timeEd32

I saw someone walking through Philly in a Shearer shirt about a month ago. I yelled "Toon Toon" while driving by at a decent speed. He almost certainly couldn't hear me, probably thought I was insane, and my kids definitely think less of me now.

It also has ramifications beyond the particular player if you're doing it to someone who is a well liked professional for essentially no reason.

With our status and budget? To find a Schar clone, but with pace and a better age would take an incredible piece of recruitment or a massive fee.

The problem is finding a player who is a genuine step-up on Schar may be nearly impossible.

I posted my best attempt at where we are in the PSR thread. I think it’s very possible we’re basically in one in, one out territory.

I'm probably not going to wear one, but that pre-match feather shirt is incredible. Looks great on the players and my son is dying for one.

This post is obnoxiously long and it has so many guesses and disclaimers that I didn’t really want to post it, but we’re losing our collective minds in the transfer thread so here’s my attempt at backing in to where we stand financially. I said awhile back I think selling more players will be a priority right now and here’s the longer version of why I think that… The last three years We needed to make a profit of somewhere between £2m and £15m in 2023/24 to be PSR compliant for the three year cycle that just ended. £2m was Swiss Ramble's estimate based on allowable deductions, but it's all a bit of a guess since those deductions aren't published. Here are the three years of that cycle: 2021/22 - £73m actual loss / £61m after allowable PSR deductions 2022/23 - £73m loss / £60m PSR loss 2023/24 - £2m(ish) PSR profit target Our 2022/23 accounts break down as follows (this isn't everything - just the headline figures): Revenue: £250m Player sales profit: £3m Wages: £187m Amortisation: £87m Other costs: £40m Here are 2023/24 estimates from Swiss Ramble back in June. At the time he said we needed to generate about £44m in sales in the last couple weeks, I said he was wrong by up to £30m, and he was clearly not wrong so I am done questioning him. Revenue: £300m Player sales profit: £85m Wages: £201m Amortisation: £106m Other costs: £46m So, based on his estimates, we would have only needed about £15m of the Anderson sale to meet the requirements. If we accept that as true then we needed £65m of player sale profits to turn a £2m profit. It would also mean we added about £20m of additional headroom for this season (or next). The £60m+ loss from 2021/22 now drops out, so that means we can go back to losing around £60-70m in each of the next two seasons if we’re willing to push it to the limit again (which I’d say is definitely not certain given how tenuously that ended). This sounds great on the surface, but the June PSR scramble has made me concerned about our costs. This season and this window Now let's look at 2024/25. If you want to read a bunch of waffle about how I landed on these numbers it's in the spoiler. For the most part I have not changed them just to get a sense of where we are today. Revenue: £300m Player sales profit: £5m* Wages: £196m Amortisation: £106m Other costs: £42m * This is Ashworth. It’s not clear to me if this happened by June 30 or was done on July 1, but it doesn’t really matter right now as it helps regardless in the current period. It’s also not clear what the fee was so I’m hedging a bit. So that’s £305m of money in and £344m out. In 2022/23 we also had about £10m in interest payments and depreciation. Swiss Ramble estimated essentially the same for 2023/24, so carrying that forward again. That means our starting point for this financial year is around a £52m loss. If the Anderson sale gave us an extra £20m cushion then we can lose around £80m this season if we go to the limit. If we just barely made the £2m profit we needed then we can max out around a £60m loss. That’s an £8-£28m cushion from where we are now. For context, Tonali added about £18m in annual costs. These numbers aren’t meant to be exact and are a starting point for this season, but hopefully illustrative of why it’s unfortunately not as pretty a picture as “well now we can lose £60-70m again.” We need to get revenue up but there almost certainly isn’t £50m+ of revenue gains coming this season, so we also really need to get costs under control. If we are able to sell Trippier and Almiron that would remove ~£15m from our costs this season, plus whatever fees they bring in. Add a training shirt sponsor and whatever else to boost revenue and then we’re creating some breathing room. Even without Europe, UEFA’s rules are relevant to this window One other factor in my mind is UEFA’s requirements, which include two parts most relevant to us – Stability (similar to PSR) and Cost Control. For Stability, it’s much of the same calculations as above except the max limit will be €90m (roughly £76m) over the preceding three years, though it could be less based on a dizzying number of factors. If we’re planning for this it could mean that our target for 2024/25 needs to be a ~£30-40m loss at most. For Cost Control, we had to have been under 90% wages & amortization for calendar year 2023, but we were likely between 85-90%. If we qualify for Europe this season then we’ll need to be under 70% for 2025/26, which is the first year of the fully phased in regulations. And the important note there is UEFA works on calendar years, so beginning January 1 our costs matter for next season (if we qualify, of course). If we use 80% of the published wages to estimate 1st team/coaching wages (this is essentially what Swiss Ramble does) and use £30m as our player sales profit (average of 3 years, which we can increase with more sales this summer and next) then we are currently at 79.6%. To get under 70% we need a net gain of about £45m (increased revenue and/or decreased costs). We may be ok drifting a bit above this number since there’s a fairly small monetary fine if you’re within 10% and a first time offender, but presumably it’s part of our planning.

The solution to Eddie taking time with new signings is to sign players he doesn’t approve of? Seems reasonable.

Even if we could afford him I'd have no interest in Toney.

I think we're basically past that time already with the possible exception of a star RW, so people should mentally prepare for our first three games to mostly feature players who are already here.

That's why you need a DoF (or someone) with more of a view of the long term to help counter the manager's (normal) inclination for short term thinking. Unfortunately ours was playing footsie with Man United at the time.

I mean, it's not ideal. But none of this was planned starting with Ashworth leaving. Mitchell needs to intimately understand everything about the squad and Howe's plans, including many of the questions routinely asked on here (is 4-3-3 the long term plan? what's needed to address the defensive issues? is Tino ready to start? is Hall the LB? what's the plan for Kelly? what was/is the plan for Barnes? can Gordon play on the right? how do we adjust when we lose Miggy's running? etc etc etc.). Then he needs a full report on the youth teams, an understanding of the players Nickson/Howe were targeting, and a full understanding of the financial picture.

We also still have the 7th highest capacity despite it not being touched in two decades, we're not getting the most revenue possible out of the current building, and there is at least one obvious option to expand with countless other paths being explored. It's a complicated situation and there's no doubt there would be complaints if we had immediately rushed into something without considering all of the options.

Those are good examples. The Roma stadium is a decade in the making and doesn't have a shovel in the ground yet. Everton has been looking into a new stadium for over 25 years.

For his value to go meaningfully higher (like north of £50m) he's going to have to be very, very good / productive. For now I am coping by assuming that won't happen.

Setting up friendlies just to get him minutes. Eddie has big plans.

27 before this season ends does seem a bit on the high side. At the same time, if you’re using Almiron to partially fund it and getting four years younger then I could see it.

Where it came from and the pace of it are hard to match.

I expected to see something far worse than this based on your build up. The issue here seems to be more about his technique

I think this is what's overlooked too much in discussions about transfer budgets and what we're going to spend, which is really just another way of my long time crusade to please talk about wages. The increase we got from Sela last season and moving forward pays for Tonali. That's it, nothing else.

There's a lot of positives in that, but I can see why it makes people nervous and it's not quite the usual bed-wetting. As a one-time thing weeks after multiple leadership changes it can be brushed aside as I think it's part power play and part the reality of a new situation where the parameters aren't clearly drawn yet. If he's still making comments like this in a few weeks/months then I'd say it's more indicative of a problem.

Oh for sure. I didn't read the article and assumed it was focused on more recent PL history.

Bruno, Trippier, Burn, Wood vs. Isak, Botman, Pope, Targett is very close. I can accept January as slightly better given the circumstances and the ludicrous fee we paid for Bruno.

Great to hear and yet somehow the best part of that video is seeing Murphy imitating the Schar celebration after the PSG goal

It's nice to have friends in very high places.