Just for once let's get the transfer business done and dusted in time for the manager to prepare the squad for the new season. In the last two seasons just 1 point has seperated us from the CL. In each of these seasons we have started in an underprepared way, the lesson is clear Daniel. The cost of delayed transfer negotiations is too high, we would be better off settling for a slightly less celebrated player than an ultimately forlorn attempt with a 'star'. Get in there Daniel make your offer and make it clear that the at the end of June the offer is withdrawn. Better to stick with what we have than unsettle the squad with pie in the sky transfer attempts.
For me, Levy is doing a great job of growing the club the proper way and we're far better off than we've been for many many years. New training facilities, new stadium blah blah blah... but spot on. All we have to do now is address these frustrating small issues which have haunted us for a few seasons now. 1. Do the business early so the team can prepare for the new campaign as a full squad, getting to know their new colleagues/friends. 2. Pay that bit extra for a player who the club wants. Just that couple of mill extra when there's a valuation discrepancy, is far better than than missing out on £30mll in CL revenue.... which seems to keep happening, which is evidence in itself that a change of approach is needed. 3. If there's players in the squad who aren't wanted, be prepared to accept a bit less to get them off the wage bill. - It's been a killer for us over recent years and we need to use that money for players we really want. 4. Address the major holes in the squad as top priority first and foremost.
Thinking about players like Bentley, at first I can see no good reason for having kept him so long. The only answer I can come up with is a possible accounting one - in that Bentley, for P&L purposes, had already been written down to zero cost. If that's not it, then I give up. He should've been sold 2-3 years ago. Plus yes, I agree. Apart from anything else, Levy's last minute tactics are too well known throughout the game now. Time to try something new.
The right way to go about transfers is to determine how much value you think the player will add to the team and not pay a penny more. Anything else makes no sense, business or football wise. Clearly buying players earlier usually has an advantage, but getting them later is usually better than not getting them at all. Levy gets a lot or unwarranted stick on here. We've only once before in our history (1960s) finished in the top 5 for four seasons running and back then we were likely one of the wealthiest clubs. To do it when we are clearly the sixth best-resourced team and still be aiming higher is really a very good outcome. And before WUMs get on here, Chelsea had never done it before Abramovitch, and Arsenal only once (in the 1930s) before Wenger.
Well someone at the Club thought he was worth more than £15m when we bought him - perhaps we were valuing him too high all the time. Levy, being a good businessman, would never make the mistake of confusing purchase or book value with resale value.
I agree PS I am not trying to give Levy stick, his strategy has worked well so far but I think it's time to change it to keep on top of the game. I think also our search for a Tech. Director suggests he agrees that we are missing a trick.
No, what i meant was as an asset, book wise, it looks like he's been treated as a straight line amortised depreciation over the length of his contract. So, if I read it correctly, he would then be on the books at zero cost. No profit- No loss. Had the club needed to book a loss over the last 2-3 years, there's a chance he could then have been sold and the loss booked in that years' figures.
Harry wouldn't have worked with a Director so when Levy decided he was the right man to get us out of the Ramos disaster he had little choice but to abolish the role. I think that WAS a mistake as was appointing Ramos in the first place and Levy has learned from both of those. I think that Levy didn't trust Harry's judgement on player values (who would really?) and that is the main reason we didn't have any big name signings recently. Having pissed away about £30m on Bentlley (rough guess including wages) I would want to have a really good case made for any similarly priced signings.
Levy has failed in the last 4 transfer windows to address obvious failings. Total incompetence. The stadium project has been so slow, that we should be playing in it now. Remember his failed attempt and wasted years going for the Olympic ground, we had no right to it and to knock it down was seen by the public as pure madness. One minor cup in a decade is pretty piss poor in my books .
PS, I get where you're coming from with using Bentley as an example, but we can't let that mistake stop us from ever spending that sort of money on other players we need, when that level of spending is easily the going rate nowadays. If others around us are doing it, we have to too, or otherwise we face getting left behind. are you really saying we should think carefully about spending £15m+ on a striker and need to have a case for doing so? I think the goal difference between us and those around us warrants us investing in that area of the squad. By not doing so, it has cost us £30mill anyway.
All valid points, but no one has addressed the issue I raised. Would you rather have the last minute signings regardless of the disruption to the squad, or just accept the squad as it is and go for a really prepared start?
It depends - Ade has been a good example in many ways over the last two seasons. There was no way City were going to loan him until the end of the window in 2011, doing that business gave us a much better striker than we could otherwise have got and it was well worth it over the year. The same logic applied to his purchase in 2012 would probably give the same expected result but the outcome was much poorer. But without 20:20 hindsight I couldn't see a way to spend £5m more effectively than to sign a player of Ade's potential a few games late. But signing him for £6m on July 1 would probably have been better.
Well said indeed. But you'll never convince some. I think they'd rather we paid whatever the selling club asks, regardless of how mad the valuation, and probably in turn break our wage structure. In other words, risk everything now for a chance of success (which I assume means CL) and let those fans who come after us deal with the consequences. But all this expenditure doesn't mean financial and/or competitive success, because we are competing against clubs that don't have to comply with any sort of sensible business model, clubs that can continue being financed by "external sources" regardless of what their revenue is. And let's be plain: these clubs spend more than it is possible to receive in revenue, even when in the champions league!! And it seems that there is no football authority that can (or seems to want to) stop them, whether it's by some kind of cosy relationship with the authorities, a ludicrous sponsorship deal or plain accountancy trick.
Thanks Vimhawk. If spending £30m + £30m wages on one striker would guarantee us two years in the CL it still wouldn't break even because we'd have to pay out £££ to the rest of the squad for their contribution. And if the striker turned out to be Adebayor or Santa Cruz rather than Aguero.......we would be going bust and still have no CL place.
How about the fact that he's on a nice long, juicy contract that he knows he won't get anywhere else combined with the fact that no clubs want to buy him anyway? So when no clubs want to buy and the player doesn't want to go what can you do? I think Bentley does not show how incompetent the board are but how difficult it can be to move on a player sometimes. And a bit of a warning at what can happen when you chuck loads of money at a player then it doesn't work out. Afraid to say that we may see the same with Adebayor.
I'm not so sure that's the reason. According to many reports, there has been interest in him - not least from Blackburn a couple of years ago. It is, of course, possible that he was content to just sit around and take the money - refusing to accept any offers of less than he was getting. But surely he would know that would almost certainly signify the end of his career. I was really just speculating as to why he is now being allowed to leave for nothing when he could and should have been sold. I just don't buy that he was completely unsalable, he wasn't that bad a player.
Levy's done a lot of good things but he's becoming a liability (which may be the fault of Joe Lewis) For instance making one off last minute bids for players he has no serious interest in like Moutinho and Thug Adam But the main example that he is not serious is his yearly pursuit of Damiao where he's told to meet the price or go away and yet he persists in bids that aren't going to be accepted. Meanwhile there are players like Michu, Remy and Ba (when he was at Newcastle and a long time before Chelsea were interested) he pays no attention to. And of course it's the opposite for selling players. He can get away with it for the likes of Modric and Berbatov but he doesn't seem to realise it won't work for anyone who has not played regular competitive football for a long time
Harry was looking at Remy a couple of seasons ago, but the interest wasn't followed up on due to his firing. I'd also hazard a guess that Harry was having a cheeky bid for Adam as well.
I think Spurcat already told us that the scouting network was in flux coupled with the current pursuit of a Tech Dir. would suggest that the club knows all is not as it should be in terms of finding prospects.
