Thai if you read the first installment you will see the bit about what your chairman said and did. I stated that both Norwich and Leeds should have done back to back promotions that season, but the difference is that your board backed Lambert and even said it was a gamble they were willing to take. If the gamble had not paid off you would be in L1 now. It worked and chuffed for you, Bates didn't and instead sold talent ...
I am in two camps with this Doc, I think to an extent we got pretty lucky, and could quite have easily followed the same path as Leeds that season, and been a little outside the top 6. Yes, it was a gamble that payed off, but it does not necessarily follow that if one gamble has worked, another one would also work as effectively. I am not suggesting that you may be looking for 'reasons' to explain why Leeds have not made a return to the top flight, but I am not so sure that the argument about parachute payments is as significant as you are making out either. Yes, it's a wedge of cash to a relegated club that more than half of the Championship do not enjoy, but it doesn't go as far as investment from these sugar daddies that are invading the top two leagues now.
Doc - Norwich only spent £4M that season (most of it on Andrew Surman) which was about £30M less than Leicester spent. With their crowds, that wasn't a gamble
That's not mega rich, and they haven't ploughed any into the team, not to get promotion anyway. Mega rich is Abramovich, Branson etc. Beckham's worth about the same as the Palace lot and that's why he's only looking at buying an American football club franchise like Miami.
We spent £2m on Waggy the season Norwich went up, so they spent more than us. It was the year after Norwich went up that we spent £13m, thats thirteen, not thirty.
That is not a huge sum, although pretty huge for the Championship Out of curiosity, what sort of wages are your players raking in? I am guessing there are some really high earners among them, and by high I would set the bar at £20,000+ PW
I can assure you 13m is a fortune to Leeds fans. Most of us near wet ourselves when we spent 1m on a player for first time in eight years
Think the point he is getting at is they didn't invest much into the playing staff especially when you compare it to others who have been promoted from this league. I agree though that they have had some mega rich owners. I think there are other examples of this though, the likes of Norwich didn't invest much into their team when they got promoted, they also had a class manager that got them promoted without needing much investment. This is why I blame Grayson more than Bates for us not being in the prem, on paper I thought that we had a better squad than Norwich and very little was needed to get that team promoted but instead he wasted what little money he did get on **** players. His recruiting in his last season and a half was nothing short of piss poor. I completely see where you are coming from, Norwich didn't spend that much at all compared to others and still had debt from my understanding even in their first year in the prem so where unable to even spend that much (again compared to others in the league) to ensure they stayed there. I think a lot is owned to the quality of manager you had at the time. QPR however did have a huge budget. They started the season by spending 1.5m on Taarabt and then had a massive wage budget, but you have to say even since they got promoted to the prem that we have seen a huge spike in spending in this league. 1.5m was a fairly decent size spend on one player back then but the ever increasing funds available to second tier clubs is almost getting scary and the margin is increasing (I do believe this is because of parachute payments and the unfair reward of failing to survive in the premier league). Now 1.5m on a player is not even worth a second look. The longer you stay in this league, the more money it will cost to get out of it (that is if you are not getting the benefits of the parachute payments). For me, Ross is far underrated in this league. He is better than what most give credit for, creates just as many as he scores if not more, when played as a striker, theres not many players in the league that I would want in a strike partnership over him.
