Match Day Thread Southampton v Chelsea 14/04/18 ....12.30 KO.

Sadly because it didn't work........Although you could argue nor is the attacking style of play..........

 

What will help is the twenty three players out of contract and the eight or nine well payed first team players that will be snapped up in the usual summer fire sale.
No doubt all our players have a relegation clause that will probably halve their wages
That should bring in £100-150m to service our debt and the wage drop will keep us ticking over until someone puts serious money into the playing squad to get us hopefully out of the toughest league around

 

I'd say that the same applies to Hughes, though to a lesser extent. He's not a good manager; he isn't the reason for our failures.

 

The players out of contract aren't making much. We'll need to sell/loan a good 7-8 players of consequence to get anywhere. Ideally more than that.

 

Because we don't have the players in key areas (lack of quality up top, and in defence).

 

Have you checked Sunderland’s attendances this season, or was that a guess? Check Villa’s attendances from earlier in the season when they weren’t pushing for promotion.

Most clubs are the same.

 

Went to the bar near my house with my brother yesterday for the match and walked home afterwards feeling like I'd had my heart ripped out so I can only imagine how it felt for the fans in the stadium. The fans are an absolute credit, still spending all that money and time and still singing

I would've snapped your arm off for a draw when I saw Giroud warming up. Without a Fonte/Alderweireld/van Dijk we are so susceptible to direct attacks, albeit only one of their goals was a header. 2-1 became 2-3 so quickly, it was a classic capitulation, but it happens to every team. If that was the first game of the season we would brush ourselves down and take confidence into the next game but like kicking someone who is already down, I fear the effect it will have now for the remainder of the season. We have displayed some degree of fight since Hughes came in (West Ham aside) but I don't think this is a bottomless reserve unfortunately. In some ways yesterday and the manner of it could be more damaging than if we lost 2-0 or 3-0 and barely had a sniff.

I would rate our chances of survival now no higher than 3 or 4 out of 10 but it's too early to give up. We have a few 50/50 games coming up and you never know but I think we are all preparing ourselves for the worst.

 

Pellegrino is the main culprit.

He was an absolute clown. We only need a few more wins, and we’d be close to safety. This squad is good enough to stay up. I don’t see how anyone can defend a manager who’s tactics got us outplayed by a championship team’s reserves.

 

We don't need to go anywhere near that range. As you said, top incomes we're about 70m. With 50m we have 120m to play with before we take on any long term debt.

I'm not saying we should keep all our players and we will definately shed some but if we do a fire sale we will lose a lot of value on our players that we don't need to which will hurt us in the long run. Additionaly the sale of any players will generate more income that again can be put into wages.

I expect us to cut it to the 70-80 Mark but to cut it to 1/3 would give us way too much money to spend without anything additional going into our wage budget. And I expect us to go into debt since us not being In debt is a rare thing among football clubs.

As steele keeps saying. The finances for football aren't like any other business.

 

I agree to an extent but this season for me has been a team effort. The players haven't performed to the levels that they can. Whether that is down to terrible tactics or poor performance from individuals is up you to decide, probably a combination of both. The board hired a very defensive minded manager, anyone who followed La Liga last year knew exactly what Pellegrino does and it was only blind optimism (which I admit I had when he was hired) that he would change his style with a more talented group of players was wrong. The board also ****ed up by not giving a defensive minded manager genuine counter attacking options (same with Puel) as we have very little pace in the top third of the pitch which if you are going to be sitting deep and holding on to the ball for as long as possible then you need something that will stretch the opposition to even give you a slight chance.

So yeah, all round it has been a terrible season and the blame can be shared by everyone. For me the board the most, but the players and Pellegrino are also to blame.

 

Will many of the contracts that were signed two Summers ago in 2016 i.e Tadic, Forster, or new players like Hoedt and Lemina have relegation clauses included in them? No idea how common they are but that will obviously be a big issue if not.

 

Almost certainly have relegation clauses, if not they will have to leave urgently

 

Of course I don't know , but it would not surprise me in the least if the arrogance of the board let them sign without one .

 

Yep.

 

There are other expenses beyond just wages, though. Take Villa: they reduced their wage bill to £61.5m in the 2016-17 season, and ran an operational loss of £41.1m. We would certainly go into debt unless we offloaded a massive pile of players under those circumstances, and that debt would approach the value of the club if we weren't promoted within a couple years.

 

It won’t be pretty if/when we go down. But we will all still be here... and hopefully we will actually win some games / have something to smile about

 

Where are you getting that from those figures? if we ran an operational loss of £41m we would still be up £9m. and that would come with a bigger income from the sale of players if we reduced it that far. We will need to sell players and certainly more over the course of several years (although many will be out of contract in the course of several years), just not as many as you are suggesting. the club is in good shape and can take some hits.

 

I got those figures from Villa's published reports.

And, again, if you sell (or buy) a player, you don't get all of that money in a single oversized novelty cheque. It's normally paid out over a period of a couple years, so selling two or three players won't balance the books. We need really deep cuts.

 

It doesn't really matter when the money comes, if you've got a contract the receive the money. We really don't need the deep cuts you're talking about, I've heard Villa took an operational loss of £41m and they're challenging for promotion this season, and we're in better shape than villa were.

 

Keep in mind that the Championship also has its own financial rules which are far more stringent. You cannot simply lose huge sums each year without the owner pumping in money to convert debt to equity. Our owner likely doesn't have money to pump in.