True but then you could also include the loyalty fees, of which the balance is paid in full on leaving as I understand it. On wages £20k a week is basically £1mill a year so I doubt we're making more than a £2mill saving on Soldado for N'Jie, for example. We're looking likely to be in the market for 2 players by the window's close with Lennon, Adebayor and possibly Fazio on the way out. Most of the squad trimming appears to have been done early so now we're left with 1 in 1 out, in my opinion. Also, I really don't understand why we bothered to set up a whole new company for the stadium build if it's still going to be a millstone around the club's neck, especially at this early stage. I just feel that our lack of net spends has coincided more directly with our rise in wages after qualifying for the CL and lack of CL money ever since. It went up by about £20mill a season and has remained there ever since. I think it's poor planning from the club to let so much time pass without addressing urgent needs in the squad.
I think it's poor planning from the club to let so much time pass without addressing urgent needs in the squad. I hate to say, what else is new, but!.....
I actually found it quite an entertaining game, end to end and I thought we were marginally the better side. Both teams had good chances to score while both keepers made a good save each. Leicester are in great form at the moment and although we "should" be better than them and looking to get three points, a point against an in form side at their ground really isn't that bad. Mahrez was the player we all said would be a handful and he proved that, what annoyed me with his goal though is apart from the whole team switching off, a defender of Jan's experience and calibre shouldn't have allowed him to cut inside on his left, he should've shown him down the right and forced him to either try and cross with his weaker foot or just allowed some extra time for our defence to take better positions to assist with dealing with him. That moment and the fact Lamela was dog **** yet again was what disappointed me. As I said the game was pretty entertaining to watch (in my opinion) and seeing as we didn't have our most creative outlet we created a decent amount of chances for ourselves. A major positive - Alli looks the real deal. He's got neat ability with the ball and clearly knows how to get into the right positions to score a goal, very excited to see him develop over the course of the next few seasons. Important period now, it's the final full week before the window shuts and I'm sure Poch along with Levy, Mitchell and co will understand where we're weak and get some stuff sorted to set us in good stead for the season.
Anyone else get the feeling that, if we didn't doze off from the restart, we'd be paying £3-5m less for Berahino?
I don't think our transfer activity is affected by the new stadium at all. Its more that we don't have enough ordinary income from football to cover transfer fees plus wages so we just don't have the scope to have a large recruitment budget. Our most recent attempts to address the needs in the striking department involved signing Adebayor and Soldado both of which turned out badly. If we could afford to use the City, United, Liverpool or Chelsea solution of buying so many that the odd one who turns out OK gets the job done then I'm sure we would. But we could have spent the entire Bale money on Torres, Andy Carroll and Ballotelli. Then we would be in order to criticise
I didn't know that until you just posted this but when companies do that, it's usually because they have either an exit or sale strategy. Possibly both.
Whilst I obviously do not think the guy is above criticism it seems odd to me to label Ade as a flop of a buy when two managers got him to play to something like his full potential and he was a very important player for us. For me the fact AVB and Poch can't/won't get the best out of the club's highest earner is somewhat of a criticism I them as much as Ade himself. To a far lesser extent I could say something similar about Soldado. Very decent player but barely touched the ball for his first 10 or so games under AVB's system of football. Lamela is a poor signing - Ade and Soldado have been handicapped by managers and strategies whereas Lamela just looks like a bit of a poor player who is so one-footed he has to do a Rabona every now and again.
Where the owners really make their money is in resale value. Even if you ignore the actual club for a moment, the money is there. ENIC took over by gaining the majority stake in the club which was at the time valued at £80mill(I think they'd bought something like £50mill worth of shares at the time). Since then they've put in the ocassional investment through share issues but for the most part the club has been self-reliant, handling it's debts whilst growing in value significantly. The club's now worth £400mill+, the investment has paid off to give them a remarkable profit if they were to sell up. Under extreme circumstances the money is there, FFP really only affects us if we over spend across a 3 year period. The 3 years preceeding this summer set us up comfortably(I'm assuming the results for this past season are inline with previous years) giving us 2 years to adjust for any overspend we make now. Bearing in mind the new TV deal coming in next season we'd have to have an absolute shocker to even be close to breaking FFP over the next 3 years. It would have to be the kind of financial meltdown that would rival Leeds and Portsmouth Starting the season with one striker and a clear lack of options and experience counts as an extreme circumstance in my book. It's not 2 points from 8 games and still not far away from the relegation zone in January level but we don't need that kind of investment. Neither is it one of the usual "WE NEED TO BUY A TOP PLAYER" cries that we have over most transfer windows(as does every club). It's a lack of numbers pure and simple. The remedy is simple too, buy before you sell. Worst comes to the worst, we're still lumped with Adebayor taking us for £5mill, Soldado's deal becomes complicated so we drop his valuation by a couple of mill and maybe we sell Lennon for peanuts. All those worst case scenarios could happen whether we have 2 strikers going into the season or not, the only difference is that if we buy the striker at the beginning of August we risk a loss of £10mill(a little over 5% of our revenue) but start the season more organised.
Is Ade a flop? Not for his fee, which as I recall was quite low around £5m, but considering how unreliable his temperament seems to have been, he definitely hasn't been worth his wages for a great period of his time at the club. So not so much a flop as an overpaid bastard.
And this is why it shocks me that top end professional clubs with the resources that they have..don't look into the minds of their assets...or if they do they do a rather **** job.
