Not sure most fans are unhappy with our scouting at present or our transfer philosophy, we were 3-4 signings away from fighting for the top 4 in my opinion without the big money signings.
The issue is there is now no transfer plan other then to sell for profit and the club in generally has no direction or actual ambition - this is shown clearly by the appointment and sticking with a sub standard manager and back room team.
In the most part we have a team of internationals yet a coaching setup sub League 1, we have no identity on the pitch and we are slowly loosing out identity off also.
Personally don't agree that its about returning to the boom and bust era of Shepard but atleast showing some controlled ambition on all fronts, starting with a new manager who can mould a team that actually knows what they are doing once they cross that line.
I don’t think the club lacks ambition, but they are cautious and pragmatic in their approach. In contrast, the fans of every football club are energised by dreams of glory, and what the club have said does cut against that. No-one dreams of finishing 10th.
The trouble with putting a dreamer like Fernandez or Ridsdale in charge is that it will eventually go belly-up, unless you’re something of a bottomless pit of money , like Abramovich. So every club, bar the exceptional, has to have some kind of financial discipline.
The problem with Shepherd was that he spent all the club could possibly afford in terms of debt, we got a break and made the CL, but then there was nothing left to push on with. The second season we made the CL places, all we could buy was Bowyer on a free. Then there was the inevitable slip backwards.
The aim has to be that if we get that bit of luck and make the top four in the future, we’re in a sufficiently healthy position financially that we can take advantage, and not come to a full stop. Youth development, hitherto neglected, is another part of being in a good financial state when opportunity arises.
So in the absence of a Mansour, I’m not yet convinced that Ashley’s general strategy is wrong. He’s made some poor decisions, the latest being Kinnear, but overall I’m prepared to give things a bit longer.
I wouldn’t say Pardew is sub-standard incidentally, but that’s another debate.
This is not a terribly wrong account of what's going on, it's just that you are mistaken when it comes to ambition and motivation, I believe.
Now, this is all speculation, but the way I see it, Ashely's main 'ambition' at this point in time is to recoup his investment, so the aim is to turn in a profit.
From a purely economic standpoint, the safest way to achieve that seems to be mid-table mediocrity. The biggest source of income for the club is media revenue (if I'm not mistaken, roughly 60% of turnover in the latest accounts), which is fairly evenly distributed among Premier League teams, and is only partially affected by the league position as long as the club stays in the league (more on this later). The second is match-day income, which of course may decline due to bad performance on the pitch, but even after years of under-performing and numerous scandals, a good audience still turns up at SJP every other week, and I'd be surprised if the average attendance would fall below, say, 45,000 in the near future. In short, NUFC has a rather loyal fan base which produces a hefty income that can be taken for granted. Third, commercial revenue may also be affected, but it's a rather small chunk of the pie overall.
So, with the TV money flowing in and people still turning up at SJP, revenues will continue to be relatively healthy.
From the expense side, the club is operating with a small squad on comparatively mediocre wages and turns in a profit on the transfer market, so it's on a rather shoestring budget. But it has a decent scouting network, and this allows it to be a selling club while not being in constant threat of relegation, so the TV money is not in danger. Whether this is sustainable on the longer term is debatable, but it seems to be working for now, and Ashely seems to believe in it.
Of course, better performance on the pitch may lead to higher revenues, but it would also mean higher costs and risks. And it's not only the one-time costs of buying a number of better players and assembling a bigger squad, but also the constant costs of maintaining that squad and its quality. Realistically, a solid top four spot is 100m+ of one-time investment away, and with the rising constant costs, the rising revenues may not even result in higher profits (we could probably get +40-50m/year provided we get into the CL every year). So, the expected return on investment for this scenario is pretty low (if it's positive at all), and going for it would involve huge risks (i.e. not getting into the CL). Not something you'd like to do if you're after your money.
There's still huge competition for 5-7th place, TV money is not substantially higher, and the EL doesn't bring decent money anyway, so it's just not worth it. In our current position, investing more heavily in the playing squad just doesn't seem to have the potential to improve the profitability of the club substantially. Moreover, focusing on cups would not generate substantially higher revenues, yet it would involve risks as to our league performance, where the TV money is.
Now, I'm not saying that this is right this way, but given Ashely's (presumed) motivation, it suits him perfectly. Of course, the performance of the team could be improved by bringing in a half-decent manager and having a more though-out transfer strategy (i.e. buying players to fit the system/team instead of buying every French bargain we can get our hands on -- of course having a system in the first place would help a lot) without spending more, but it has been proven from time to time that Mike Ashely is not very wise when it comes to either footballing or personnel decisions. And playing good football just quite simply isn’t the point for him. So, sadly, I do expect us to stay where we are as long as Ashely is in charge, and that's possibly one of the more positive takes on the near future given his well demonstrated capacity to f*** things up horribly.
Thank you for that post, which addresses the points that I was making, even if we don't entirely agree.
When I said that I didn't think the club lacked ambition, I meant it in the sense that they're not indifferent to the idea of success, and would like the team to thrive. What others mean by the word strikes me as rather different ie spending more money on players. And achieving success that way is not as simple as all that, as your post acknowledges at various points, I think.
Where I think we differ is in our assessment of Ashley's motivation, which I think is more complex and more erratic than is usually stated. I don't think he bought the club purely as a business proposition. I think it was a poorly thought-out impulse buy, by a genuine sports fan. He'd got all that cash from selling part of his business, and the sudden opportunity to buy a major Premiership club was too much to resist. Since then, he's stumbled along, making as many bad decisions as good ones, as the realities of running a club hit home.
I certainly think he's fallen out of love with the task. He's had to put in a lot of money which he's unlikely to recoup, and he's determined not to lose any more. I also think a certain mentality has crept in, along the lines of I'm going to be unpopular no matter what I do, so I may as well please myself, as with the appointment of Joe Kinnear and the Sports Direct advertising.
But I baulk at the idea that where we happen to be at this precise moment is where he was planning to be all along, and where we're necessarily going to stay. Though obviously we need a bit of luck as well as good management to progress.
Whether Pardew is good enough, I'm still not sure tbh.
His representatives bought the club for him on his behalf for completely non-sporting reasons and ENTIRELY as a business proposition. Why spout random crap that conflicts with what the guy who sold the shares has actually said?
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