We effectively owe Acun Medya, so for as long as Acun owns the club, we're fine and it's a case of restructuring the debt accordingly without doing a Mel Morris. If we start to see players being swapped between us and Maribor or Fenerbache for random prices, that's when I'd start to worry. That's not the same as us buying players from there, so deals like Tufan who was a player who they actively wanted rid of aren't what I mean.
We sold Philogene, Greaves, Tufan, Allsop, Estupinan, Ingram and Lokilo for a combined £34.5m this summer. Three of those were high earners.
We spent just over £24m on Millar, Belloumi, Kamara, Giles, Hughes, Palmer, Burstow, Racciopi and Mehlem, plus whatever loan fees we paid for Zambrano, Puerta, Rushworth, Burns and Bedia. Probably not unreasonable to assume that Millar, Belloumi and Giles will have wanted a decent wedge to come here and I doubt Hughes will be on less than £10k a week given the competition to sign him.
So in terms of money made, I'd say we were in the black in that regard, but as we know, wages eat up a lot of the expenditure and without knowing the exact figures it's hard to know exactly how we're doing going forward. The new sponsorship deals will also have lightened the load and increased attendances will also have helped.
This is why I said that we shouldn't go mental in January, regardless of the position we are in. We could do to loan in a winger to help cover the losses of Millar and Belloumi, but I honestly don't see the point in going all in when our season isn't looking like being anything other than transitional. Even with those two key players out, we have enough quality in depth to not go down, it's about setting them up in the right way.
What I'd like to see is this current group kept together and resist any bids for Hughes, make the loans of Puerta and Zambrano permanent and a couple of incomings that pad out the squad and see us through to Summer. We can't have an overhaul every year just because we don't get promoted and have Lewie Coyle, Alfie Jones and Regan Slater as the only remnants year on year.