I think that Ralph likes the challenge of working with and developing the raw materials that our Academy can offer him personally.
Thanks, so we’ve hardly been rolling in it. Yes, fees can be paid off over a period of time, but it still needs paying.
Premier league clubs may sometimes have to pay a premium, but our budget is likely to be more than Ralph has had before
But after we've paid those fees, we still made a cumulative profit of more than £110m. There is a middle ground between "spend every ha'penny in the world" and "make an enormous paper and cash profit". We've been preaching financial conservatism, but this (particularly handing the reins over to Gao) isn't at all conservative. It's short-term profit-driven.
I guess we can’t bemoan the state of football and cry that we aren’t doing what the rest of the top half are doing. My personal feeling is that we are a club on the turn again for the last 12 months. We have a very long way to go to recover any of the status and pride we had during our return to the EPL but the right moves have been made. Ralph and Les are gone and we now have our best manager in years. These are important shifts that have happened under Gao and nothing to do with massive bankrolling. Our best hope is that we can get lucky and transfer in a couple of players who are up there with the best in the league. We can then build around them and attract other talent of a similar standard. No point in pretending that isn’t what happens. It happened to us under Cortese and it happened to Leicester. I have to believe there is more to the sport of football than spending big on transfers. Players are constantly waxing and waning and new stars emerge every season. Gao is not going to buy us success so we have to have hope that the academy and the scouts are able to deliver better results. One thing is for absolute certain we will not see another Carrillo arriving this season so let’s be grateful for that, money doesn’t guarantee success or survival. Provided we honour our agreements with Ralph the owner is ok with me.
I’m reading that as he is being backed on his judgement (types of player, final say on ins/outs) but that we’re still being run at a profit transfers wise. I may have just misjudged your earlier statements before tonight, but the thought of spending more than we sell (even 20-30m) with Ralph at the helm would’ve been quite exciting. Not saying there’s anything wrong with that either, just that my hopes have been dashed a little. Was never expecting a net -£100m.
So far my biggest concern is the lack of noise in bringing in a CB. Surely this should be out number 1 priority.
You don’t know in year one that you’ll end up with £110m. One year we made £5m. I for one don’t have a problem that we don’t go crazy in cash. If he right players and managers had fitted together over the last two-three years, the money wouldn’t be a question. In a year we make £30m and we go with your middle ground, say £15m on a player (not enough for a quality one some will say) and wages, that’s just one player. So we’ve not been too bad. As I said. Better judgement or luck on the signings and it coming together, then money wouldn’t be mentioned.
The thing to keep in mind, though, is that most of the teams spending big are also being financially responsible*. The reality of the revenue picture in the modern Premier League is that you can do both. *Most, because there's always Everton
We absolutely would have known that we'd end up with a very positive financial position. It was, in fact, exactly what we set out to do. The principals talk about being responsible because given our history that is something to which our fans respond positively...hence suggesting that Cortese was scheming to throw us back into bankruptcy despite all evidence to the contrary.
One year we only made £5m... how did that happen? What if we’d over spent? Even if we went with your middle ground, £55m over all that time? That’s not even a player a season. I just think you expect too much, or just like to find the faults. What if we’d spent all that money, got it wrong and were relegated?
If we overspent we'd...have turned a small shortfall, I guess? Which would have been easily offset by all the profit we made elsewhere. Though teams (and businesses in general) have a pretty good idea of their incoming and outgoing payments before they're made. And the middle ground of merely making a significant profit a year that doesn't give us a player a season still gives you the chance to make a real run at players you need. It's funny, though. You've indicated that you find Gao dodgy. I agree. We would not have sold the club to him if not for the fact that our previous management was itself dodgy and profit-driven. The things that I was concerned about before Gao took over are the same things that resulted in us selling to Gao. It's not like they didn't conduct due diligence on his finances beforehand; hell, after the Premier League rejected his bid to buy the team. because he was so damned dodgy, we launched an appeal arguing that, sure, he violated the bejeezus out of the spirit of the FPP test, but not the letter.
That small Shortfall is where problems can start, but we don’t know and they wouldn’t have known. They planned to make money through selling players but may not have got what they wanted. I just find it strange the number of Saints fans who appear to demand we spend loads more. It’s not like it is suddenly now, with a cumulative £110m, it’s been the same every year. The only thing wrong is the quality of the recruitment and the magic dust of the right coach and the right moment. For all those bemoaning Puel and Pellegrino, what good one more £30m player or two £15m players if they weren’t the right ones.
That cumulative total was not an accident. It was not a happy hedge against a downturn. It was, and remains, the actions of a management group who were preparing to sell the team and wanted to maximize the amount of money that our owner received once the team was sold. End of. And the net result is twofold: we hemorrhaged quality players and backroom staff, leading to our predicament over the past two seasons, and we ended up with Gao. And here's the thing on Puel and Pellegrino: we got them because we were being so money-conscious. We hired managers who would come for free and wouldn't require particularly large wages (and would agree to small/no payoff if we fired them; best I can tell we didn't give Pellegrino a cent when we sacked him), which meant that we were fishing in a pretty shallow pool. No one actually believed that Pellegrino was the man to bring back free-flowing attacking football; no one is that crazy. He was just cheap and available and willing.
There are so many strawmen in this thread, I should stick my phone in a field to protect the farmer's crops from crows...
Then I'm afraid that I don't understand what your point is in this instance. I'm saying that being cheap isn't necessarily prudent and can instead be financially risky; in the case of our former owner, she got away before the bottom fell out, so it's a substantial win from her perspective, but the ramifications of that cheapness have been felt and will continue to be felt so long as Gao remains owner. What's your nut graf here?
"A straw man is a form of argument and an informal fallacy based on giving the impression of refuting an opponent's argument, while actually refuting an argument that was not presented by that opponent." I know you know this. This is just for the general population. I mean there are an awful lot of people responding to points no-one has made. My personal, recurring favourite: we should not ask to spend like the big 6. Specifically and quantifiable this has not been posited anywhere. Strawman. Fun spotting them all - at least 5! - as an outsider skimming the thread.
