clubs instead of glory hunting like manure fans?

 

Quite possibly. I never really expected to enjoy our return to the PL, but then we did unexpectedly well, and I think we all started to believe in miracles.

Back down to earth with a bump now though - the PL is a rigged game. I've said before, if it was a Casino it would be like the one in the Scorsese movie (utterly bent).

 

I’m pretty sure there are easier ways for someone in the construction business to make an equivalent profit.

Relegation might not be the end of the world for him and so might not bother him as much as most fans but even if you assume he’s only interested in cash (and we have no evidence either way on that) I can’t see how any businessman would prefer relegation to receiving the huge sums of money that Premier League clubs get every year. He might be able to pay off his debt by selling players after relegation but if we’re in the Premier League the club will definitely pay off his debt and he can sell the club for more more money.

 

And the downward spiral would continue with gates dropping below 20,000. No, I really do not want or wish that on any club, particularly SFC. Let's aim to get back up in the PL table. The squad is there, the capability is there but is the belief and the willpower?

 

Selling players on biggish contracts will be difficult, even at knock-down prices. If relegation is the outcome this season, is there a clause in the players' contracts that stipulates less cash in their pockets as a result?

 

I don’t understand the true meaning of this “genuine League” stuff. I think it’s all a load of bollox to be honest. That is not a dig at you St K, because it’s a commonly used expression and everyone likes a pop at the PL.

I support my team and I want them to do their best. That means playing in the top division. If it wasn’t the the PL it would be called the first division. The part that I think clouds it all is the amount of money and how different the money is in one League to the rest. I am all for having that equalled out.

If we do play in this “genuine league” where do fans want us to finish? 7th-10th and do it all again, or dare we risk a play-off and a defeat at Wembley. God forbid we win that and get propmoted again to the evil PL we are supposedly all sick of.

Truth is, it is hard to support a team who realistically can’t win it or can’t push to win it, (Leicester was a freak) without our club suddenly changing into some billionaire’s toy (oh and then we’d be as bad as what the PL represents, so anyone wanting that is hypocritical). The other truth is we are stuck here supporting this team. We don’t know why, but we just don’t change our team, as illogical as that is, > 95% of fans don’t change their football team.

We are fans of Southampton and like it or not there will be **** with smooth. We need to Buckle up and face up to it as calmly as we can. **** happens in Sport. Bad decisions happen. Bad performances happen. There is no right of passage for us.

I want the best for my team, but I don’t expect to happen all the time. We had a **** four years from 2004-2009, followed by a fabulous journey from 2009-2017. Let’s hope that we are just having a **** 6 months that stops in time for us to not get relegated.


* no personal digs aimed at anyone in this post.

 

Don't believe for one minute that anyone at the club wants relegation....especially with no guarantee of doing well in the Championship. Sunderland are struggling and teams like Leeds slid into oblivion before climbing back up. And we also ended up in the first division for a couple of seasons. And if you do succeed in the Championship, do you refuse promotion....saying no, no we don't want to be in that evil PL because we are a nice club. Doesn't wash....must stay up this season and hope to improve next season. Not impossible as we actually have a good team to build on.

 

I cannot believe for one minute that anyone at the club would relish Saints not being in the premier. The value of the club has already fallen because of our current football status. I cannot see that the owners will except taking capital out while the value is falling. The best way for them to get their money back is to keep the club in the big money arena. That way I would have thought they would possibly get the money back within ten years and then sell the club for about 3/400 mil and make a killing.

 

The PL is fun for a few years then reality hits that you are nothing more than a make weight to pad the league out for the top teams. Sure it is nice with the extra coverage/ease of watching games if you can't go but we will never be a force in this league. Then it becomes a bit stale and finishing 8th or 17th is basically irrelevant in my view as the outcome is the same, no Europe and stay in the league. Matters to the club because they get that bit more money for finishing higher but there is no difference to a fan.

Going down obviously doesn't' guarantee anything and it could be just like when we went down in 2004 and a shambles or when we had a great season when we got promoted in 2011(?). What it does guarantee is something different, which I think a lot of PL fans want. If you could offer me being like West Brom were a few years ago of bouncing back every time they went down I would take it. If we stay up this year then next year we will either get relegated or finish 8th to 17th. Rinse and repeat for basically every season until we do go down, there will be anomalies, but that will be the norm.

 

Does nobody remember the fear and trepidation when we were promoted to the Championship in 2011, when all we heard from fans of other clubs was that it was “a tough league to get out of”? We proved the doubters wrong because we had a great squad at that time, one that was almost as good as the Premier League squad the following season. And yet, after a great start we faltered towards the finish line and didn’t confirm promotion until that last game against Coventry.

The premise of this thread is that we offload our best players to reduce wages and become a mid table Championship side. All I can say (sorry Fats) is, look at Sunderland. If this is what Jisheng Gao is really after, and I don’t believe for one second that it is, that could easily be us next season. The Championship is still a very competitive league, and as with all levels of football you either sink or swim. You have to aim to get promoted even if you fail, otherwise the trend can only be downwards.

The other aspect of this thesis that makes no sense at all is that no owner in their right mind would voluntarily give up the TV money which is a massive part of the Premier League. That alone would make up for any incoming transfer fees after relegation, once the parachute payments run out. And, by the way, those Saints fans who live away from the Southampton area can give up any hope of ever finding a stream to watch games!

I can see where you’re coming from, St. K, and asset-stripping is something I still suspect Mr Gao of being up to, as he’s done nothing to prove otherwise so far. It’s just that the economics of relegation don’t add up either.

 

I think it's the opposite with clubs unwilling to match the wages of our players so we get stuck with many of them on PL wages for the duration of the (currently long) contracts and we don't have the financial income of the PL to put into those wages.

That's why they introduced parachute payments as clubs often get into financial difficulty due to the drop.

 

Is there anything left on the playing side to asset strip? How much would the club get if it sold other players such as Bertrand, Ward-Prowse? It would favour the buyer knowing SFC want to sell?