What I am getting at is that I wish that we weren't involved in a sports portfolio group, and Dragan was the sole owner. 100% business focused on Saints. Instead of Europe to buy into clubs, look at the Canadian Premier League for example? There's lots of untapped talent over there.
I suppose you could make the argument (to support your argument) that if we did go down we had about £200m worth of talent to sell if their investment/gamble didn’t come off last time. This time we don’t have as much, albeit we should still be looking at £100m+ hopefully
Last time we were an established PL team who had flirted with relegation for a few seasons. Keeping us up then shouldn’t have required as much investment as it would this season. And much of the talent was young and didn’t perform that well, apart from Tino, Lavia and JWP people weren’t clamouring to sign our players.
This is about right. They got burned two seasons ago when we had 3 managers and spunked a load of money up the wall on players who haven't performed. Now they've probably gone too far the other way. Presumably they think we should be competitive in the Championship next year no matter what and don't want a repeat of January 2023. Which is why the interesting thing for me will be what happens in the January window. If we spend big in a panic then I'll be confused. If they don't spend and/or play around with our loan slots then that's fair enough. It's entirely clear Martin should never have been given a new contract. But that decision reminds me of the tail end of our successful period, say 7 or 8 years ago, when we'd lost a bunch of very good players so decided we needed to tie everyone down to long contracts and ended up with a load of dead wood in the squad that we couldn't shift for years because of the contracts we'd given them.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but regardless of his contract extension, Russ still had two years left. I don't think the contract was about extending his time here, but more about increasing his salary in order to ward off other clubs. I still don't understand the rumour that it would cost 12m to sack him. Most lower end Prem managers are on about 1m to 2m a year.
Think it was to do with him and all his staff leaving. No idea where the number comes from as it does seem high, unless there is some clause about him getting sacked in the first season after signing or something, which looking at how it’s going wouldn’t surprise me.
Yeah I don't buy the £12m figure either. Re the contract extension there's a good chance it was part of his original contract in case of promotion
I always thought the £12m figure was what was bandied around last season when we were still paying off Ralph and his staff, and Jones and his staff. Assume we're still paying off NJ and his cronies as well this season .. Seems to have morphed into it's own rumour about Martin on his own, but really it's probably the cost of RM and his staff, plus the cost of NJ and his staff ... not sure how it all works, to be honest.
Not sure. I was under the impression that the clauses were written that clubs only continued to pay while managers remain unemployed but may well be wrong.
The contract was reported as a new 3 year deal so I think it was an extension. This article: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/articles/czvxdnkev02o quotes him as saying "I'm really grateful to the owners and to Phil [Parsons, chief executive]. Once the season was finished, they expressed a desire to discuss a long-term plan with myself and the coaching staff." which doesn't sounds like it was something triggered by promotion. I don't fully believe the £12m number being mentioned either, although the combination of the extra year and the pay rise means we will have to pay more if he's sacked and I don't think it was deserved. I will put my hands up to being biased because even last season I thought he was a deeply flawed manager (and said at the time I thought we'd be awful in the Premier League under him). He seems to be a good man manager (if a bit too matey as others have said) but he's not great tactically and possibly not a good communicator either? I'm amazed that he comes out after games and says things that suggest the players still don't understand what he wants them to do, even though most of them have played under him for 18 months now.
This is where the figure comes from, it does seem a weird thing to make up though if it isn’t true. On here can see that people don’t believe it anyway so why make it up? https://www.dailyecho.co.uk/sport/24673414.finances-factor-southampton-consider-martin-call/
I can't read that. Does it say the £12m includes paying off his staff and if so does it say how many of them there are? If that number includes paying off a load of staff and paying a possible release fee for a manager who's currently in a job then maybe it's plausible.
"One source estimated prematurely releasing Martin and his staff and replacing him with a new boss could cost up to £12m this season. Up to 50 per cent of that would be paying up terminated staff contracts while any new hire could require a transfer fee - and then add their new wages."
Right. So the cost of sacking him and his staff is actually £6m, which seems believable. It seems a bit disingenuous to say the cost of replacing him includes his payoff AND the new manager's wages. Regardless of what happens with Martin we'll have to be paying wages to whoever is our manager.
Yeah the actual additional cost is £6m to pay off Marin & Co. The other £6m is to pay whoever is in charge and isn't an additional cost. Unless we are thinking of sacking him and not having a manager. Actually, not a bad idea.
