It's been puzzling me for a while but our scale and revenue suggests that we have significantly more spending power than quite a few of the other 'bottom half' clubs... yet we always seem to be completely skint and scratching around for money to buy players. We're getting out spent by a lot of clubs who on paper have a lot less money coming in. Is part of the problem the fact that we get little to no stadium advertising due to all the 'free' SD ads everywhere? I read somewhere that he waives the 'interest' on the loan he made in lieu of the ads. The figure I think was put at £1m. This was 10 years ago so the true value of that space would have been £3-4m back then and maybe up to £8-10m now. He's therefore basically using smoke and mirrors to get cut price ads. This is clearly holding back our revenue streams. Another one is retail. He controls the club shop and .com businesses from within his SD shell but how much more would we be able to claw in with another partner.. one who is more focused? Hopefully a potential new owner will see the opportunity to make a step change in our revenue structure and we will see our revenue rise to where it should be... which should allow for more player and wages. The lack of competitive spending may just be down to Fatty tightening the purse strings so he can sell but it pisses me off big time. It's the football equivalent of meeting a street magician who fools you with a trick which you simply cannot work out the mechanics of. I know we are being 'done'.... but just cannot work out why.
You're spot on Albert, I don't see any big earners in your squad . All the best, you'll bounce back, always do
Good post, Chippy. From 2016@ https://www.theguardian.com/football/2017/jun/01/premier-league-finances-club-by-club What this says to me is we are absolutely consumed by the need to break even or turn a profit - a very corporate thing to do, but not to be sniffed at either as we're really healthy. The weird thing is this report has our commercial activity significantly better than Southampton, Everton, Leicester, etc. Look at the Spurs section - they borrowed £100m just to spend. It's hard to say specifically where the money's going as the accounts add up for a club of our size. I'm not convinced this is all about money - I think it's about structure and ambition. What I could possibly suggest is: - We don't pay anywhere near enough in wages to look like an attractive proposition - We don't have anything like a good enough back office structure to work out good deals for the club - Our MD is an incompetent bellend who hasn't put the right building blocks in place - Our scouting has been extremely limited - Our youth set up is, frankly, laughable Unlike every other club, we have no youth players playing and haven't sold anyone for a decent profit to allow us to spend again - when we have made some decent coin, it's had to fund relegation. Why I think we need Rafa is far beyond the first team. Surely he must know what competence looks like, what a scouting network should be like, what an MD should deliver and be strong enough to rectify this stuff?
Its Rafa’s taxi to and from Merseyside every day. We could be challenging for Europe if he would start biking it.
