Is anyone happy?

[BarclayWazza 91]

5 hours ago, GJL Mid-Norfolk Canary said:

You're confusing net spend with gross spend

We spent £65m on £65m worth of player. If we'd have banked the money we'd received for Buendia and only spent the difference it would be a different matter. But we didnt

I think those creaming themselves saying we've spent £65m are the ones getting confused. That is the gross spend and there's a lot of creativity as to how that figure is arrived at. Using that number as a measure of ambition is then flawed because:

a) Approx £15m of that was essentially spent last season on Gibson and Gianoullis (from the £40m generated from the sale of the players they replaced).

b)  Approx £20m of that may not even be spent if we don't convert Kabak and Normann to permanent.  I'd also suggest the reason they were signed on a loan with option to buy is because the Buendia money had then been spent and that the fee for these 2 would then come from the 2022-23 budget. So a bit disingenuous to bundle that in with this seasons spend.

c) if you're talking ambition you surely need to be looking at net spend and in context with previous seasons. We've lost 3 players for a combined sum of approx £75m over the last 2 off seasons.  We haven't permanently replaced any of them adequately imo (and spent poorly elsewhere as well but thats another matter) and ambition would imply doing something above and beyond. In a time where we've earned £¼B in TV money, just spending what you generate in player sales is not ambition.

 

[BarclayWazza 91]

On 16/03/2022 at 11:35, nutty nigel said:

I don't know much about NFL and understand little. But it seems to me the trophies are won through sporting achievement rather than owners wealth. This doesn't seem to have affected the sports popularity which our uncompetitive billionaires toy model certainly has.

The US sports model (not just NFL but basketball, ice hockey and baseball as well) is completely different to how football works. There's a huge amount of TV money going into the main US sports however there is a harshly enforced salary cap across the league which is the same for all teams so theres no disparity across the teams. Players contracts are often short and they do not move for transfer fees rather often as swaps for other players or draft picks.  Speaking of draft picks, no teams have youth setups, instead US college sport is a huge thing and the worse teams in the league have first choice of the players coming through college.  

Sounds mental but as someone who has gotten into US sport in the last 5 years or so, its so much better for competitiveness than the reasons given before.  Interestingly though, some US teams are owned by the same people who own PL teams, relevant example being Stan Kroenke (Arsenal owner) having recently won the Superbowl with the LA Rams. Liverpool's owners also own a baseball team.