Saints are 'increasingly hopeful' on Victor Wanyama signing a new deal at St. Mary's

Perhaps Reed can be the new Morgan?

Realistically though, I do not think we will find a new MS. Not sure we can do better than Wanyama either.

But what we maybe can do is match Wanyama at a cheaper price via Reed or Romeu.

Would say the same about Pelle, really. He is a solid player for where the club is now in terms of stature. But we can maybe get younger and cheaper.

Then put the money into a position of greater weakness...a winger perhaps. Or we will also be needing a CB soon.

And just keep cycling through players like this for a few years.

Step by step. We hang on to our star players a bit longer each time. Add more money each time they go. Beef up the academy and sign some youth. Ralph does his thing and markets the club. We finish no worse than 14, and hopefully 10 or above most years.

I don't know how long it will take but if we can just keep at it, following this plan we will eventually get there.

We will have to be patient, and willing to take measured risks. It will be really, really difficult but it is the only way forward for me.

 

I'd take the money. Wanyama is at our level atm - for the same reasons Pelle and Tadic are; quality players with certain limitations. I would be happy for somebody to sign him for £25m.

 

Oh hell yes. Sorry!

 

I'd be amazed I'd any one paid £25m for VW, even more we could struggle to get £20m with a player known to want to move.

If he goes in the summer we would likely get a Clyne for him at best, perhaps topping at four Charlies...

 

All those people saying they'd be happy to sell, have you not begun to recognise how hard it is to find then bed in replacements for any half decent player? Wouldn't it be nice if, for one season only, we only let go of players who didn't feature in our plans for the following season?

 

My take on that is that we already have the replacements. Im against selling and finding a replacement in the off-season but in this case I think we actually have the squad to cope.

 

Real life football is not like those Football Manager Games and some people seem not to be able to differentiate between the two.

 

It's the balance that's important. Planning involves signing replacements whilst the original players are still here and having time to bed them in and giving the manager options. Players come and go all the time, but I'm willing to bet we won't have any mass exoduses again.

 

I hope this comes off! This would send out a massive message to RK about signing his Long term future to us, thus sending out a big message to Sadio, Should he decide to have a U-turn. And potential signings.

 

No. That would suck pretty bad, actually.

It would mean we generate no revenue from player sales, and revenue from player sales is the major means of acquiring new players for most clubs. If we had just won the Premier League title then I suppose it would be okay. But pretty much any team looking to improve will have to sell to buy.

It's not like Wanyama is going to stay for nothing. You will have to pay him more to stay. The amount you will have to pay him is enough that we will likely no longer be able to sell him. So if Wanyama signs a 75k a week deal, we're stuck with that for four years.

 

Enough with the messages. We sign Wanyama if it makes sense. We don't sign him if it doesn't.

People wanted Wanyama benched/replaced as a punishment to "send a message." Now we're going to give him a massive pay rise and extension as a reward to "send a message" just one game later.

The only message that needs to be sent is "We are going to work tirelessly to improve this club and make logical decisions based on costs and benefits." And the way to send that message is to actually do it.

Make decisions based on sound principles and not what players, supporters, or managers might think.

 

Agreed. We have to behave in a consistent manner. We don't fold in the case of blackmail or petulance. Our dealings with other clubs should be honourable. The biggest problem the club faces are players and other clubs not being straight with us. If Clyne had, early doors, said that he simply would not sign a new deal with us he could have been sold earlier for much more money. Pochettino's prevaricatung left us in the smelly stuff because his dissembling. Where's the honour in that?

 

This simply isn't going to be true in an environment where practically every team in the PL has revenues of 150m or more. Heck, it isn't really true now; most teams are not selling to buy at the moment, either. Teams with a net transfer spend over the past two years exceeding 40m include such giants of football as West Ham, West Brom, Crystal Palace and Leicester.

Wanyama's not going to fetch 25m in the summer with a year remaining on his contract in any event. Probably not 20m, for that matter. Sign him to a new contract if we can, and then if we have to sell at some point, we'll at least have a bit of leverage.

 

It IS true now, and it will remain so. I've explained this before.

What you are doing right now is worrying that Saints will have all this money coming in and you expect them to spend it on players or we will fall behind and the owners are just being greedy. Which is the same thing that every supporter of every team is saying.

So if we get 30m more in funds, and spend it all, then all we are really doing is keeping pace with every other team that has will also 30m more. So all that happens is everyone spends more and the price of players is inflated.

If you want to improve, you will have to not spend more, but spend more relative to the other clubs. Where is that extra money going to come from? Most likely, player sales. It's unlikely that Saints or other club can grow their fanbase 10% overnight. Bar a new stadium opening of something like that, other revenues are fairly stable.

Every so often you get a new TV contract or something which gifts the clubs some extra money. Which they will promptly factor into their budget and spend. After that, it's back to trying to make money at the margins again.

The primary source of discretionary revenue for a club is player sales. The primary source of discretionary expenditure for a club is player acquisition. That's actually a good thing. If it weren't this way then either owners would be pocketing money or clubs would be going bankrupt.

 

You can explain as you please. Verifiable reality in the form of the transfer spends of Premier League clubs are readily available which demonstrate that our sell-to-buy habits are not in any way the norm.

Eliminate the top six teams in revenue from the equation. Then, eliminate us. The net transfer spend of the remaining thirteen teams over the past two years? 375m. That simply does not square with the notion that most of the PL is in sell-to-buy mode and will be for the foreseeable future.

 

Not if you look at the overall picture. Yes, many teams spent more more on players than they generated in sales. But they accomplished this by borrowing and increasing their debt. West Ham and Leicester especially.

We did the same thing. When we were outspending everyone in L1 and Championship, we were running up debts. When we made those big money Osvaldo and Ramirez purchases, that was more debt.

Since the club appears not to want to take on any more debt, then basically we will have to sell to buy. We'll get a bump in revenue that doesn't mean that much because every other team will get it and spend it on players as well. Anything beyond that will come from player sales.

 

Again: there are readily available numbers on these things. West Ham's profligate spending caused their gross debt to increase by 3m between 2013-14 and 2014-15. Their net debt went down by several million. Their debt over the past three years overall is down, both net and gross.

I mean no offense here, but you're arguing from what you believe should be the case, rather than what is the case. This isn't an argument about how teams should comport themselves, it's an easily tested hypothesis about how the finances of the sport have changed and continue to change. And the evidence simply does not back the idea that teams sell-to-buy, nor that they need to sell-to-buy.

 

West Ham has already said that FFP has tied their hands and they have to get wages off the books to bring anyone in. Thus their salty reaction to Austin going to us.

So I have no clue where you are getting this idea that they have money to spend.

 

But FFP is very likely to be overhauled because of the new TV deal. It's almost universally expected.

I'm arguing against what you have said to date, namely that:

Simply isn't true. The numbers are very clear: most clubs are not funding their transfers through player sales.

And:

Simply isn't true. West Ham's debt has been flat/decreasing since the new TV deal came into being, despite spending 49m more in transfer fees than they have taken in over the past couple years.

 

Yes. They are. You can play a financial shell game if you want by claiming the 50m you spent on Player X came from matchday revenue instead of selling Player Y. But ultimately, it's tied to player sales.

Here is the Swiss Ramble breakdown for Saints from 2014-15:
http://swissramble.blogspot.com/2015/11/southampton-with-or-without-you.html

It pretty much explains everything. Look at the charts. The amount of profit teams make is fairly highly correlated with how much profit they made from transfers. Now that FFP is here, most teams break even or come out a little ahead in player sales, and most teams break even or come out a little ahead in profit. There were four clubs in 2013-14 that made an big profit on the transfer market, and not coincidentally they were also the clubs that showed the most profit. Except for Man U, which is obviously an outlier in terms of ability to generate revenue.