To continue a game of "guess the accounts", a £30m hole this summer was predicted, next summer when we lose the dead weight that's £20m. Is it even possible to shave £20m from our wage bill and still be vaguely competitive? If my maths is correct, that's all members of a 25 man squad taking a £15.4k p/w pay cut? I'm sure we've made some steps in that direction, but it must be nigh-on impossible to be self-sufficient in the championship, without relying on player sales. Just looking at record transfer fees, it's amazing Millwall do as well as they do. They've never spent £1m or more on a signing. Brentford and PNE are the only other teams in the division to have never spent £6m or more.
Dropped him for the second half of the season for a loan player who was a CM. Who has now gone back to his club. Who was asked to play out of position at RB, despite pinto being fit again. That, mainly.
He got injured for a few weeks when we fell out of his car or something. He was fit after a few weeks.
Pretty sure he pushed Pinto so that he had a "freak" accident climbing out of his car. Devious Farke.
I fully agree with your overall assessment. To be self sufficient we would need a payroll squad of 25 earning less than we are paying now and, judging by the comments made by Millwall over the signing of Marshall, we remain one of the better payers in the Championship. The player sales should cover the black hole this season but a squad of 32 - if we can't shift a few - many still on old contracts is still a problem.
We have all known for many, many years, this board has f**ked the club and the fans. This is just what this club is. Discussing it wont change it. This is our club now. We had all the opportunities, they spaffed them all away. Wasted all those billions of Premiership TV rights. We all know this. Tha's why we are all so heart broken and angry. It's never been about expecting promotion. It's been about expecting all those years of Premiership money to secure our club. After the years in League 1 when we thought we might fold. The Premiership years, I honestly thought, we can invest this, and solidify our club as a greats English football club. I really thought all that premiership money would save us from this worry.
I pretty much agree with a lot of what you say FML and why they had to issue the bond to fund the Academy upgrade. It’s a bit like you or I spending all/most of our income and then deciding we’d like a holiday/better car or whatever. I know it’s all been accounted for with pay-offs to AN/Naismith holding us to ransom etc. Having said that, I don’t us to end up in ‘the same boat’ as Villa, but I wish the Board had made far better use of the PL £Ms!!!
Thanks for that, 1950's. So that's about £19m in players salaries. It doesn't sound unreasonable, but even with a few high earners leaving next summer there is not a lot of savings to be had.
Try £49m my friend - to be accurate £48.2m although that is all staff costs - not just the players. The year before the figure was £60.1m.
We ALL don't know anything of the sort - it is your opinion as is the idea that we got billions from our years in the Premiership.
Disagree here. The revenue per club in the PL is well documented (and obscene) - it's how the clubs spend it that determines heir fate - and ongoing bank balance. We were clueless, as in RvW, etc. Oh, and Naismith's length of contract with no obvious relegation clause built in
The revenue income is well documented and we never got billions. Hughton wanted RvW and the Board backed him. Neil wanted Naismith and the Board backed him. The details of his contract were probably the minimum he would accept. I do not dispute that the 2 players mentioned turned out to be a waste of money but they were players the Manager wanted and the Board backed the Manager. Can you imagine the uproar if the Board had not backed the Manager? AN thought Naismith would help us avoid relegation. If the Board refused to back him then there would have been cries of ' no ambition ' ' Board condemn us to relegation by not backing Neil ' etc etc. It is just too easy to bash the Board. If we make a bad signing - it's the Boards fault. If we make a good signing then praise goes to the Manager. The audited accounts clearly show where the money went and whilst I accept some decisions were bad ones they were decisions made by the Manager and the Board backed him with the finance.
We all know how much promotion to the Premiership is worth. It's all they talk about every Play-off day. Obviously when I said billions it was to say we god obscene money twice recently. We should never be in this position.
So we have a choice of who to blame, 1:- the manager for wanting expensive players 2:- the board for backing the manager , 3:- the fans for the way they would react if the board refused to back the manager. Fans every time for me!
Sorry to nit-pick but if you meant millions why say billions. Anyway presumably you are now a happy bunny because we no longer get the ' obscene money ' and will be unhappy if we are ever in the position to receive this obscene money again. I also have to assume that you are now saying that the Board should not have backed the Managers on expensive signings. I respect that as a point of view although I cannot recall too many fans expressing that view at the time.
