https://bleacherreport.com/articles/1804288-real-madrids-eur541-million-debt-allegedly-being-hidden-by-florentino-perez#:~:text=Madrid's debt is, effectively, €,which are €239 million. This report reckons they are in €541m of debt. Crazy. La Liga is bent as f*ck though.
Sinik and Tufan are the only Turkish players we signed. Oh, we're daft signing anyone who's ever played in Turkey now. Eh?
Rosie talked about fitness, and standing up to the rigours of this league. Those we’ve signed from the Turkish league aren’t that.
Plenty of our British lads had long term injuries also. Should we avoid promoting academy players cos Fleming spent half a season out? Avoid anyone from Brighton cos their toes are made of glass?
Im sure the championship as more demanding but I really think the chaos that ensued last pre-season coupled with Shota and his methods has skewed the opinion of players in the Turkish league. If they are good players with a good pre-season under their belt there will be no problem imo.
Why does it matter? In reality we have to build back the fanbase that was destroyed during Allams and COVID. We are at about 15k Members now by accounts of the last update. I imagine with payday on the horizon that will bump up a bit more. Norwich is a weird comparison given there's no other professional sports teams near them for miles and they've had decent ownership and recent success.
Since 2008:we have both spent 1 season in League one, we have had 5 seasons in the PL and they have had 6 and the rest have been in the Championship. They have sold out their season tickets for every season since 2005 no matter what division they have been in.Covid affected us no differently to everybody else. The Allams certainly did though. Ipswich are closer to them than any club is to us.The one advantage the have is they don’t have a RL club let alone two. Should imagine Ipswich will get good gates. They were getting 8 or 9,000 more than us in League 1. Trouble is with our low prices I don’t see how we are going to have the money to compete with the restrictions of FFP. Bill Gates could buy us but he would not be able to spend loads of cash.
Suffolk and Norfolk are two big Counties with one big team in each. It's no coincidence that they are similarly well supported.
Can you imagine an Old Farm play off final at Wem-ber-ley? The tractor traffic jam on the M25 would be like nothing ever seen before.
Its been said on here about the current regime's plan is to keep prices low and get the proverbial bums on seats. So far thats working and I would imagine as long as the team performs well it would stay the same. Christ we had a couple drab draws and gates still exceeded 20k late in the season. With the top notch catering at the minute and increased gates I can only imagine game day spending has sky rocketed. This coupled with supposed sponsorship deals from abroad means we can manage for now. I would imagine over time the club will slowly increase ticket prices and I dont think anyone would begrudge them given its already one of the lowest. The fact is this fanbase was destroyed and yes whilst everyone was affected by COVID it hit clubs like ours harder when the fanbase was already at an all time low prior to it. There's a clear plan and it wont happen overnight. But again to compare us to clubs with established fanbases that have been well run despite their on the pitch success (and again I would argue Norwich have been far more successful than us in the past couple years) is silly. Clubs like Boro and Norwich can charge what they want. They know the fans will pay it and if they dont they have money in the bank to fall back on especially for Norwich who still have 2 years of parachute left. We have to build it back and then think about increasing it.
I caught the tail end of those big crowds but also the periods where we struggled to muster 5k home attendances due to the dire straits we were in and the equally dire football on display. A lot of those fans that drifted away then, wouldn’t have brought their kids/grandkids and so a lot of that legacy was lost.
To be fair there is a bit more to do in Hull on a weekend than in Suffolk and Norfolk where the options are basically footie and shagging your cousin.
It’s almost getting to the point where we are going to need a bigger ground capacity. If our fan base carries on growing like the last year or so, we are either going to have to expand, disappoint several people or move.
