And so Sheffield United continue the worst run in the top flight since 1888

[king canary 7,578]

16 minutes ago, PurpleCanary said:

It was a joke.

Apologies for misreading the tone then.

[king canary 7,578]

6 minutes ago, Alex Moss said:

I dunno, it’s almost like their owners are extremely rich, often billionaires or something. Weird isn’t it?

Almost like you need some kind of outside investment/ability to spend some money in order to stay up.

[PurpleCanary 5,554]

18 minutes ago, king canary said:

Apologies for misreading the tone then.

Sunday night, and I was making fun of my own frequent use of the phrase. To take your mortgage example, it doesn't work with football, or rather with the football examples where I have used it to say it is a misnomer.

I imagine this is the case with you, but when I took out a mortgage I factored in that I was debt-free, had a job, and that if I lost that job I would almost certainly find another comparable one very quickly. That is a calculated risk.

With some clubs (and people who understand the position at Villa say this was true of them) the situation is more like this. They are already in debt and are working for a company where you know 50 per cent of the workforce will be fired shortly.

Those who stay will get a pay rise but those who get fired, partly because of age, have virtually no chance of working again. In that case taking out a mortgage you know you won't be able to pay it off if you are then one of the unlucky 50 per cent is not really a calculated risk but a wild gamble, à la Villa.

Edited January 18, 2021 by PurpleCanary

[king canary 7,578]

4 minutes ago, PurpleCanary said:

Sunday night, and I was making fun of my own frequent use of the phrase. To take your mortgage example, it doesn't work with football, or rather with the football examples where I have used it to say it is a misnomer.

I imagine this is the case with you, but when I took out a mortgage I factored in that I was debt-free, had a job, and that if I lost that job I would almost certainly find another comparable one very quickly. That is a calculated risk.

With some clubs (and people who understand the position at Villa say this was true of them) the situation is more like this. They are already in debt and are working for a company where you know 50 per cent of the workforce will be fired shortly.

Those who stay will get a pay rise but those who get fired, partly because of age, have virtually no chance of working again. In that case taking out a mortgage you know you won't be able to pay it off if you are then one of the unlucky 50 per cent is not really a calculated risk but a wild gamble, à la Villa.

Yeah I agree the Villa example is a not really a calculated risk.

But in general I think every football player ever signed is a calculated risk. Will they play well? Will their value increase or decrease? How old are they? How affordable are their wages at this level or the level below? If we need to sell him how easy will it be? What is their injury history like? Etc etc.

Compare two signings that cost us decent money at the time they were signed- Naismith and Fer.

Naismith the risk outweighed the reward- he wasn't good enough to have the impact we needed, his wages were far too high and he was too old and expensive to shift when we needed to.

Fer was a bit cheaper, younger but had a dodgy injury history. Also didn't have the impact needed to keep us up but played well enough and had enough pedigree to sell for a profit a year later. 

Both calculated risks- Fer could have banjoed his knee after 6 weeks and been unable to move on, Naismith could have scored 7 or 8 goals even as we went down and suddenly been a much more attractive prospect to other teams. In my opinion you have to be able to take risks like Fer to have any chance of success and players like him are now in the £10-15m bracket rather than the £4-7m he was at the time. 

[kirku 1,332]

1 minute ago, king canary said:

But in general I think every football player ever signed is a calculated risk...

In other news, the sky is still blue. Every choice we make in life is a calculated risk...

[king canary 7,578]

Just now, kirku said:

In other news, the sky is still blue. Every choice we make in life is a calculated risk...

Yeah you might want to take that up with the guy who says they don't exist 😉

[ron obvious 1,499]

2 hours ago, king canary said:

Thats all great if you ignore the whole point of Norwich City...the actual football.

So from a financial perspective, yeah no risk, mugged the Premier league, how clever etc etc.

On the pitch this led to our lowest ever top flight points total, the 6th lowest Premier League points total ever, the longest losing streak in club history, not leaving the relegation zone from game 8 onwards, being bottom from game 19 until the end of the season and scoring least goals (for us) in a season since the Premier League began.

So if you support a set of balance sheets it was a great season. If you actually wanted to watch a team try and compete in the Premier League it was awful. And again, I admire your optimistic viewpoint but I cant get hugely excited about it being a success because we might get a chance to repeat the experience again next season.

I think some sort of collective madness has gripped the country. The basic truths about money have disappeared under a mountain of debt.

NOTHING ON THE BALNCE SHEET = NO MONEY = NO EFFING CLUB!!!!!!!!

[kirku 1,332]

2 minutes ago, king canary said:

Yeah you might want to take that up with the guy who says they don't exist 😉

I've not seen anyone in this thread say that

[king canary 7,578]

Just now, ron obvious said:

I think some sort of collective madness has gripped the country. The basic truths about money have disappeared under a mountain of debt.

NOTHING ON THE BALNCE SHEET = NO MONEY = NO EFFING CLUB!!!!!!!!

I love the immediate leap from 'spending a historically low amount on players' to 'THE CLUB WON'T EXIST ANYMORE!!!!!!!'

[Alex Moss 2,165]

3 minutes ago, king canary said:

Almost like you need some kind of outside investment/ability to spend some money in order to stay up.

Exactly - and as we don’t have that, this is *exactly* the very reason why we have to generate our own money through a clever business model💡

Nothing to do with ‘balance sheets’ for me either - sorry to correct you, but I don’t personally get off on that. What I do really get off on though is having a club that is not only financially stable, but more importantly, still in existence for future generations of Norwich City supporters. Because without the club in existence, then we’ll never be able to actually have a go full stop 💡

All that Premier League money banked with little outlay ✅

Currently in a great position to bank a shed load more on top of that with promotion ✅

Building one of the most enviable internal cash generators - our fantastic youth recruitment and academy ✅

You may think it’s all about ‘balance sheets’, but common sense dictates that to build our level of spending on players then we must build our level of income in order to do this. It’s really very simple, and that’s exactly what we’re doing.

It’s almost like money doesn’t grow on trees when you don’t have a cash rich owner, and so we have to do all of the above to get ourselves in a position where we CAN compete bigger and better next time round, which contrary to what you believe is something we ALL want to see. 

Not ideal for those with zero levels of patience, but for those of us who seem to have a grasp of the bigger picture, then we will get our reward on the pitch - whilst all the while doing so without any risk of putting the club in jeopardy. Win/win 🏆 

[wcorkcanary 4,329]

21 minutes ago, ron obvious said:

I think some sort of collective madness has gripped the country. The basic truths about money have disappeared under a mountain of debt.

NOTHING ON THE BALNCE SHEET = NO MONEY = NO EFFING CLUB!!!!!!!!

This x 10 quintizillion !!! 

Keeping up with the Joneses is not the way we are going.  We are ignoring  their flashy  new  conservatory  and garden water feature and concentrating on making our roof sound and increasing our  insulation. Wasting less money is as good as making more of the stuff in equal measure.  

Basic  housekeeping. 

Tortoise and the Hare.

Icarus 

King Canute.

 

Edited January 18, 2021 by wcorkcanary

[king canary 7,578]

5 minutes ago, Alex Moss said:

Not ideal for those with zero levels of patience, but for those of us who seem to have a grasp of the bigger picture, then we will get our reward on the pitch - whilst all the while doing so without any risk of putting the club in jeopardy. Win/win 🏆 

This is the sort of stuff that winds me up a bit Alex.

I don't have zero patience, I'm not obsessed with instant gratification. What I want is to feel that the club is geared towards being the best it can be on the football pitch. All your green ticks are again related to finances, which is all well and good but I don't watch games to feel happy about how much profit we've made. I personally don't take huge pride in the fact we sold Godfrey for £25m for instance- I'd much rather he was a Norwich player, the money just offsets the disappointment of not being able to watch an extremely talented player in yellow and green anymore. Right now, it feels the club is geared more to being a financially stable, self funding business rather than actually being the best it can be on the pitch. 

You're happy with the model and the ownership and that is your prerogative. But I'm tired of the insinuation that people like you who 'grasp the bigger picture' are somehow smarter or better fans than those who think last season was pretty pathetic and don't want to repeat it. 

[wcorkcanary 4,329]

6 minutes ago, king canary said:

You're happy with the model and the ownership and that is your prerogative. But I'm tired of the insinuation that people like you who 'grasp the bigger picture' are somehow smarter or better fans than those who think last season was pretty pathetic and don't want to repeat it. 

I dont think anyone is suggesting  we are better or smarter than you, just more realistic and therefore  more content  with the albeit slow progression of the Club. Sure a midrange  investor MAY have a positive effect. What we are doing at the moment IS having a positive effect on the Club. Just not the way you want it. I realise that you wish for greater Investment , that hasn't  appeared , so in the meantime  we invest in ourselves.  

A Bird in the Hand Is  worth two In  the bush.

[Faded Jaded Semi Plastic SOB 1,017]

Personally I do not take any pleasure in what is happening at Sheff Utd and again from a personal point of view I do not think it just a matter of how much they have spent, the issue for me is that their style of play is no longer a mystery to opposing coaches so teams are better able to nullify them. So for me it is a mixture of no longer being an unknown quantity together with perhaps a lack of quality. I tend not to be fixated on other teams and clubs and what they are doing and as I have said before if every team in the Premiership was owned by a billionaire and they each spent £200M, at the end of the season, under the current rules, three of them would still be relegated.

That all said, if we are promoted again, it would help our survival chances  if we are able to recruit a bit more quality that can play our system, and give us some strength in depth, I know others will disagree put prior to the lockdown suspension I thought we were not quite good enough rather than absolutely terrible, not sure what happened upon the restart but that is all history now.

So I am happy to be Norwich City, through thin and thinner 😜😀............

Edited January 18, 2021 by Faded Jaded Semi Plastic SOB

[It's Character Forming 1,160]

It frustrates me that people focus entirely on transfer fees paid in this sort of discussion.

 

According to one of those football stats books (The Money Game AFAIR) there is NO CORRELATION between transfer fees paid and league position.  But there is a very high correlation between footballer wages paid and league position.

 

Which makes sense when you think about it.  High wages means you will normally have the better players.  Transfer fees are going direct to your competitors to let them strengthen their own squads and are money down the drain as far as the player is concerned.

 

Of course sometimes you have to pay the transfer fee to get the better player, but overall you need to focus on paying good wages to get good players and minimise what you can spend on transfer fees.

 

There are always exceptions, I remember when QPR were promoted to the Prem and splashed out loads on silly wages for players who just weren't worth those wages.  Or indeed Naismith simply wasn't worth the wages we agreed to pay him (and plenty of concerns were flagged about signing him at the time).

 

So I wish people could talk about the wage bill a club is taking on, if they want to look at how much it's spending, and transfer fees just being secondary.

[Alex Moss 2,165]

55 minutes ago, king canary said:

The 'root' is fine but the fruit is going to get constantly plucked off before it is ripe enough to be really enjoyed. 

But that’s the whole point of having a strong root - we can pluck the fruit, but what’s brilliant is that we can always grow more. But if you destroy the root, then not only will it stop producing fruit, but it will die. That’s exactly the reason why the health of the root is always placed paramount above ANYTHING else.

 

59 minutes ago, king canary said:

My view is that we've found our ceiling under this model and its a shame that modern football doesn't reward this sort of stewardship but fundamentally it doesn't.

I notice you, again, didn't actually make any real mention of what happened on the pitch last season, just the finances and what it means for the balance sheets. But then for some the AGM is the real Cup final...

2 things. We have not found our ‘ceiling’ under this model. We have not plateaued at all. This season it appears we’re about to invest around 15million on 2 defenders alone should we be promoted. One being a player who got an England call up not so long ago, the other being the first choice Greece international LB. That is already a significant step up in spending so that already dismisses the notion we’ve found our ‘ceiling’.

Secondly, I wasn’t aware I had been asked to comment on what had happened on the pitch last season? (‘Again’?). I’m not sure what you want me to say? A decent effort in the main despite crippling injuries would be my summary, that had they not happened then I personally believe we would have stayed up. But that we will never know for sure.

We borrowed players risk free other than a loan fee and they either turned out to be absolute crap despite having good pedigree (that’s the danger of big spending), or not used because of the form of the player in front of them (Krul —> Fahrmann).

And so a great example that had we have blown 10’s of millions on those players then we’d have been relegated anyway. But we went down the same path getting in the players we wanted without the risk. How can that be anything other than bloody sensible?! Same scenario, no risk!

But fortunately, the way we chose to operate means we still have a healthy club, we still have that transfer money we DIDN’T **** on a load of rubbish, and we are now in a great position to come straight back up all the while adding coffers to our back balance (which we also need for transfers, not just to please those at the AGM 💡).

The other alternative of course is that you had your way and we bought those players, we are 70 odd million quid down, are currently complaining about being 15th in the table, and moaning because can’t we move on Fahrmann, Amadou, Rupp and Roberts etc this window. 

The evidence suggests had we followed your model, then on this particular occasion we’d be completely f**ked right now.

[PurpleCanary 5,554]

3 minutes ago, It's Character Forming said:

It frustrates me that people focus entirely on transfer fees paid in this sort of discussion.

 

According to one of those football stats books (The Money Game AFAIR) there is NO CORRELATION between transfer fees paid and league position.  But there is a very high correlation between footballer wages paid and league position.

 

Which makes sense when you think about it.  High wages means you will normally have the better players.  Transfer fees are going direct to your competitors to let them strengthen their own squads and are money down the drain as far as the player is concerned.

 

Of course sometimes you have to pay the transfer fee to get the better player, but overall you need to focus on paying good wages to get good players and minimise what you can spend on transfer fees.

 

There are always exceptions, I remember when QPR were promoted to the Prem and splashed out loads on silly wages for players who just weren't worth those wages.  Or indeed Naismith simply wasn't worth the wages we agreed to pay him (and plenty of concerns were flagged about signing him at the time).

 

So I wish people could talk about the wage bill a club is taking on, if they want to look at how much it's spending, and transfer fees just being secondary.

Yes. I did a fair bit of research on this several years ago. The only point I would make, which sometimes gets overlooked, is that in any one season the correlation is not so high but over several seasons it is very high indeed.

[king canary 7,578]

8 minutes ago, Alex Moss said:

But that’s the whole point of having a strong root - we can pluck the fruit, but what’s brilliant is that we can always grow more. But if you destroy the root, then not only will it stop producing fruit, but it will die. That’s exactly the reason why the health of the root is always placed paramount above ANYTHING else.

 

2 things. We have not found our ‘ceiling’ under this model. We have not plateaued at all. This season it appears we’re about to invest around 15million on 2 defenders alone should we be promoted. One being a player who got an England call up not so long ago, the other being the first choice Greece international LB. That is already a significant step up in spending so that already dismisses the notion we’ve found our ‘ceiling’.

Secondly, I wasn’t aware I had been asked to comment on what had happened on the pitch last season? (‘Again’?). I’m not sure what you want me to say? A decent effort in the main despite crippling injuries would be my summary, that had they not happened then I personally believe we would have stayed up. But that we will never know for sure.

We borrowed players risk free other than a loan fee and they either turned out to be absolute crap despite having good pedigree (that’s the danger of big spending), or not used because of the form of the player in front of them (Krul —> Fahrmann).

And so a great example that had we have blown 10’s of millions on those players then we’d have been relegated anyway. But we went down the same path getting in the players we wanted without the risk. How can that be anything other than bloody sensible?! Same scenario, no risk!

But fortunately, the way we chose to operate means we still have a healthy club, we still have that transfer money we DIDN’T **** on a load of rubbish, and we are now in a great position to come straight back up all the while adding coffers to our back balance (which we also need for transfers, not just to please those at the AGM 💡).

The other alternative of course is that you had your way and we bought those players, we are 70 odd million quid down, are currently complaining about being 15th in the table, and moaning because can’t we move on Fahrmann, Amadou, Rupp and Roberts etc this window. 

The evidence suggests had we followed your model, then on this particular occasion we’d be completely f**ked right now.

You keep mentioning my model and yet I don't think you've ever stopped to ask what 'my model' would actually be, just assumed it involves chucking money at players like Amadou.

[king canary 7,578]

15 minutes ago, It's Character Forming said:

So I wish people could talk about the wage bill a club is taking on, if they want to look at how much it's spending, and transfer fees just being secondary.

This, for me, is the long term issue with the model.

If we're self funding it means that we need to be able to either chop our wage bill down to a self funding level in the Championship very quickly or we need to subsidise the wage bill wtih player sales.

Our turnover without parachute payments in the Championship is somewhere around £30-35m. So we need to be able to swiftly slash our wage budget to around £20m in two seasons to remain self funding, meaning we can never really push the boat out wages wise.  

[Alex Moss 2,165]

41 minutes ago, king canary said:

This is the sort of stuff that winds me up a bit Alex.

I don't have zero patience, I'm not obsessed with instant gratification. What I want is to feel that the club is geared towards being the best it can be on the football pitch. All your green ticks are again related to finances, which is all well and good but I don't watch games to feel happy about how much profit we've made. I personally don't take huge pride in the fact we sold Godfrey for £25m for instance- I'd much rather he was a Norwich player, the money just offsets the disappointment of not being able to watch an extremely talented player in yellow and green anymore. Right now, it feels the club is geared more to being a financially stable, self funding business rather than actually being the best it can be on the pitch. 

You're happy with the model and the ownership and that is your prerogative. But I'm tired of the insinuation that people like you who 'grasp the bigger picture' are somehow smarter or better fans than those who think last season was pretty pathetic and don't want to repeat it. 

It’s really not about how fantastic it is to have a nice bank balance. It’s about the *opportunity* that comes with having a healthier bank balance. The better off we are financially, then obviously the greater chance we will have to be more competitive and adventurous in future transfer windows. But we have to build that balance from somewhere. Colney, clever scouting, promotion money etc, that is our oil field.

And this is exactly why those ‘financial green ticks’ are important.

[Alex Moss 2,165]

9 minutes ago, king canary said:

You keep mentioning my model and yet I don't think you've ever stopped to ask what 'my model' would actually be, just assumed it involves chucking money at players like Amadou.

That’s because you never really put much meat on the bones other than repeatedly make it clear that we should have spent a load of money last season in order to give us the ‘best chance’ of staying up. Seems pretty black and white to me?

[It's Character Forming 1,160]

24 minutes ago, PurpleCanary said:

Yes. I did a fair bit of research on this several years ago. The only point I would make, which sometimes gets overlooked, is that in any one season the correlation is not so high but over several seasons it is very high indeed.

That's a very good point Purple, Sheff Utd are a superb example last season of how you can over-perform compared to that statistic ( and this season shows how it can then revert to the mean !).  Also it reminds me of a couple of things -the book/film Moneyball about Baseball and the saying "it all evens out over the season"  (another pet hate of mine).

 

In Moneyball Billy Bean is trying to apply stats to the baseball team to produce a winning team for a much lower cost than the big teams.  Part of the way into the season, it's not going well and he says they haven't had enough games to be statistically significant.  The thing being this is after 40 or so games !  Baseball has something like 160 games in a season, and sure enough in Moneyball, things do come right eventually later on in the season.  But after 40 games in the Prem, it's too late and you're already relegated !

 

So in the Prem or indeed the Champs you often get one season where you get the "rub of the green" on things like injuries, ref decisions, chances that go in or are missed.  For Sheff Utd, last season it all came together to near perfection for them.  This season, if it can go wrong, so far, it has.

 

I am still cautious though - remember, they only need 2 wins and a draw to beat Derby's record points haul I think, and they only need to put together a reasonable run over a few games to be right back in contention for survival. 

[Crabbycanary3 994]

11 minutes ago, It's Character Forming said:

That's a very good point Purple, Sheff Utd are a superb example last season of how you can over-perform compared to that statistic ( and this season shows how it can then revert to the mean !).  Also it reminds me of a couple of things -the book/film Moneyball about Baseball and the saying "it all evens out over the season"  (another pet hate of mine).

 

In Moneyball Billy Bean is trying to apply stats to the baseball team to produce a winning team for a much lower cost than the big teams.  Part of the way into the season, it's not going well and he says they haven't had enough games to be statistically significant.  The thing being this is after 40 or so games !  Baseball has something like 160 games in a season, and sure enough in Moneyball, things do come right eventually later on in the season.  But after 40 games in the Prem, it's too late and you're already relegated !

 

So in the Prem or indeed the Champs you often get one season where you get the "rub of the green" on things like injuries, ref decisions, chances that go in or are missed.  For Sheff Utd, last season it all came together to near perfection for them.  This season, if it can go wrong, so far, it has.

 

I am still cautious though - remember, they only need 2 wins and a draw to beat Derby's record points haul I think, and they only need to put together a reasonable run over a few games to be right back in contention for survival. 

Worth a cheeky fiver ICF. It'll pay off your mortgage! Derby's record is only relevant to Derby and Sheff Utd fans. It's relegation that counts to the rest of us.

They have no green shoots of recovery, in terms of looking likely to produce a run of games. They need more than a reasonable run of games. They need a miracle (plus at east 3 other teams to implode)They still have to play 5 of the top 6 away.

They are down.

[PurpleCanary 5,554]

13 minutes ago, It's Character Forming said:

That's a very good point Purple, Sheff Utd are a superb example last season of how you can over-perform compared to that statistic ( and this season shows how it can then revert to the mean !).  Also it reminds me of a couple of things -the book/film Moneyball about Baseball and the saying "it all evens out over the season"  (another pet hate of mine).

 

In Moneyball Billy Bean is trying to apply stats to the baseball team to produce a winning team for a much lower cost than the big teams.  Part of the way into the season, it's not going well and he says they haven't had enough games to be statistically significant.  The thing being this is after 40 or so games !  Baseball has something like 160 games in a season, and sure enough in Moneyball, things do come right eventually later on in the season.  But after 40 games in the Prem, it's too late and you're already relegated !

 

So in the Prem or indeed the Champs you often get one season where you get the "rub of the green" on things like injuries, ref decisions, chances that go in or are missed.  For Sheff Utd, last season it all came together to near perfection for them.  This season, if it can go wrong, so far, it has.

 

I am still cautious though - remember, they only need 2 wins and a draw to beat Derby's record points haul I think, and they only need to put together a reasonable run over a few games to be right back in contention for survival. 

I don't have the stats to hand but I remember in the Lambert season in the Premier League there were very few teams - if any - that were in precisely the league position you would expect from their wage bill, and QPR, although they stayed up, were way below where the wage bill said they should be and we (12th) were way higher.

[king canary 7,578]

1 minute ago, Alex Moss said:

That’s because you never really put much meat on the bones other than repeatedly make it clear that we should have spent a load of money last season in order to give us the ‘best chance’ of staying up. Seems pretty black and white to me?

Not really no.

The important stuff isn't the transfer fees it is the profile of the players signed- likely a focus on signing young players from smaller leagues who see the Premier League as a step up- basically a Premier League version or Sorenson and Buendia. These players are likely to cost in the £8-12 range (examples for me are players like Saint Maxim at Newcastle, Brownhill at Burnley or Konsa at Villa). Two or three of them combined with a couple of useful loans and suddenly the squad looks much helathier.

Of course they come with a risk but the principle is those players should be good enough that even if we don't stay up we can sell them on for decent money, ala Leroy Fer or Nathan Redmond a few years ago. It takes some risk and it takes having some faith in the people we've hired to build this to get it right but I personally have that faith. 

So yeah it is spending more money but it isn't as simple as saying 'just throw cash at it and **** the concerns!'

[Badger 2,405]

On 05/01/2021 at 11:40, king canary said:

Southampton are a great example of what our system could be if combined with a bit of spending power (cue why aren't we Southampton blah blah blah...)

Take a player like Van Dijk- Southampton stumped up the initial £14m odd to sign him (more than we've ever spent on a player) and then sold him for £70m+. To make a model work like this in the Premier League you have to be able to front up that initial spend.

Here you go again with 2 +2 = 10 again! 😁

Southampton bought Van Dijk for £14 million because they sold Schneiderlin for £31 million: they didn't buy him because they had rich owners (spending power) but because they sold another player for twice his purchase value. They also sold Luke Shaw, Adam Lallana, Dejan Lovren, Calum Chambers and others the year before for a net transfer profit of over 25 million for the season.

BTW they also spent nearly £14 million on Jordy Clasie the same year as they bought Van Dijk for nearly £14 million the same year and let him go on a free transfer, so not quite the certain route to progress you suggest!

They also made a profit of £5 million in 15-16, following a net profit of £12 million in in 14-15 as well - the "spending power" came from player sales.

https://www.southamptonfc.com/news/2015-10-09/201415-financial-results-released

https://www.southamptonfc.com/news/2017-03-15/st-marys-football-group-limited-201516-financial-results

https://www.transfermarkt.co.uk/southampton-fc/rekordabgaenge/verein/180/plus/0/galerie/0?saison_id=2014&pos=&detailpos=&w_s=

Edited January 18, 2021 by Badger
Added links

[king canary 7,578]

Just now, Badger said:

Here you go again with 2 +2 = 10 again! 😁

Southampton bought Van Dijk for £14 million because they sold Schneiderlin for £31 million: they didn't buy him because they had rich owners (spending power) but because they sold another player for twice his purchase value. They also sold Luke Shaw, Adam Lallana, Dejan Lovren, Calum Chambers and others the year before for a net transfer profit of over 25 million for the season.

BTW they also spent nearly £14 million on Jordy Clasie the same year as they bought Van Dijk for nearly £14 million the same year and let him go on a free transfer, so not quite the certain route to progress you suggest!

They also made a profit of £5 million in 15-16, following a net profit of £12 million in in 14-15 as well - the "spending power" came from player sales.

Neatly leaving out the most relevant two seasons when they first got promoted- 12/13 where they spent over £30m after being promoted while bringing in nothing from sales and the season after where they spent another £30m odd while not bringing in any significant income from player sales which rather backs up my whole point.

You need to be able to spend when you first go up to be able to make the 'Southampton model' work because you need to actually stay up to help increase the value of the players you have.

[Badger 2,405]

3 hours ago, king canary said:

Which inevitably brings us back to the elephant in the room- how can other clubs spend money to make themselves competitive without apparently jeopardizing their future?

They can't - that's the point.

(Unless they have a multi-billionaire owner).

[Badger 2,405]

10 minutes ago, king canary said:

Neatly leaving out the most relevant two seasons when they first got promoted- 12/13 where they spent over £30m after being promoted while bringing in nothing from sales and the season after where they spent another £30m odd while not bringing in any significant income from player sales which rather backs up my whole point.

You need to be able to spend when you first go up to be able to make the 'Southampton model' work because you need to actually stay up to help increase the value of the players you have.

But we stayed up after being promoted and managed to pay off debt as well! Strengthening the squad is fine, but it needs to be done in a way that doesn't threaten long-term financial stability - otherwise it is a gamble (or calculated risk as you prefer to call it) - you gamble on the present against the future.

BTW talking about Southampton, they have borrowed c£75 million at over 9% for working capital from MSD. Sure, it seems to worked this year, but you can't see it as a sensible move, surely?

https://theathletic.com/2319471/2021/01/13/southampton-accounts-losses-football-soccer/

[keelansgrandad 6,679]

I don't recall any of the clubs who spend big going to the wall though.