Top 26

[PurpleCanary 5,554]

On 05/02/2020 at 21:12, PurpleCanary said:

And specifically in the 2014-15 season when Burnley were in the PL, the figures show they were very prudent, in effect accepting they might well get relegated, as happened, but would be financially in a good state to bounce back, as also happened. Their wage bill was the lowest in the PL that season and their wages as a proportion of turnover  were also the lowest. This from The Guardian's David Conn:

'A remarkably low wage bill, £27m less than the next lowest-paying club, Hull City. Bouncing straight back from the Championship this [following] season has vindicated the directors’ choice of not using the top-flight bonanza to sign players in an effort to stay up, but to pay off debts – including to themselves – redevelop the training ground, and bank a profit.'

Stap me, it really does almost sound like a model to follow...

When I posted my original comments about Burnley I didn't realise just how extreme had been their prudence, particularly on wages. But it does emphasise the point that it is misleading to look at the blunt figure of transfer spending when assessing ambition versus prudence. Wages count more.

From memory every time we have been in the Premier League in the last couple of decades (ie, once the silly-money era started) we have always been in the relegation zone as far as wages are concerned, except once. The high-spending Hughton season we got relegated...😲

[lake district canary 4,531]

33 minutes ago, king canary said:

We could have spent £20m on McBurnie you're right. Or we could have trusted Webber with some decent budget to get in players that fit our way of playing.

Spending £20m on a player who could get injured long term, alongside the extra expensive wages that would tie up, is folly for a club like ours on limited means.  If we have £20m to spend, far better to do what we are doing, get in young players at £1-3m or whatever, one or two Pukki/Vrancic/Buendia type signings and mould them into our way of playing.  Those three were great finds, but it proved there are players out there who will not cost the earth and who can be very good at the top level - and developing young players is exciting to see, as they come through to the first team - which under this model, they will.  

 

[Kenny Foggo 1,116]

31 minutes ago, lake district canary said:

Spending £20m on a player who could get injured long term, alongside the extra expensive wages that would tie up, is folly for a club like ours on limited means.  If we have £20m to spend, far better to do what we are doing, get in young players at £1-3m or whatever, one or two Pukki/Vrancic/Buendia type signings and mould them into our way of playing.  Those three were great finds, but it proved there are players out there who will not cost the earth and who can be very good at the top level - and developing young players is exciting to see, as they come through to the first team - which under this model, they will.  

 

As the professional manager Farke says... You can not expect to win as we do not bring in £10m / £20m players... It is a fact. So if you would like to see us compete at the highest level you need more investment. If not be happy with not competing regularly at the highest level and on the odd occasions you get to the top flight, get use to a pretty miserable experience (if you are not happy with losing most weeks that is). The "limited means" is purely down to our owners.. Bournemouth, Watford, Leicester, Wolves etc (all clubs of similar size and location) all manage to invest far more. The model thing is born out of necessity and not a master stroke... It's designed, like the top 26 nonsense, to limit expectation and dampen ambition... In my opinion. I am never happy seeing the City fail to compete with the likes of Sheffield United... Now long is it before we get the "we can't expect to compete with the Blades"... Just so incredibly accepting of failure which relegation is 100%

[king canary 7,580]

6 minutes ago, PurpleCanary said:

When I posted my original comments about Burnley I didn't realise just how extreme had been their prudence, particularly on wages. But it does emphasise the point that it is misleading to look at the blunt figure of transfer spending when assessing ambition versus prudence. Wages count more.

From memory every time we have been in the Premier League in the last couple of decades (ie, once the silly-money era started) we have always been in the relegation zone as far as wages are concerned, except once. The high-spending Hughton season we got relegated...😲

I'd imagine we're bottom of the wage league this season. It will be interesting to find out how low it is.

From Swiss Ramble -"#BurnleyFC wage bill rose £20m (33%) from £61m to £82m, as a result of “our determination to be more competitive in the market, coupled with increased bonuses due to our 7th place finish”. Since promotion, has tripled from £27m in the Championship (and up from £29m in 2014/15 PL)"

This is from last season so I'd imagine it has increased further. I'd also imagine we're (quite sensibly) below that number. The issue is will we ever be in a position to do this. 

 

[king canary 7,580]

58 minutes ago, lake district canary said:

Spending £20m on a player who could get injured long term, alongside the extra expensive wages that would tie up, is folly for a club like ours on limited means.  If we have £20m to spend, far better to do what we are doing, get in young players at £1-3m or whatever, one or two Pukki/Vrancic/Buendia type signings and mould them into our way of playing.  Those three were great finds, but it proved there are players out there who will not cost the earth and who can be very good at the top level - and developing young players is exciting to see, as they come through to the first team - which under this model, they will.  

 

If there were loads of youngsters for £1-3m able to seamlessly compete at this level then everyone would be doing it. You might find the odd one or two here and there but it isn't likely to happen.

[lake district canary 4,531]

Just now, king canary said:

If there were loads of youngsters for £1-3m able to seamlessly compete at this level then everyone would be doing it. You might find the odd one or two here and there but it isn't likely to happen.

But it's never really been tried on a large scale by a club - most clubs that get promoted feel the pressure to achieve straight away and buy in ready made players......and for a lot of clubs that still doesn't work.

[Kenny Foggo 1,116]

4 minutes ago, lake district canary said:

But it's never really been tried on a large scale by a club - most clubs that get promoted feel the pressure to achieve straight away and buy in ready made players......and for a lot of clubs that still doesn't work.

It's tried by every club with the same budget as us... It's a necessity, we are not the exception. We have excellent and better scouts, whether they can keep unearthing gems (particularly when the man responsible for the long term planning is off in two years) remains to be seen. It has proven that you can not do it and stay in this league though... Or should that be looks like it can't work in this league. The manager is saying it....

[Badger 2,405]

1 hour ago, king canary said:

No, spending is not a goal in itself, but improving the team is and those two things are generally linked, certainly at this level.

We could have spent £20m on McBurnie you're right. Or we could have trusted Webber with some decent budget to get in players that fit our way of playing. 

Not sure on how close the correlation is between spending money and team improvement - particularly at levels below the very highest where they can afford big mistakes. Obviously you need to have the money to buy players but there are so many examples of teams below this level "spending big" and failing and vice versa.

On the second point, I suspect that Webber did have a bigger budget than he spent but decided that better value was to be had in the loan market. Was there a available CDM that looked a better prospect than Amadou or a goalkeeper better than Fahrmann? The signing of Roberts also looked like an exciting one as did Drmic, an international forward with a good pedigree. In other circumstances they might have been worth £40 million+ but none has made serious impact on the first team. Obviously we do not know for certain if the Claude Maurice story is true, but you chose not to believe it, whilst financially, I believe that we could have afforded it.

The truth is that buying players is inherently risky. You can easily spend £50 million+ and end up with a group of players that barely touch the first team and remain a big liability for the rest of their contract. If you are not confident of what you are buying, surely it is better to retain the cash or spend it on younger players, who whilst being even riskier in many respects, are a better speculative option on much lower wages?

[king canary 7,580]

9 minutes ago, Badger said:

The truth is that buying players is inherently risky. You can easily spend £50 million+ and end up with a group of players that barely touch the first team and remain a big liability for the rest of their contract. If you are not confident of what you are buying, surely it is better to retain the cash or spend it on younger players, who whilst being even riskier in many respects, are a better speculative option on much lower wages?

Yes buying players is risky- but it is part of the game. We're always going to find it near impossible at this level if we're so scared of spending the going rate on a player because it apparently could bankrupt us.

I agree signing young players is always preferable- clubs like us need to understand the resale value of anyone we sign. Under Hughton, we weren't financially devastated by a poor transfer window because we'd signed players we could move on without too much issue even if they were poor for us.

I'm not advocating for more Naismiths. But to make the most of players like Godfrey, Aarons and Buendia you have to surround them with a bit more quality at this level- and that costs money.

[PurpleCanary 5,554]

39 minutes ago, king canary said:

I'd imagine we're bottom of the wage league this season. It will be interesting to find out how low it is.

From Swiss Ramble -"#BurnleyFC wage bill rose £20m (33%) from £61m to £82m, as a result of “our determination to be more competitive in the market, coupled with increased bonuses due to our 7th place finish”. Since promotion, has tripled from £27m in the Championship (and up from £29m in 2014/15 PL)"

This is from last season so I'd imagine it has increased further. I'd also imagine we're (quite sensibly) below that number. The issue is will we ever be in a position to do this. 

 

Based on how our plan has been talked about the implication is that wage spending would gradually be increased if we managed to stay up into a second season, and so on, but never to the extent that we would be crippled if we got relegated.

[ROBFLECK 132]

3 minutes ago, king canary said:

I'm not advocating for more Naismiths. But to make the most of players like Godfrey, Aarons and Buendia you have to surround them with a bit more quality at this level- and that costs money.

This is my opinion too! I don't think you have to splash out 25 million on just one player ! But you have to have depth in your squad at least to have a chance at this level imo. We didn't get off to a very bad start, but the injury crisis "paralysed us"  because we didn't have sufficient back up or quality. I am convinced that one or two good signings would have made a big impact. I think this was a big mistake and it will cost us our place in this division.

Like I said earlier , to be top 26 in the country we will have to finish top six next season , which will not be easy by any means! The "ambition" to be top 26 , might come back to haunt us...

[king canary 7,580]

37 minutes ago, PurpleCanary said:

Based on how our plan has been talked about the implication is that wage spending would gradually be increased if we managed to stay up into a second season, and so on, but never to the extent that we would be crippled if we got relegated.

I guess we'll just have to wait and see on the hypothetical second seasons.

I personally believe our current financial model just doesn't give us the margin for error needed to take some calculated risks at the top level. I may be wrong but I don't think I am.

[Icecream Snow 761]

23 hours ago, Badger said:

I'm not sure if this "hangover" actually exists - by many accounts we offered £15 million for Alexis Claude-Maurice this summer, which was agreed by Lorient but we were rejected by the player. 

It is all about getting the "right" player - and if we do not believe that we can get what we want, not spending for the sake of it.

I don't know where Dave Freezer was getting his numbers from, or at what point they would have been from, but he said on the transfer window stream that Norwich were expected to make a £16m profit this year.

Newcastle had a £35m-40m fee agreed with a club for a player who decided not to move, and also Sander Berge turned Sheffield United down in the summer, before signing in January.

So yes, I agree with you that it's about identifying the right player, and that it can also be hard to persuade good players to move.

[hogesar 9,618]

Having only just read through the thread, it's obviously resorted back to how much we spent (or didn't, for that matter) in the summer. I still don't think we done much wrong in that window and other than people complaining about the 'amount' spent, very few complained about our actual dealings. 

Personally, i'd have liked to have seen another striker / number 10 in the summer. I'd have liked Che Adams actually, yet I think i'm right in saying he's yet to score a Premier League goal and cost £15m. 

Back to the original point, the joys of discussing football on a forum and theoretically spend other people's money makes it really easy to always say you want better. Had we spent more and stayed up this season, then next season people would be complaining if we weren't midtable. Then there'd be a complaint we don't have the owners to spend £50m on a midfielder. It will go on and on. Whatever we have, some will always want more. Unfortunately you need to support a top 4 club for that really.

My hope is that we spend some more money on infrastructure, continue scouting other leagues for young players to sign and maybe next season sign one or two top Championship players (homegrown would be ideal). But I don't think we should sign them 'at any cost', which some people seem to disagree with.

[All the Germans 1,075]

Some people are never as happy as when they are unhappy and complaining about something... anything. As has been said, they will always want more "why aren't we Bournemouth" turns into "why aren't we Newcastle" turns into "why aren't we Leicester", turns into "why aren't we Man City" when (if) each of the former materialises.

I'm happy with our club. Am I gutted when we lose? Yes. Will I also be gutted when we (in all likelihood) get relegated? Definitely. I'd have liked to spend some more to 'give the boys a hand' this season, but I trust the judgement of the current leadership, as they haven't done too badly so far.

I like our philosophy, our entertaining style and our manager's class. I'm more proud of that than I would be finishing 4th bottom or spending x million on a player.

[Icecream Snow 761]

2 hours ago, lake district canary said:

But it's never really been tried on a large scale by a club - most clubs that get promoted feel the pressure to achieve straight away and buy in ready made players......and for a lot of clubs that still doesn't work.

We've just allegedly paid around £3million for Sam McCallum and there was talk of Sheffield United offering £3m for Luke Woolfenden, and those are just League One defenders. Young and homegrown with potential comes with a steep premium.

[king canary 7,580]

1 hour ago, hogesar said:

My hope is that we spend some more money on infrastructure, continue scouting other leagues for young players to sign and maybe next season sign one or two top Championship players (homegrown would be ideal). But I don't think we should sign them 'at any cost', which some people seem to disagree with.

Personally I think this is what we should have been doing this season. 

Best case scenario- they are good enough at this level and keep us up.

Worst case- we have saleable assets with a track record in the Championship.

[Badger 2,405]

3 hours ago, king canary said:

The issue is will we ever be in a position to do this. 

I can see no reason why we couldn't have a wages bill at this level - so long as there were very strict relegation clauses. Why wouldn't we be able to afford it? Burnley recorded a profit of £36.6 million in 2018, 22  million in 2017 and 30.1 million in 2015. This is with match day and commercial activities at a fear lower level than us. 

Because of their sensible financial management they were able to afford a loss of 3.7 million in 2016 regaining promotion. I don't really know why you bring Burnley up as an example - they show the benefits of NOT taking on debt, which is what I thought you wanted to do?

https://www.burnleyfootballclub.com/club/club-accounts/

https://www.insidermedia.com/news/north-west/burnley-fc-post-3.7m-losses-in-promotion-year

 

[Badger 2,405]

1 hour ago, Icecream Snow said:

I don't know where Dave Freezer was getting his numbers from, or at what point they would have been from, but he said on the transfer window stream that Norwich were expected to make a £16m profit this year.

Newcastle had a £35m-40m fee agreed with a club for a player who decided not to move, and also Sander Berge turned Sheffield United down in the summer, before signing in January.

So yes, I agree with you that it's about identifying the right player, and that it can also be hard to persuade good players to move.

Yes, especially in the first season after promotion as you are likely to be relegation favourites and therefore often have to pay over the odds for wages and have weak relegation clauses (allegedly the case re Naismith) but generally accepted as a risk. If you were a "PL quality player" and offered a £40,000 a week contract - to set you up for life - you'd be unwise to accept an offer from a relegation likely over another team with a medium term track record.

[king canary 7,580]

6 minutes ago, Badger said:

I can see no reason why we couldn't have a wages bill at this level - so long as there were very strict relegation clauses. Why wouldn't we be able to afford it? Burnley recorded a profit of £36.6 million in 2018, 22  million in 2017 and 30.1 million in 2015. This is with match day and commercial activities at a fear lower level than us. 

Because of their sensible financial management they were able to afford a loss of 3.7 million in 2016 regaining promotion. I don't really know why you bring Burnley up as an example - they show the benefits of NOT taking on debt, which is what I thought you wanted to do?

https://www.burnleyfootballclub.com/club/club-accounts/

https://www.insidermedia.com/news/north-west/burnley-fc-post-3.7m-losses-in-promotion-year

 

If you can find where I've recommended taking on debt, have at it. Also it wasn't me who brought up Burnley.

My point is they have a margin for error that we don't. We don't have a safety net due to our ownership situation so any wage bill we have has to be realistically cuttable down to where it was last season (about £25m) in two years. 

[Badger 2,405]

2 hours ago, king canary said:

I personally believe our current financial model just doesn't give us the margin for error needed to take some calculated risks at the top level. I may be wrong but I don't think I am.

The narrow margin of error is a strength in the long-term rather than a weakness. It is why we come up again after going down, and most do go down after a few years, whilst other clubs tend to stay down for far longer. The wide margin of error leads to over-exposure and a prolonged period of retrenchment whilst the investor owners try to recover their investment. 

e.g. The Hull owner owns the club and the ground in separate companies (a common device nowadays) - he charges the football club nearly a million pounds a year (and rising) to play at the ground. They were also charging around 5% interest on loans (now reduced) - totalling over £20 million since 2012. The club are still over £50 million in debt - thank goodness we didn't have the same margin of error!

[Badger 2,405]

8 minutes ago, king canary said:

f you can find where I've recommended taking on debt

I'm confused - if you don't take on debt, where does the extra money from come from? The investor owners don't just give the money away - an very often they borrow it themselves. the very best you can hope for is a "fan owner" like Brighton, who lends the money but does not charge interest - be such owners are few and far between. 

[king canary 7,580]

1 minute ago, Badger said:

The narrow margin of error is a strength in the long-term rather than a weakness. It is why we come up again after going down, and most do go down after a few years, whilst other clubs tend to stay down for far longer. The wide margin of error leads to over-exposure and a prolonged period of retrenchment whilst the investor owners try to recover their investment. 

e.g. The Hull owner owns the club and the ground in separate companies (a common device nowadays) - he charges the football club nearly a million pounds a year (and rising) to play at the ground. They were also charging around 5% interest on loans (now reduced) - totalling over £20 million since 2012. The club are still over £50 million in debt - thank goodness we didn't have the same margin of error!

I don't have a clue what that last paragraph has to do with a margin of error.

By margin for error I mean being able to take a gamble on a more expensive transfer without being concerned about it doing massive long term harm to the club. So West Brom for instance dropped £13m odd on Oliver Burke who really hasn't worked out for them. Yet despite that, and the relegation it hasn't hamstrung the club financially over the longer term.

[nutty nigel 7,509]

How much debt constitutes "going for it"?

 

Edited February 7, 2020 by nutty nigel

[sgncfc 1,221]

12 minutes ago, Badger said:

I can see no reason why we couldn't have a wages bill at this level - so long as there were very strict relegation clauses. Why wouldn't we be able to afford it? Burnley recorded a profit of £36.6 million in 2018, 22  million in 2017 and 30.1 million in 2015. This is with match day and commercial activities at a fear lower level than us. 

Because of their sensible financial management they were able to afford a loss of 3.7 million in 2016 regaining promotion. I don't really know why you bring Burnley up as an example - they show the benefits of NOT taking on debt, which is what I thought you wanted to do?

https://www.burnleyfootballclub.com/club/club-accounts/

https://www.insidermedia.com/news/north-west/burnley-fc-post-3.7m-losses-in-promotion-year

 

But do we want to watch the football that Burnley play? Stoke established themselves playing a similar way and when Hughes tried to change it the club fell apart because he couldn't get the players - he could afford them, but they wouldn't join Stoke so the players he ended up with were the wrong ones and became luxury mistakes. It might be that fear which means Burnley are taking much longer to make that change - but they do seem to be making it slowly. Berge probably didn't sign for Sheff Utd because he thought they'd go down - why would a sought after player agree to yo-yo wages?

I suspect we do have players willing to join us because of our style, but we can't afford them. For our "plan" to evolve without investment we have to spend a few years building and selling. The plan therefore seems to make the sales of Aarons, Buendia, Godfrey, Cantwell and Lewis inevitable. Creating a £20m player takes longer than buying one.

[sgncfc 1,221]

5 minutes ago, Badger said:

I'm confused - if you don't take on debt, where does the extra money from come from? The investor owners don't just give the money away - an very often they borrow it themselves. the very best you can hope for is a "fan owner" like Brighton, who lends the money but does not charge interest - be such owners are few and far between. 

In the position we are now in, we sell some players. If we get £50m (maybe more) for Aarons, Buendia and Cantwell, spending £30m of that in the summer to push for promotion again makes more sense than spending £30m we don't have now to try to stay up. And it still leaves £20m for infrastructure improvements.

[king canary 7,580]

7 minutes ago, Badger said:

I'm confused - if you don't take on debt, where does the extra money from come from? The investor owners don't just give the money away - an very often they borrow it themselves. the very best you can hope for is a "fan owner" like Brighton, who lends the money but does not charge interest - be such owners are few and far between. 

You kind of repeat this point every time the conversation comes up.

There is nothing inherently bad about owners earning something from running a football club. According to this the highest interest on loans is paid by...Liverpool. I assume some of this is going to their current owners to whom they apparently owe £99m. Sure would hate to be them...

 

[king canary 7,580]

11 minutes ago, sgncfc said:

I suspect we do have players willing to join us because of our style, but we can't afford them. For our "plan" to evolve without investment we have to spend a few years building and selling. The plan therefore seems to make the sales of Aarons, Buendia, Godfrey, Cantwell and Lewis inevitable. Creating a £20m player takes longer than buying one.

Slightly going off-topic but I wonder if our style means the kind of players we want are that much more expensive. 

Take the DM position- Amadou flamed out and the consensus is he wasn't comfortable enough on the ball. But finding a defensive midfielder who both offers the level of protection needed while being a comfortable ballplayer for less than £20m is a bit of ask. Sure you can dig up the odd gem (Kante at Leicester for example, hopefully, this Sitti we've signed) but they are few and far between.

[Badger 2,405]

32 minutes ago, king canary said:

You kind of repeat this point every time the conversation comes up.

There is nothing inherently bad about owners earning something from running a football club. According to this the highest interest on loans is paid by...Liverpool. I assume some of this is going to their current owners to whom they apparently owe £99m. Sure would hate to be them...

 

So you are happy to take on debt for player costs then? How much?

Liverpool are not really directly comparable to us, but even then they are benefiting from shrewd financial management which is seeing debt being brought down, rather than up. The debt in place was due to the expansion of the ground capacity to 54,000 and other capital developments - not on player costs. 

"Around £200m has been spent on the stand, a £50m new first team training centre, and improvements to the pitch and access to Anfield. "

(https://www.ft.com/content/02c2c91a-8088-11e8-8e67-1e1a0846c475) 

As with Burnley, Liverpool show the benefits of NOT  taking on debt to fund player costs but only on capital developments - like our (much smaller) 3% million development at Colney.

Despite superficial attractions spending beyond your means to buy success does not tend to work. There are examples of clubs defying football gravity for a few years, but not many that last. There are plenty of examples where it has failed and left clubs in the doldrums for years - again our lack of a "margin of error" is a strength not a weakness. Taking on debt to fund player costs does not work long term.

[king canary 7,580]

1 hour ago, Badger said:

So you are happy to take on debt for player costs then? How much?

Liverpool are not really directly comparable to us, but even then they are benefiting from shrewd financial management which is seeing debt being brought down, rather than up. The debt in place was due to the expansion of the ground capacity to 54,000 and other capital developments - not on player costs. 

"Around £200m has been spent on the stand, a £50m new first team training centre, and improvements to the pitch and access to Anfield. "

(https://www.ft.com/content/02c2c91a-8088-11e8-8e67-1e1a0846c475) 

As with Burnley, Liverpool show the benefits of NOT  taking on debt to fund player costs but only on capital developments - like our (much smaller) 3% million development at Colney.

Despite superficial attractions spending beyond your means to buy success does not tend to work. There are examples of clubs defying football gravity for a few years, but not many that last. There are plenty of examples where it has failed and left clubs in the doldrums for years - again our lack of a "margin of error" is a strength not a weakness. Taking on debt to fund player costs does not work long term.

You're right it doesn't work long term. But you likely need it for that initial push to get yourself going.

Liik at Southampton- when they went up they complemented their group of younger, talented players (Lallana, Schneiderlin, Cork, Shaw) with quality like Rodriguez, Clyne, Rameriez and Davis who cost a fair whack. This paid off and since then their net spend has been minimal as they've been able to sell their best players for absolute top whack because of being in the Premier League. They could do this because they weren't concerned about one bad transfer sending them down the ****ter. 

If we go down, we'll likely get less money for Aaron's, Godfrey, Buendia etc than we would if we'd stayed up. 

Our lack or margin for error is not a strength no matter how many times you repeat it.