Seen a few posts in the Scum Match thread about promotion, staying in the Championship, spending money etc and its had me thinking about how its probably an impossible situation for the club now. I have no interest in getting promoted to the Premier League and getting dry humped most weeks like Sheffield United / Burnley are going through. I also have no interest in the club getting in ridiculous amounts of debt funding a possibly fruitless cycle of players on obscene wages to try and stay in the Premier League. The way we are set up will take us so far and potentially could see us yo-yo forever, is that a good thing? One great season followed by one where we really struggle in an attempt to cling to the Premier League cash cow. Does it make me un-ambitious to potentially stay in and around the top of the Championship, a big fish in a small pond so to speak? Trouble is the Championship is a black hole for finances and put even more pressure on the owners to fund losses. The cost to watch us at the SOL is very reasonably priced, even more so if you have young kids, would that have to change if we got to the Premier League? It probably would as the costs increase massively. Then we run the risk of pricing people out of attending. I post about wanting the commercial side of the club to be absolutley flying because of the new FFP implications, but then see clubs like Forest in FFP Trouble, Man City with 115 breaches, Everton deducted points for breaching FFP, Chelsea spednign £1 Billion and wonder whats the point? We could have the best commercial operations in world football and try and do things properly by the book, but its never going to be enough to complete with State owned or Multi Billionaire Groups Basically money has ****ed football and I dont know how or where it all goes
I think that for a team in its second season following promotion from the league below where we'd been for several years, further consolidation in the top half with a sniff of the playoffs is realistic and acceptable. Lots of variables we have to consider though. Overall ambition, player throughput (i.e. can we keep the good players we have for long enough to get up with them or sell on to strengthen gradually), strength of the league, investment available.
I wasnt really talking about the position now, more the medium to long term future. Does me starting to think i like being in and around the play offs but not really stressed if we miss out on promotion make me worse as a fan or show a lack of ambition or an acceptance of were its more enjoyable?
I look at a club like Brighton and wonder if that is a model to follow. I know they have had a lot of investment from Tony Bloom, but they are brilliantly run and their net spend must be a negative number by now. Can we continue to develop these kids, add a sprinkling of experience and quality and keep the majority of the squad together as they evolve? Like you, am in no rush to get back to the PL if it's going to be the same formula as last time - scratching around for 8 or 9 wins a season, celebrating finishing 4th bottom etc. No thanks
Brighton is a really tricky one as they are still really reliant on Bloom never calling in his debt. It will take years and years to pay him back and now the level they are at the cost to replace players they sell is getting higher and higher, putting more pressure on the recruitment and the owner. It doesnt help i have SSN on in the background while i am working and the figures quoted for some rank average players is eye watering
Suppose Fulham is possible an approach to look at also, but they also means you accept a few relegations before you establish yourself in the PL
I dont know much about how they work. I believe their ticket prices are quite high though (although that could be due to the London Tax). I would hate our season tickets and match day prices to be raised to a level the average fan couldnt afford it
I meant more from an approach where you get promoted, bank the money and accept likely relegation. Do that a couple of times and you are cash rich and able to compete. They spent £100m+ the last time they got promoted and it seems to have sustained them as a PL team
I see the point and its a very valid one, obviously we would have to suffer a couple of "bad" seasons to get the good times. I don't know if the wider fan base would accept that though.
I think we've all seen enough relegations to last a life time. 1985 was my first and I think I've seen 8 in all.
Achievement for me is to maintain the club in a financially healthy way, playing entertaining football, slowly strengthening at all levels. Getting into and establish the club in footballs top tier, whatever that will look like in 2 or 3 years time, we can only guess
On the subject of Brighton replacing players, Leicester, Southampton and Spurs are lessons of clubs that have sold players for high fees but screwed up spending the money on new players. Brighton will always flirt with that risk too. As canny and shrewd as clubs can try to be, there is still a lot of risk that can cause financial hurt. I think running a club really well and trying to be as sustainable as possible is a good way to go as the damage when things go wrong shouldn’t send finances into a tailspin. Plus, there a big benefits of running youth academies well and keeping a steady stream of homegrown players feeding into the first team.
The pub I drink in is getting worse for folk going on about the lack of ambition the club are showing and how if we don’t go up this year the clubs hierarchy are no better than D+M it’s got to the point where they reckon the coach is being told who he can play and who he can’t, for me as has been said we need to walk before we can run we don’t want to go down the massive spending route been there got the T-shirt,the big test will come when we sell our 1st player for big money and how that cash is then used.
With football the way it is now, with clubs owned by nation states and billionaire owners looking poor in comparison, ambition for me is to run a football club that can survive if the owner, for some reason, leaves. That doesn't mean bumbling along at a low level though. History, stature, fanbase, ground all mean that we can rightly say that SAFC is a club that should be able to compete in the Premier League. There has to be another way, beyond selling the club's soul or hoping that an American billionaire or Russian oligarch doesn't lose interest or have his assets frozen. I believe the people that own the club are trying to find that way. Gathering together young talent and allowing them to reach their peak together slowly is much more exciting to me than spending loads of money on players who are only interested in a pay day. We'll sell some of those players when they hit their peak and, ideally, their places will be taken by the next wave of young talent. We will return to the Premier League and that has to be the club's main ambition. But I believe we'll be in a much better state than most clubs when we do. So, in short, the ambition has to be to find a better way to run a football club.
The trouble is mate, everywhere I look every club in the Premier League owe their owners hundreds of millions
