Juggy

"I don''t know what the figure is now but even if it''s £10m less than my guesstimate, we would still be in a far healthier position than most in that division and certainly not the catastrophe that you envisage" We have liabilities in the form of player contracts that those other clubs do not have lappin, not to mention a probably large HMRC bill. The point is the extent of which are outgoings exceed our probable revenue next season in comparison with other clubs, not the extent of which are turnover exceeds theres. I''m probably flogging a dead horse.

"OK, you crack on with your constructive criticism then" You are still appearing to assert that what I say on here has an influence on the team. By saying positive things on here I am not providing constructive criticism to anybody, unless they read it. In much the same way that if I say something negative on here I am not undermining anybody, unless they read it.

"What was the fool proof, nailed on, 100% guaranteed answer to the relegation issue?" If you find yourself on the wrong side of the motorway driving head on into an articulated lorry you would probably take your chances and have a last minute swerve. There is a good chance that you would still swerve into something and die. What you wouldn''t do is nothing.

"Says 60 million parachute payments over four years on my Google, you must have an older version" You get more in the first two years than you do the second two years. At one point it was £16m, £16m, £8m, £8m. So £60m would be the new version, something like £20m, £20m, £10m, £10m.

"ST sales, Casual tickets, boxes, Catering, clothing, sponsorship, TV money, advertising etc will probably bring in £30m. Add £19m parachute payments (City1st) means an income of around £50m. As you''ve already said, we will probably lose several players BUT they won''t be given away and I reckon we would be looking at a minimum of £20m giving us a total of £70m" So you think that relegation to the Championship would result in an increase in non-TV revenue? I''ll have a puff of whatever you are smoking.

"undermining them at every opportunity" Are you asserting that this thread is an example of me undermining the team? That would only really work if they made a habit of reading this forum. I''d suggest that they would be undermining themselves if they were that stupid. There is something that I didn''t consider, and that is cash reserves. We don''t know how much capital the club has. If they have substantial cash they might be able to subsidise the wage bill for a season and hope that we can bounce right back up. But I''m surely not alone in thinking, if this is the case, that any cash reserve would have been better spent in January trying to remain in the division and not as a short term fix if we get relegated. Getting back out of the Championship is probably much harder than staying in this division.

"What do you want to happen at this stage?" I really don''t know. I wanted something to happen in Mid-December (change of manager followed by transfer activity). Second best would have been clear and concise commitment by the board to the manager and the arrival of some quality additions in January. The worst thing they could have done is what they have done, which is absolutely nothing.

"ps the parachute figure is £16m (try using google" It is rising next season in line with the increase in Premier League TV money (try using Google), with £20m to £23m likely.

We would probably end up missing people like Marc Tierney and Chris Martin.

Well that is the obvious result of having to spend more then you receive, haven''t you learnt anything from years of deficit spending by successive British governments? I''m saying that the spending cuts required to avoid debt would need to be of a severity greater than we have ever had to see before at this club, and that this means a complete rebuild of the squad and the loss of probably all of our best players to be replaced by much cheaper players who are likely to be of obvious Championship standard.

If Redmond was playing and Snodgrass was on the bench he would probably be saying "how is Snodgrass not playing games".

It shocks me how many people can''t see this. I''ve seen people suggest that we could go into a championship season with people like Howson and Pilkington still at the club. Sorry but it just isn''t going to happen. Relegation would result in the biggest summer rebuild we would ever have had to witness, possibly the biggest we will ever witness. This isn''t 2005, it would be a catastrophe. Oh it''s ok because we are debt free (facks sake!). Our turnover last financial year (pretty much last season) was around £75m, or wage bill LAST SEASON was around £50m. That was with TV revenue of £46m. This may be fag packet stuff but £75m minus £46m = £29m. Our wage bill was almost two times our non-TV revenue. If we ignore the other financial benefits of premier league football (Chuck from Ohio knowing who we are and buying a shirt, Billy from Costessey deciding that he doesn''t need to support Arsenal now that we aren''t as unfashionable). Parachute payments will be somewhere around £20m for the first year. £29m (optimistic) + £20m = £49m. Even lasts seasons wage bill would exceed total revenue including parachute payments. Our wage bill is of course likely to be much higher, your guess is as good as mine. Let''s say £65m conservative estimate. Our wage ratio for last season is given as 67% by the board. Even if we were to sustain a wage ratio of 67% in the Championship that would mean a maximum wage bill of £32m. That is probably more than halved. That itself doesn''t consider that our fixed costs have increased, we now employ dozens more academy coaches. Remember that our tax bill from this financial year will be due in the next financial year. £32m is probably way too high for us to be solvent with £20m in parachute payments. Wouldn''t surprise me if we have to cut our wage bill to one third of its current level. Even keeping Howson is optimistic. Just one overpaid ''hanger on'' could cripple the club and deny it the chance to be competitive. We would have to know what individuals earn to speculate, but we could be lumbered with our Nicola Zigic. Relegation would see us have to look forward to signing Championship journeymen like Carl Robinson and Andy Hughes again. At least Declan Rudd is a good keeper. Can anybody seriously see us getting back up if we get relegation? I am amazed at the blase attitude that some have towards our sleepwalk to relegation and the failure of the board to take a punt on somebody who may have been able to turn our season around. I''m even more amazed that after clearly backing their man they have not at least taken a punt on a player of real quality like Ince or Zaha. We are going down without so much as a whimper, stuck in limbo land somewhere between rolling the dice and sacking the manager and rolling the dice by backing the manager with money. Sticking with the manager but not backing him with money is possibly the riskiest thing that the board could have done, it makes no sense to me and I struggle to understand how it could make sense to anybody else. And yet we have posters saying stuff like "17th is an achievement". No, no it is not. 17th is avoiding a catastrophe which could ruin this club and lead us to decades of Leeds or Ipswich style mid-table Championship mediocrity where we all have to get excited about the prospect of signing a 32 year old journeyman like Stephen Hunt. But it''s OK because we can almost certainly wait as long as it takes for our £8.5m Dutch bloke to break a sweat and begin to understand the severity of our situation. Not that it matters to him. We have been watching a disaster unfold before our eyes in slow motion. I look forward to the inevitable criticism that this post will attract, but at least I''m laying my cards on the table. The same cannot be said for the board.

I didn''t search for it, I stumbled across it. I''d just like to know his opinion, because it seems to contradict his current stance.

I''m sure that this will be perceived by some as a ''call out'' thread, but actually it is an attempt at debate and one which is open for discussion by all. On 27th April 2013 on a thread about whether people wanted to keep Hughton in employment you said: "Stay...his job was to keep us in the premiership... style of football and whether or not its been entertaining doesn''t matter... he has done what he was hired to do and the board will be happy...next season has to be progression and if none is seen then we can ask this question i feel" The thread is here: http://services.pinkun.com/forums/pinkun/cs/forums/1/2906770/ShowPost.aspx#2906770 In that same thread there were lots of people who wanted him out, and lots who were saying even then that if he stays he should get just 8 or 10 games to show progression and improvement. I''m just wondering what you define as progression, whether we have seen it, and what deadline you are putting on this? I''m only asking because so many other posters have remained consistent since April and went into this season giving Hughton his 10 games like they promised, I''m not so sure that you have been as open to fellow fans asking the questions that you said could be asked if no progression is shown. At what stage this season does it become acceptable to ask the question?

"While still manager of Northern Ireland, Sanchez was named as caretaker manager of Fulham following the sacking of Chris Coleman in April 2007.[18] Having achieved his 32-day task of maintaining Fulham''s Premier League position, with a record of one win, one draw and three defeats, he was given the manager''s job on a longer contract" Four points in five games? Then sacked by December? I think it is much more interesting that they sacked Sanchez in December (when they should have sacked Hughton). Be interested to know whether it was McNally who made the decision to sack him.

Keep The Faith, you talk some rubbish. Firstly, we are underachieving. Our turnover is similar to that of Stoke, and believe it or not bigger than that of Aston Villa. Our "poor squad" was built by Hughton. We are 2 points from the relegation zone. Those unhappy with Hughton are NOT a minority any more, and have not been for some time now. Hughton is not achieving because his target was ''continuous improvement''. 15th with the possibility that we could be 17th come 3.30pm is not improvement, it is decline. Last season we finished 11th, the year before that 12th. Some teams have shown improvement this season (Stoke, Villa, Newcastle to name a few). We have not, we have shown the opposite.

I''m not convinced that a change of manager is worth it now that we can''t change any personnel. The decision to stick by Hughton was confirmed as soon as the transfer window opened with him as manager.

All I''m trying to say really is that with no big transfers in January, and a reluctance to change manager where other clubs have, I wonder whether this is a decision driven by finances and a reluctance to borrow money to finance. Something which I guess we just won''t know. We could equally just be taking a gamble and hoping that Hughton can keep us up, with any cash surplus being added to a summer budget of course. Does make you wonder whether we have very well paid players not contributing much to the cause though.... Garrido, Becchio, now Hoolahan, perhaps even Fox. And whether a summer clear out is on the cards if we stay up (or indeed if we go down).

What amazed me is that our turnover and ''wages and salaries'' are a very similar level to Stoke City in their 2012 return who have been in this league for a fair bit longer and have had quite a large squad of high profile players (like Shawcross, Crouch, Owen, Huth, etc). I would love for the Premier League to become more like the MLS, where salaries are disclosed publicly. Considering the last set of accounts were before Leroy Fer and Gary Hooper, I''d love to see which of our players were on big money last season.

Well he would tear up the Championship and I don''t think he would be any worse than Elmander in the Premier League. He has aerial ability and pace, and a surprising amount of skill for a lanky sod. I''d have been quite happy if we''d snatched Samaras on the last day of January and shifted Becchio. Can see no sense in arranging transfers when we don''t know what division we will be in next season though. I think we really missed out on Joe Ledley, good all round centre midfielder with some goals in him and proven to play well with Hooper. With Palace having a wage cap of £15k nobody can say that we were priced out of Ledley surely!

I don''t think we can blame Ruddy for our defeat yesterday. Two individual errors led to the goals, neither originated with Ruddy. With the Bellamy finish we saw his class, hit first time before the keeper had a chance to set himself. There have been a few times this season where I feel Hooper should have hit his shots first time but has been let down by a first touch. Ruddy remains a very good keeper and you would soon miss him if Mark Bunn returned to the team.

Since when did you become our resident mystic meg?

How long must we wait for the next set of accounts Purple?

"For what ever you think about the board, one thing is true to say that by making our club debt free they have also set the future out for us and that is relegation" I''m not a big numbers man like Purple or FTA but ''debt free'' gets bandied about on here quite a bit. We may not have any external loans but that doesn''t make us ''liability free'', in fact far from it.

Yes turnover will be up this year Purple of course, but our wage bill will likely be up too. I''m grateful for your contribution as one of the resident number crunchers though (not sarcasm). Is it in fact much more likely that rather than "being skint", we could be being "very prudent so that we don''t become skint"?