Its the same for everyone isnt it?

[Huddy 0]

Neil Doncaster has came out and said that becasue of wages, bonuses, agents fees,add ons and league levy''s we have spent alot more money than it seems. Ok, fair enough, so perhaps we nopw know why we havent seen a mass influx of million pound talent, but on the other hand,surely this is the same for the other clubs. These agents fees, and levy''s i believe would go up with the size of the transfer, the agents of big name players that have been signed by other championship clubs are likely to want more. So y question is, how can other clubs afford what we cant, clubs thats financial position appears worse than ours.

[The Judge 0]

Matt - you''ve hit the nail on the head for me.

Doncaster makes a few statements in his article but still doesn''t say how much has come in, gone out in a very clear way.. and it certainly doesn''t explain why after all the income we recieved from our Premiership adventure, the parachute payments, and the £7.5m sale of Ashton etc why we have so little left in the kitty for transfers in what is a pivitol season in the clubs recent history.

Prudence, Prudence with more Prudence is unfortunately the clubs mantra. If we were awarded points for trying to manage a tight ship then I could accept this approach - but unfortunately you don''t and we are losing out on good players who would strenghten a team/squad that certainly needs it. Some may feel other clubs are being reckless with the amount they spend and the level of debt they run up- but i don''t buy that - they are just prepared to run with much higher level of debts than we are. It is extremely unlikely a football club like Norwich will go out of existence - which is the fear factor that the board play on. OK Ipswich went into adminstration, have huge debts, paying back millions on loans each year - but are they really doing that much worse than us in terms of league status/chances of promotion?? Leeds/Coventry/Southampton/Derby - probably the vast majority of team in the league are all running with significantly higher levels of debt than us - but they still go out and buy players.

If we have no money - then the board have mis-managed the finances very poorly over the last 2 seasons, which also raises the question - why was £3.5m spent on one player - a player they knew would need someone to play alongside him aswell ?

It is obvious to me we need to try and attract some major investment from somewhere if the board are going to change their prudence approach - but are they actively looking to do this ? Totally appreciate their are not "sugar daddies" or investors knocking at our door - but the club should be trying to get this investment - however this may mean that Delia needs to relinquish some of her control - is she prepared to do this ? - I don''t know the answer to that question - but do know that if the level of debt has increased over the past 2 years with the premier cash windfall - what will it do if we don''t get promoted this year ? I leave you to come to your own conclusions on that one.. 

[Temp the Revelator 0]

And if we were to follow the example of some of the other clubs this summer and spend millions that we clearly don''t have, where exactly would that leave us?  Yes it''s frustrating watching Derby, Coventry and the like bid millions for players, but in there perilous financial positions it is a hell of a gamble they are taking.  What, six, seven, eight clubs seem to be pushing the boat out to try and get promoted?  Only three teams go up, whatever, and I wouldn''t put my money on either Derby or Coventry being there come there come the end of the season.  Then we''ll see how they fare after that, asset stripping galore is my guess.

[canary cherub 1]

The frustrating thing is that we don''t need to spend multimillions. 

We''ve got the makings of a very good squad that doesn''t have quite enough strength in depth to be really competitive over 49 games.  Another million would make an enormous difference.

We won''t find out what our financial situation really is until the Annual Report comes out in the autumn.