Financial Fair Play / Profit & Sustainability

[timeEd32]

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.

Spoiler

The loss of CL money (including the match day boost) is roughly offset by the addition of Adidas. I’m assuming there will be some events at SJP to replace things like Fender, Saudi, and England friendlies we’ve seen in the last couple years and I’m calling the Japan tour equal to the US one. The Amazon doc goes away, but let’s call that a wash from smaller deals we've done in 2024 that will now have a full 12 months as well as SELA Stack. A lot of words to say keeping revenue flat for now. There are clearly some new deals coming but just picking a baseline.

 

Wages are the trickiest part. The big downside to cashing in on Minteh and Anderson is it barely changed our costs. Dummett and Ritchie going will have done more for decreasing wages. I think Dummett + Ritchie + Anderson = Kelly, though it’s hard to fully trust what’s out there. Vlachodimos for Dubravka is also basically even (I’m assuming we’ll give him away at some point). Joelinton got an increase and Bruno now has a full year of his new contract. There are likely other increases, but also a drop from no European bonus. We’ll decrease by £5m, but that may be a kind guess.

 

Minteh removes £1m in amortization but that’s likely offset (or exceeded) by Kelly’s sign on bonus. Vlachodimos adds ~£3m, though that is probably offset by Joelinton’s extension. Hall is already included since his loan fee was essentially just another year of amortization.

 

I’m not including Isak or Gordon contract extensions, which will increase wages and decrease amortization.

 

I’ve decreased ‘other costs’ slightly since these are typically higher when in Europe.

 

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.

[JonBez comesock]

You lost me at 

 

This..

[janpawel]

25 minutes ago, timeEd32 said:

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.

  Reveal hidden contents

The loss of CL money (including the match day boost) is roughly offset by the addition of Adidas. I’m assuming there will be some events at SJP to replace things like Fender, Saudi, and England friendlies we’ve seen in the last couple years and I’m calling the Japan tour equal to the US one. The Amazon doc goes away, but let’s call that a wash from smaller deals we've done in 2024 that will now have a full 12 months as well as SELA Stack. A lot of words to say keeping revenue flat for now. There are clearly some new deals coming but just picking a baseline.

 

Wages are the trickiest part. The big downside to cashing in on Minteh and Anderson is it barely changed our costs. Dummett and Ritchie going will have done more for decreasing wages. I think Dummett + Ritchie + Anderson = Kelly, though it’s hard to fully trust what’s out there. Vlachodimos for Dubravka is also basically even (I’m assuming we’ll give him away at some point). Joelinton got an increase and Bruno now has a full year of his new contract. There are likely other increases, but also a drop from no European bonus. We’ll decrease by £5m, but that may be a kind guess.

 

Minteh removes £1m in amortization but that’s likely offset (or exceeded) by Kelly’s sign on bonus. Vlachodimos adds ~£3m, though that is probably offset by Joelinton’s extension. Hall is already included since his loan fee was essentially just another year of amortization.

 

I’m not including Isak or Gordon contract extensions, which will increase wages and decrease amortization.

 

I’ve decreased ‘other costs’ slightly since these are typically higher when in Europe.

 

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.

Good post, shows how expensive wages are for established players (Tonali) 

[Unbelievable]

46 minutes ago, timeEd32 said:

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.

  Reveal hidden contents

The loss of CL money (including the match day boost) is roughly offset by the addition of Adidas. I’m assuming there will be some events at SJP to replace things like Fender, Saudi, and England friendlies we’ve seen in the last couple years and I’m calling the Japan tour equal to the US one. The Amazon doc goes away, but let’s call that a wash from smaller deals we've done in 2024 that will now have a full 12 months as well as SELA Stack. A lot of words to say keeping revenue flat for now. There are clearly some new deals coming but just picking a baseline.

 

Wages are the trickiest part. The big downside to cashing in on Minteh and Anderson is it barely changed our costs. Dummett and Ritchie going will have done more for decreasing wages. I think Dummett + Ritchie + Anderson = Kelly, though it’s hard to fully trust what’s out there. Vlachodimos for Dubravka is also basically even (I’m assuming we’ll give him away at some point). Joelinton got an increase and Bruno now has a full year of his new contract. There are likely other increases, but also a drop from no European bonus. We’ll decrease by £5m, but that may be a kind guess.

 

Minteh removes £1m in amortization but that’s likely offset (or exceeded) by Kelly’s sign on bonus. Vlachodimos adds ~£3m, though that is probably offset by Joelinton’s extension. Hall is already included since his loan fee was essentially just another year of amortization.

 

I’m not including Isak or Gordon contract extensions, which will increase wages and decrease amortization.

 

I’ve decreased ‘other costs’ slightly since these are typically higher when in Europe.

 

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.

 

Fantastic post timeEd32 and essential reading for all those who think we can easily drop 100-200m this window on two or three star players.

[DahnSahf]

At the most fundamental level what that post tells us is that, despite all the money involved, the sport is worthless.

[Terrymac1966]

What a sad sad indictment of football today. All this invented sh+t to keep the same teams at the top...

 

How the hell Villa are spending left right and centre was beyond me...then I remembered Diaby.....we are slowly being tied up in contrived knots of convenience to strangle our ambition and keep the status quo unthreatened. Pass the gun please....

[Ben]

Without knowing much, why the fuck are the Saudis not finding a way to pump money into the club ? 

[BoSelecta]

3 hours ago, Ben said:

Without knowing much, why the fuck are the Saudis not finding a way to pump money into the club ? 

A million mag+ memberships would do for a start. 

[brummie]

4 hours ago, Terrymac1966 said:

What a sad sad indictment of football today. All this invented sh+t to keep the same teams at the top...

 

How the hell Villa are spending left right and centre was beyond me...then I remembered Diaby.....we are slowly being tied up in contrived knots of convenience to strangle our ambition and keep the status quo unthreatened. Pass the gun please....

 

See my post in that Other Clubs' Transfers thread.

 

You really need to start generating home grown players for profit, that is where you get options.

[JonBez comesock]

We heard it from the horses mouth

 

it’s going to be a difficult summer!

 

Not sure why people think any different 

 

I can see us signing 2 players 

 

Maybe Miggy Leaves ?

 

 

[duo]

Not sure if posted but helps explain new rules - still don't get why we are so broke though with CL and Adidas money 

 

 

[Ikon]

We might not be THAT broke. New DoF just come in, which kind of means a reset regarding targets. This along with the club aiming for proper genuine quality targets that are either difficult to get done or might not even be available at this very time. They have repeatedly been talking about having to get the RIGHT players in, that they can’t afford to make too many mistakes in the market if we are to catch up with the others that possess very different resources. My guess is that we are keeping our cards close to our chest and play it out calmly, without rushing anything and making risky deals. No I don’t think we have ridiculous amounts to spend but I’m confident that we have enough for two relatively big signings and a “cheap” one or two. I’m anxious and frustrated, but let’s wait and see. We might not even be after any of the linked names. Who knows wtf is going on in the background. Twitter and so called journalists know fuck all, that’s for sure (my guess regarding 99%). Also know the club has said that their transfer plans won’t change too much because of a new DoF. But I don’t believe that. PM once he signed might have made some demands himself. For present and the future. 

 

 

Edited July 29 by Ikon

[et tu brute]

People need to wait until September 1st to see what happens, what the verdict on the Man City case is, what new commercial deals are incoming and also what will be happening with the stadium. It's just constant negativity swirling around at the moment, with fuck all to back it up

 

 

Edited July 29 by et tu brute

[Mattoon]

1 hour ago, et tu brute said:

People need to wait until September 1st to see what happens, what the verdict on the Man City case is, what new commercial deals are incoming and also what will be happening with the stadium. It's just constant negativity swirling around at the moment, with fuck all to back it up

 

 

 

 

I think there's a train of this running online at the moment, itchy trigger fingers, we've never been the most patient! The longer time goes on with no movement, the more empty space people have to fill and historically we're experts at doom and gloom.

 

Leave it to the experts and trust they are doing the very best they can to make us the strongest team possible under the constraints they're dealing with. #Wait

[Dr.Spaceman]

I don't think we're that broke at all, we're just not broadcasting to the world that we have funds and are looking to splash the cash. Why would we or any other team for that matter publicise that info? Remember when Pardew used to tell the entire world our transfer plans in every fucking interview. We'd win 4-0 and he'd be touting Cabaye with shite like "Well if a big offer comes in what can we do?". 

 

This way is much more preferable.

 

 

Edited July 29 by Dr.Spaceman

[TheBrownBottle]

2 hours ago, duo said:

Not sure if posted but helps explain new rules - still don't get why we are so broke though with CL and Adidas money 

 

 

We don’t have CL money, that was last season.  With the adidas deal it means our income is likely to be what it was last year.

 

Still waiting on those additional commercial deals …

 

The new rules completely fuck us btw.  Our current squad cost to income ratio is around 100%.  If we qualify for Europe next season, we’d either need our revenue to grow by c.£100m in one season, or we’d need to start selling players. 

 

 

Edited July 29 by TheBrownBottle

[The College Dropout]

It’s almost August 2024 - it’s still not clear almost 3 years later how we plan to get to and stay at the top. Revenue wise. 
 

Is it to wait for the City verdict?

 

We need £150m extra in revenue year on year to compete regularly.  Where is it coming from? Eales said we’ll do 300m this year. The worst top 6 club does 450m of memory served.  That’s gigantic. 

[timeEd32]

4 minutes ago, The College Dropout said:

It’s almost August 2024 - it’s still not clear almost 3 years later how we plan to get to and stay at the top. Revenue wise. 
 

Is it to wait for the City verdict?

 

We need £150m extra in revenue year on year to compete regularly.  Where is it coming from? Eales said we’ll do 300m this year. The worst top 6 club does 450m of memory served.  That’s gigantic. 

 

There's been a number of discussions on here in the past about how the last couple years contained the easiest revenue increases, so this shouldn't be all that surprising. The rules continually changing are obviously not helping us.

 

There's probably another £10-15m of increases coming from price rises, season ticket freezes ending, and a few more sponsorships. After that the next £100m is by far the hardest to gain if we need to play by the rules. It requires greatly increasing match day revenue, consistently successful player development and trading, and regular European football (which means continually overachieving until the revenue catches up).

[Rafalove]

Bloomberg claiming we’re worth a billion now. Just remember what a good businessman Mike Ashley is.

[The College Dropout]

26 minutes ago, timeEd32 said:

 

There's been a number of discussions on here in the past about how the last couple years contained the easiest revenue increases, so this shouldn't be all that surprising. The rules continually changing are obviously not helping us.

 

There's probably another £10-15m of increases coming from price rises, season ticket freezes ending, and a few more sponsorships. After that the next £100m is by far the hardest to gain if we need to play by the rules. It requires greatly increasing match day revenue, consistently successful player development and trading, and regular European football (which means continually overachieving until the revenue catches up).

Isn’t that the problem? We’ve picked up all the low hanging fruit - knowing it’s low hanging fruit.  
 

Id hoped we would now be executing the plan to bridge the gap. It feels like we are formulating that plan now rather. Growing pains. 

 

 

Edited July 29 by The College Dropout

[Stifler]

 

45 minutes ago, The College Dropout said:

Isn’t that the problem? We’ve picked up all the low hanging fruit - knowing it’s low hanging fruit.  
 

Id hoped we would now be executing the plan to bridge the gap. It feels like we are formulating that plan now rather. Growing pains. 

It is, but it will take time. This is why what happens to SJP/new build stadium is key. First of all it will bring in more fans to games, then it will bring in more corporate/boxes people, and it will bring in more events. This is years away though.

 

Right now we are left with having to deal with other sponsorships, which will be a difficult sell to the Premier League who are determined not to let us have anything. They will keep resisting us being able to get deals close to the other top 6, as they will argue that 2 years doesn’t equal parity. We will have to do what Spurs did, but you could argue that largely started when plans for their new stadium got going.

Unfortunately for us we are the best part of, if not atleast 5 years away from moving into a new stadium. So right now we just have to maximise what we can get out of sponsorship deals, and that means we have to get everything right on the pitch to keep up with the top 6.

Our argument of saying well finishing 7th is at worst an 80% chance of European football, so therefor we can justify getting those sponsorship the top 6 do will fall on a table of laughing cocks at the Premier League.  

[NG32]

13 hours ago, Rafalove said:

Bloomberg claiming we’re worth a billion now. Just remember what a good businessman Mike Ashley is.

Think how many stacks of boot cut denim jeans a billion pounds can buy. 

[HawK]

I think as a club we're shifting to a more normal operating mode of a professional football club after decades of mismanagement.

 

If we spent £10m + on someone, it's been pretty much expected they're a starter. Younger players in this bracket that cost a bit were Jenas, Viana, Dyer etc. who had varying degrees of success with us. Signings for the future have always been such a novelty and a rarity in days gone, that anyone who walked through the door that wasn't signed for the first team was seen as the next potential superstar - Zamblera, Vuckic, Tozer, Kadar (and we never spent big on them either). Now that we are forking out big sums for players that don't immediately walk into the first 11 but need a couple of seasons to develop and bed in, we're naturally bemused because the concept is completely foreign to us.

 

Livra and to more of an extent Hall have turned that old methodology upside down. If we want real quality with less of a gamble, the pathway is the same as the previous 'starlets' of yesteryear with the need for development, coaching and reserve games, just with a much higher price tag and a better chance of becoming a future first teamer and with that the associated increase in expectations.

 

However, it's hard to understand this sometimes when as fans we generally just think of this or next season at the most when it comes to squad building. I was sceptical when we bought Gordon for example when it was plain as day we needed a LB not a LW at the time. The club is looking at this with a much longer term view and need to be clever with the money spent, i.e. there's no point patching a hole in RW, LB, with a 28yr old someone  at their peak for £40m who'll end up becoming a black hole in our accounting book 3-4 years down the line when our sole focus as a club right now is to grow, and unfortunately the only way to do that is going to be finding players of potential and selling them at their peak.

 

I think the next few windows are going to be frustrating, but if the right player doesn't come along, it doesn't look like we're going to panic buy someone that isn't right from an accountancy, personality and ability standpoint. I don't know why I always recall the transfer of Albert Luqué, but if you remember we only signed him because we missed out on Luis Boa Morte, it was so lastminute.com that even the player didn't know he was signing until he was practically on the plane to us.

 

The £100m odd for Bale at Spurs helped set them up for over a decade. We can't be too proud to sell players like Bruno or Isak if good money comes knocking, the reality is we need to sell them to progress as a club under the current PSR rules. Oversimplifying a bit, but we aren't going to win anything with 2 purples, but if we can sell those 2 purples at peak prices to buy 4 more potential purples, we're on the right track. 

 

FWIW I hate this PSR cartel system, but if we're going to have to play by these bent rules, this is the only way to do it imo.

[Paully]

2 hours ago, HawK said:

 

 

I think the next few windows are going to be frustrating, but if the right player doesn't come along, it doesn't look like we're going to panic buy someone that isn't right from an accountancy, personality and ability standpoint. I don't know why I always recall the transfer of Albert Luqué, but if you remember we only signed him because we missed out on Luis Boa Morte, it was so lastminute.com that even the player didn't know he was signing until he was practically on the plane to us.

 

T

 

Was that not because Shepherd preferred Luque over than Boa Morte as well as Owen over Anelka?!

[WilliamPS]

On 29/07/2024 at 21:51, The College Dropout said:

It’s almost August 2024 - it’s still not clear almost 3 years later how we plan to get to and stay at the top. Revenue wise. 
 

Is it to wait for the City verdict?

 

We need £150m extra in revenue year on year to compete regularly.  Where is it coming from? Eales said we’ll do 300m this year. The worst top 6 club does 450m of memory served.  That’s gigantic. 

The secret sauce is success on the pitch. ultimately regular European football and any trophy open up the commercial doors, I think missing out on the EC has been undervalued on here in terms of impact.

 

In pitch success is how FSG got Liverpool back on track, after their previous American owners focussed too much on the P&L.

 

The product is football, do that successfully and the cash will follow. Not the other way round.