The Sunday Times: Saints up for sale

It's in the Echo FFS!

 

Yep...and gave us cup finals and European football along the way. It was a fun ride and no reason why it can't happen again with this Dagrosa guy or such like.

As has been said, to turn a worthwhile profit they must invest. With Premier league money decreasing, just owning us in the condition we are won't be enough.

 

But what do you invest in? Academy players where the risk is relatively low, a good coach who knows how to develop young players or high profile, high earning signings like Ings, Ramirez, Hoedt and Carrillo where the returns are mixed? For me the modern game is all about coaching and developing.

 

You have to have both. You can improve all the cheapo talents and academy players you can with the best in the world training campus but eventually you either need to bring in premium price talent to supplement that, or give the big, six figures a week+ deals to keep your best talent.

The idea that anyone can break into the upper echelons of the league without spending big in contracts or fees is (generally) a myth. There’s a reason why Leicester was such a massive shock and game breaking anomaly. It was a total freak occurrence in so many ways.

 

Not sure it was a freak at all. There’s a group that includes us and Leicester just below the top four who are waiting to capitalise when one or more have a dodgy season. But as Leicester showed, it impossible to sustain because having tasted success the top players then want to move on as part of their development. You’re then back in the old game of paying huge sums for players unproven in EPL.

I just don’t understand how a venture capitalist borrowing money to buy the club could possibly give us greater spending power than we have now.

 

Agreed on the developing of players. With the right owner, we would snap up players like Balogun from Arsenal without looking to fund it from the back of the sofa.
We also took Bertrand and Romeu from bigger clubs which reignited their careers. That model did us ok too.

 

Probably not an ideal time to be investing heavily in a business that can’t currently accommodate it’s paying customers.

 

Or an absolutely ideal time, if you can absorb losses for a year. Gao is a motivated seller, and is likely to part with his controlling share for less than a (for whatever it's worth) established PL side would normally fetch, precisely because of the current circumstances. Circumstances that will not be permanent, and to be perfectly frank the 'paying customers' really don't matter all that much from a financial standpoint anyway: the percentage of our revenues that come from the people in the stands is really very low.

 

Buyers market. Low

 

In the PL maybe match day revenue is unimportant. But the PL doesn’t exist in a bubble. If the lower leagues don’t open their gates soon, there’s going to be some big names in serious trouble. This could be the year that financial reality finally returns to the Beautiful Game.

And how much longer do you think there’ll be a huge international market for televised games in empty stadia? Invest in football? Now? Not sure I would.

 

Sure. Those are things that would matter if you were investing in a League One team. He is not. He is investing in a Premier League team, where it really doesn't matter.

Do I think that there'll be a huge international market for live entertainment at a time when people have sweet **** all else to do? Of course!

 

We are already seeing more and more clubs in the lower leagues go bust, although Bury last year was through mismanagement rather than the pandemic.

Financial normality may return for some leagues, but can you really see wages etc going down in the Premier League though? Aubameyang has just been given a three year deal worth over £300k per week and he's 31. I know he was last season's top scorer but that's still ridiculous wages.

Havertz is also rumoured to be earning around the same per week.

 

Macclesfield Town was wound up because of a debt that was equivalent to one weeks wages for Gareth Bale. Maybe Macclesfield and Bale are so far apart that what happens to one has little bearing on the other, but they are not actually operating in different universes.

Do I think the rich can go on getting richer while the poor are left to die at the side of the road? I don’t think that is sustainable, in sport or in wider society, but I’ve been saying that for years now and the gulf keeps getting bigger. So we’ll see. Everything is connected isn’t it?

 

To be honest, not got a clue. But what I do know is that we live in a world where Arsenal would rather make a bunch of low-earning, most likely working class staff members redundant and pay Willian and Aubameyang (both in their 30s and a few years from the end of their careers) over half a million a week in wages.

Could they have done both? Probably. Are Arsenal the only club thinking like this? Probably not.

As much as I agree with you, I just can't see Premier League clubs giving a toss if half the lower league teams go bust.

 

No idea on the reliability of these

.

 

This is all over Twitter too. Fingers crossed

 

Or as usual with us we could be banking on the takeover, it doesn't materialise and then we unveil Hoedt as the new CM we have all been after.

"I've been played out of position for all my career, I want to repay the Saints for their loyalty and do a good job replacing Pierre"

 

Always complicated financially aren't they.

 

Nightmare!

 

This looks almost as good as the proposed SISU takeover.