L - agreed - ok that's a shock, yes indeed Stoke ARE at that point. Invest and improve or have one helluva a wage bill in the chanpionship. That is NOT being negative either. You mentioned elsewhere that Villa spent £20 million on Bent - sure they did, before they did, they were in seriouis danger of going down, X amount of goals later from Bent they finish above us!! L it ain't rocket science - if you want the best yoi have to pay for it!! If you pay peanuts you get monkeys, in our case we don't pay peanuts but we still get monleys - that goes for the manager as well
Even if Stoke went down they would still be on a sound financial footing, no debt plus parachute payments, it's a well run club, that makes a profit, we would not be forced to sell our best players in order to pay off debts. This is my point entirely, is it really worth spending 20M plus wages to finish 10th in the league? Especially when Stoke finished 14th with one point less than Villa (10th) last season? Where is the 20M Plus wages going to come from, the club already spends almost 3/4 of its revenue on wages as it is. That would only allow us one signing in a season, and rack up debt, it's financial suicide.
L - I understand your point but, we have spent that type of money across multiple players and got very little in return and I think thats the worry of some of us on here! If it was that we were loaning players and begging with the odd 2 million signing then fair enough, but as stated we have spent the best part of 80 million with only a handful of talent to show for it! However, I do believe that this is really TP's last transfer window to get it right, because if not I believe that we will be in trouble and the fans will eventually lose patience!
Sorry to but in but, I think we've gone here before lads. Welsh M you said the other day that.. you thought this current squad of player's was good enough to get us a result v Hadjuk on Thursday. Maybe it is but looking at things as they are right now. I don't think we've any chance this season because other teams as with Delap's long un's will suss us out. Crossroads of course we are and I for one don't want to see us relegated because the present team would not find it that easy in the Championship IMHO. So, we either speculate buy player's or play negative boring football and still stuggle. Don't tell me that any of Blackpool,Wigan, West Brom player's cost the earth because they didn't. But, they all played us off the park last season. And, I know that Blackpool went down but that wasn't the point I was making. Our defence is miles better so... Food for thought. In short. Someone tell Mr Pulis that ANY Pro football player should have the ability to pass to his team mate. If he can't do that much. Then for me he ain't good enough end of. Or as you said, our midfield which lacks creativity, which is does of course. Only put's more pressure on our back four. It isn't rocket science to work out someone we need to KEEP the ball and play with it, not use it like it was a hot potatoe and panick. Because that is usually what happens. It's the system in part but Im talking about passing/basic/simple football. If you ain't got the ball you can't do much with it. Which, is why Delap is always knackered after 70 odd mins. One he's run his socks off like Whitehead does. And second, he's too old now. And, I was having a dig at the Manager not you L
Is this 80M over three seasons and does it include wages? I don't think thats a lot of money taking in to account the going rate these days, The smaller the budget the less margin for error you have as a manager. I'll admit that we probably do have one of the weakest squads in the league but Stoke arguably have two of the best wingers, two of the best center backs and two of the best goal keepers in the league. Walters, Wilson and Jones were great buys. Like I was saying before, Pulis has kept us up comfortably for three years, so in that respect he's delivered. If you don't feel that he's the man to take us further then I guess that this will be the season to judge him on. Just for the record, I'm not a "Pulis can do no wrong" person. I just think that he's doing a good job with a club that was pretty much going nowhere when he came in, lets face it it's not the easiest job in football, I mean how many times has he saved us from relegation? I'm just happy to see us in the Premier League to be honest, (especially when the highlight of your season used to be hoping to draw a Premiership side at home in the early stages of the FA Cup) there's not been a lot to shout about supporting this club over the years so I'm making the best out of it, damn it!
Mu understanding is that the 80 million is in purchases, loan fees and sale losses over the 3 year period - not taking into account wages! I do think that is an exceptional amount of money to spend for a club of our size and can only be matched by the tradditional, top 6-8 type prem teams! I agree that Huth, Shawx, Ethrington and Pennant are probably pound for pund the best in the league considering how little they have cost us and how vital they are too the team. Begovic is class and Jones solid (potentially great) but Willson was massivley overvalued and is under utilised for his potential skill set and I still believe Walters is an excellent wing cover and rotation striker, but he is no where near the status of a prem striker and has only 1 season under him! Whitehead has an excellent engine anf plays the role required by TP very well. The rest of the core team (Delap, Diao, Higgy, Collins, Wilko, Fuller, Whelan, Sidibie, Pugh, Shotton, Soares, Tongue,) form the core of what was our promotion team or picked up from left overs in the first transfer window! I dont see the 80 million, or whatever its there, I just see the same team with a few low value (except Jones) addition which have been very successful for us! Anway, Like I have said before, 6 previous transfer windows has not resulted in capable fullbacks, better CM's or a consistent striker and we still lack pace throught the spine of the team. However, I have faith that this will be the window it gets rectified, otherwise its going to be tyhe same old grounhog debates for the rest of the season!
It would be interesting to see how much Stoke have spent in the last three seasons compared to other teams in and around us. Most clubs are in massive debt so I'm assuming that a majority may have spent more than us? I forgot to mention Faye and Beattie, another two extremely important signings there. I rate Walters, he works well with Jones and now they've had sometime playing regularly together they will score goals this season. I agree with your comments on the rest of the squad though, Delap was always going to finish his career here (wouldn't be surprised if he ended up as a fitness coach), Wilco is improving and Wilson needed to improve the defensive side of his game to play in midfield (I think his stint at fullback has helped him enormously and hope to see more of him next season. I'm really disappointed in Tom Soares, (apart from sounding like he should be in a Dickens novel) he was excellent against Spurs, won two penalties and got Bale sent off, then just faded into obscurity I honestly think that Tonge and Davies were bought in as a precautionary measure incase we went down. Then of course there's Kitson who looked like a great signing until he decided to throw his toys out of his pram and as a result we couldn't offload the guy because of his attitude. Huth and Tuncay had to come as a pair or Boro wouldn't do a deal, we just simply had to get Huth. I can totally understand your frustrations, but as I understand it (I may be wrong) the whole survival plan for three years was to focus on the first eleven rather than the squad. This season onwards (time to kick on) is to try to develop a squad. Sadly Pulis has to do it within the financial restraints of the Club, basically he has to be more savy with the cash than he has been in the last three seasons as the goal isn't just to stay in the league anymore.
I am not sure who spent what, but I cant imagine the likes of Wolves, Bolton,, WBA, Everton, Newcastle, Blackburn, Wigan outspent us last season, but I dont know?
OK I have had a quick look and decided not take into account Man City, Liverpool, Chelsea & Man U and have not taken into account purchases made this transfer window! So for 2008/9 - 2009/10 - 2010/11 this is what was spent! Spurs IN 132.7 Mil OUT 100.25 Mil Wigin IN 30.8 Mil OUT 45.25 Mil Wolves In 28.5 Mil Sund IN 71.35 Mil OUT 75.55 Mil Newc IN 41.25 OUT 96.25 Mil Everton IN 38.5 Mil Bolton IN 15.5 Mil AV IN 118.1 Mil OUT 86.6 Mil Arsenal IN 40.25 Mil B'Burn IN 26.8 Mil OUT 38.8 Mil Fulham IN 30.3 Mil WBA IN 28.3 Mil OUT 20.6 Mil Brum In 37.5 Mil OUT 13 Mil + more to follow WH IN 33.5 Mil STOKE CITY IN 50.225 Mil with no values for Faye, Davies, Tongue, Sonko, Higgy and a couple of others and WILSON. Interesting reading I thought across al clubs!
Would be very interesting to see how much each club have spent on wages as well, especially West Ham and Birmingham. The loan market will play a big part again this season. I wonder what Wolves will do this season as the last two seasons they could have gone down very easily, go for broke or stick with what they've got?
I just thought it was interesting. After Liverpool, Chelsea, Man City & Man U we are the highest spending team over the last 3 years due to a combination of what we have actually spent and the fact that we have raised very little through sales! When u take into account that 4/5 clubs have either made money or broke even and the next highest spending clubs are technically Arsenal and Everton on approx 40 million, it puts our 50 million + half a dozen player (including the 8 - 10 million deal for Wilson) into perspective! You will also probably find that Man U made a profit aswell with the Ronaldo fee but I didnt bother to check! I'm not sure what it actually means, but I suppose it stops all spectulating as to the size of our relative budget in relation to the competition!
I see what you're getting at but we pretty much had a squad of championship players in our first season that quickly needed replacing, people like cort, parkin, cresswell etc who all had no resale value,. The vast majority of the League already had Premiership quality squads on place, due to the fact that they have been in the league a lot longer than us to start with. We have also done a very good job of keeping our best players who would all command high transfer fees. Newcastle, Villa, Sunderland, Blackburn and Birmingham have sold a lot of their best players, we havent because we don't have to. it's not the transfer fees that take up the majority of the budget it's the wages. 30k a week over 3 years is a lot of money and that's only for one player, plus there's perks like goal bonuses, 10% wage hikes each season, player of the season etc.. and also loan signings, you have to pay all or at least a portion of their wages too.
Agreed, but I think the issue is that TP's suuceesful siginings have been the likes of Ethrington and Pennant who were only a few million quid and Shawx was not in the purchase figures because he was bought in our championship year at 1 million. So it only really leaves Huth and Begovic at a combined 8.5 million that have been outright bargins. When you bang on all the loan fees etc and the undisclosed fees for the other players we will be well into the 65 - 70 mil bracket which is massive compared to the rest! Anyway, I wasnt trying to have a dig, just wanted to highlight that TP hasnt had a small budget compared to the rest and really he has made some "trefic" buys but his budget has been affect by good players that have gone on a free or in the last year of a contract, and the ones that have gone proper Pete Tongue like Kittson and Tunny! It is really this area that I think TP is cutting his nose of to spite his face - if they dont fit or he doesnt want them, get rid quick before the press gets hold of the situation and we end up losing millions!
Thank you Smithers, that's exactly what I have been saying for the last 12 months, but didn't have the figures to back it up. Well I wouldn't trust Pulis with a dodgy fiver
Smithers, The point about our best players is that even thought we picked them up relatively cheaply, they would be sold for three, four or even five times as much as we picked them up for. Just as an example, Carroll cost Newcastle nothing but they sold him for £32M? That's a third of their transfers going out. I don't know about you but I wouldn't let Shawcross or Huth go for anything less than £20M each, they are that important to the club and clubs would pay that kind of money, £20M for Downing? On the wages, I wasn't specifically targeting Stoke, in general i'd bet that every other clubs wage bill by far exceeds ours and that's where the real out goings come into to play. I know that around 70% of what what Stoke makes in profit is spent on wages and Coates chips in with the transfer fees, is that right? With other clubs it must be 90% or even 100% possibly more and this is what runs up the debt. I guess what I'm trying to say is that £80M might seem like a lot to us as were have been in the lower leagues for quite sometime, but its not a lot when you add everything else up and see how we look compared to other teams in the premiership. Every manager makes bad purchases but Pulis gets the crucial signings right, hes also able to balance the books which means that we don't have to sell our best players to make new signings. Just off topic, looks like Dicko and Davies are on the way out. Good bit of business...
Yep agree that Shawx (15), Huth (12), Begovic (5), Ethrington (7), Pennant (5) and Jones (6) are probably worth 50 million, but the Shawx valuation is very similar to the Carroll situation because he was with us int he championship year and owes us peanuts! The only thing I would say ( which touched on in one of your posts) is if we sold those players we probably wouldnt even have a team capable of holding their own in the championship, whereas the other teams that have offloaded some of their talent are still competing at or above our level! Anyway we have debated it to death now and i think the conclusions are as follows; TP has spent a net amount more than all the clubs accept for Man City, Chelsea and Liverpool (Mau U have made a profit) so has not had a small budget. Stoke needed to do this becasue they were building a team from the championship. If they sold their key assests they would recoup most of the money. TP has made some excellent signings that were "trefic" value for money. We have lost some money on bad buys or buys that for whatever reason didnt work out (different debate)! We have improved our average skill level but nor improved our squad depth! Thinks thats fair!
