Regardless of what happened in the past, it would take WW3 at Swansea for them to go bankrupt now. If Tan pulls the plug on us it wouldn't take much for the proverbial brown stuff to start flying around. Admittedly we'd probably be bought by some other nutcase provided we remain an attractive prospect.
Tan would only pull the plug if it continued to cost him more than the prospective return would justify. If we went down, he'd have a very simple choice to make - continue to support the club to get back to the Prem, or just sell up for whatever he could get and walk away with a very large dent in his wallet. Whether he converts his loans to equity or not is irrelevent, it will cost him either way. The cost evaluations of both options would be his only consideration. That's assuming the worst though. If we stay up, I expect him to invest heavily to push for the ultimate. He is nothing if not a reacher for the top in any of his business ventures, and this is just another of them. He will see the ultimate goal as Champions League football, and will fund that aim accordingly. Malky's continued presence at the club in doing so would not be a consideration. He will do it his way or it wont happen at all.
That gets settled after 38 games. You could also consider the derby game as an indicator. Back to the thread I think the question was how much longer will the low capacity work for. No one here says it's not working just that most bigger clubs have larger grounds and therefore larger match day revenue to accompany it. No one can argue you've had a great couple of years, the question is can it get any better for a club of that size or have you already peaked? Can you sustain year on year euro qualification? Can you keep pulling Michu type rabbits from the hat? You've just smashed your transfer record for Bony, I think that shows the direction ML would like to take the club and also how he sees the route to sustained success. To move onto your point about wages, with sustained success you'll have 2 choices, pay a lot more or sell up and start again. The first option blows your careful budgeting (which I am a keen advocate of in business) out the window, the 2nd is a VERY difficult way (maybe impossible) to sustain the success.
I think what you will see is a growing group of clubs with mega rich foreign owners and a gulf between these clubs and the rest. I certainly dont see the Utd way coming to an end. Football has far too much money in it. Smaller clubs may start to go that way but they wont be able to compete. There are a lot of big clubs out of the PL at the moment who could probably be bought for a decent price but to compete in the PL they would need to spend millions. Exeter City , Torquay , Accrington , Newport are never going to attract a billionaire owner as they cannot compete at the top as they dont have the support. Sheff Wed , Leeds , Wolves for example are clubs with massive support.
Its not set in stone or records until all 38 games are played, but as we had to endure it during our time in the championship, it only feels right to use it now, "the table does not lie" and as such we are the 10th best team in the League system, where as your currently 15th, that will no doubt change between now and the end of the season, but as things stand, we are the no1 team in wales, you are no 2, Newport are no 3, and Wrexham are no 4. And that is fact, sorry couldn't help but do a Daiswan there I could say we have already gotten better this year, as we are still sitting mid-table, 1 place short of our final standing last season. This time last season after 12 games we were sitting on 16 points, 1 more than we are now, whilst this season we have also had to play a further 6 competitive games. So not only are we on course with our hopeful mid-table (yet top half) positional expectations. We are also closing in on qualifying for the knock out stages of the Europa league. So would say yes, we have already bettered last season. Yes there is the point of growing wage bills, but when you are the lowest in the league and finish 11th, then there is no rush to go out and increase that wage bill substantially, just look at QPR on how NOT to run a football club by spending stupidly trying to buy success. A way that has proven to be useless on a number of occasions. Its all about living within your means and also about running the club correctly, now our way is just one of a number of ways you can correctly run a club. We have no debt, we have no sugar daddy, yet we are still here competing with the best, and have done for the past 2 years, we are now in the Europa league, which goes to show what can be done by running a club in the right way. Is it sustainable, we don't know, of course as success grows, so will our wage bill, and fee's paid out to new players, but at the same time, whilst we are not running into debt over it, then there is nothing to really worry about. I know somewhere in this thread someone claimed we sold Allen to bring in cash, however we had no choice with Allen, as Liverpool met his buy out clause, we wanted to keep Allen, however we didn't exactly sniff at the £15m we gained form his sale. We are not a selling club, we will not sell our main assests unless its out of our hands, such as the Allen case. If we were in it for the money, we would have looked to have sold Ash during the summer, but instead basically set his price high enough so Arsenal would not bother, same as we set Michu's price high enough that people won't bother, why? Because we are not a club who sells our biggest assets.
Both Cardiff and Swansea have to be careful about expanding. Both of thousands of fans who are there to see PL football. Relegation will see the support for both decline. Swansea have a European tie against Valencia and are having to give out free tickets to the DVLA. Should they expand over 20,000.? Its a difficult. Long term I cant see a PL club competing with those attendances. Can a club the size of Swansea compete long term in the PL anyway? I think relegation in the near future is a certainty and while they may be able to bounce back loads of PL clubs struggle when relegated. We will have a 33,000 seater stadium next season and theres the prospect of that hosting Championship Football. Maybe we should have established ourselves 1st. Stay up and the gamble pays off.
Indeed Hilts, otherwise you could be a Wolves (31,700), a Leeds (39,460), a Leicester (32,262) sort of club. So even bigger stadiums cannot help you. Its about the running of a club, if run correctly it can compete, if run in a manner that is poor, then they won't survive. Take Newcastle, a big stadium hasn't helped them has it. Recent relegation, poor last season. Most of the lower half premier league teams have a maximum of 10k between their attendances. Whats next, Man City will struggle because their stadium isn't as big as Newcastle? Or that Sunderland can do better than Everton? Stadium size has as much bearing on the success of a football club as I do on my teams performance on the pitch. As shown the actual income from ticket sales is minimal in terms of what clubs earn in the Premier League. Where I showed Norwich would earn an extra £4m per season on their extra 6k seats, I have since checked and they are selling tickets for the game against Swansea for £20. So those 6k @ £20 Extra ticket sales = 6,471 Rough estimate of income = 129,420 From the season = 2,458,980 So a whole season and they would make an extra £2.5m more than us on ticket sales. (based on current season averages). Survival at the top tier has nothing to do with current crowd sizes, it has to do with what happens on the pitch, as proved last season, a club with very little money and 20k stadium, finished 9th, where as a club with a 50k stadium, and very little money finished 16th. It could also be argued that smaller stadiums such as ours and yours can create a better atmosphere than the bigger stadiums, resulting in more points at home thanks to that, so the money from better results would also balance the books in the "is a bigger stadium better" and sometimes partially empty stadium.
Fair points. Though its not just ticket sales. Food , drink , merchandise etc. I reckon the clubs with the higher attendaces will also be more attractive to sponsors. It would be interesting at the end of the season to see clubs income minus the TV money and prize money. Of course Ridsdale I believe contacted out the catering so we are not getting our maximum revenue until the contract expires. I believe this is the 1st season we get our full revenue for the Premier Seating. Getting those extra fans in now also means more will be hooked and be there when at some point relegation comes - which for both of us will happen at some time in all probability.
The stadium naming rights havent been sold. I was talking about other sponsorship in the stadium. Ive been told we had to turn sponsors down as we had so many. This obviously had more to do with PL Football though. Sam Hammam/Langstone had the naming rights but that deal has been settled. Im not looking forward to the inevitable re-naming of the CCS.
I dont know but im suprised it hasnt already been changed to a name connected to Vincent Tan. Such as the Berjaya Stadium!!!!!! I doubt it will remain as the Cardiff City Stadium much longer. Hope im wrong though.
........................................................... I can't help it that you boys can't handle the truth!! I provide a link for you to view (allright, it may cost you a few quid to get the info), but you bury your head in the sand and threaten to ban people There's a word for that
He has already and thats why he is trying to get banned, dilligaf will then accept him into the new groovy gang.
