Been having a debate with a Vile fan on twitter...

[RvWs 4 year contract 0]

Basically I said to her that one of the main reasons I//Norwich fans were surprised that PL left for V.P is because of how tight the budget is.This then got me thinking.How much have we spent in total this pre-season? Obviously the likes of Javier Garrido (how good was this guy today btw! [:D]) and Stevie W were loan and free transfer deals respectively but clubs pay money to get loan players and pay signing on fees even to free transfers.According to various "sources"- the reliability of which can be questioned this is what we paid for our other 5 signings:Tettey- between £1.5 and £2.5 millionTurner- £2.5 millionButterfield- £1m compo.Bassong £4mSnoddy - not sure.I''m not posting the above as cast iron truth by the way. Does anybody have different thoughts on what we paid for the players? I estimated around £12 million spent in total.

[Mr Brownstone 0]

The commentator on the Fulham stream I watched claimed we''d spent, I think, £5.5m at that point. Bassong was rumoured to be £5.5m and Tettey another £1.5m so I''d say you''re not far wrong. Already spent about the same as last year.

[Aggy 944]

There were reports/estimates/guesses (depending on how reliable the sources were) a while back that said we would probably have around 15 million to spend in the summer, whilst Villa would be nearer 25.

I think we probably have spent around 15 - which both of your posts above would agree with near enough.

I don''t really know how much Villa have spent, but I suppose it would be interesting to have known how much Lambert was promised when taking the Villa job.

[PurpleCanary 6,386]

[quote user="Grant Holts 3 year contract"]Basically I said to her that one of the main reasons I//Norwich fans were surprised that PL left for V.P is because of how tight the budget is.

This then got me thinking.

How much have we spent in total this pre-season? Obviously the likes of Javier Garrido (how good was this guy today btw! [:D]) and Stevie W were loan and free transfer deals respectively but clubs pay money to get loan players and pay signing on fees even to free transfers.

According to various "sources"- the reliability of which can be questioned this is what we paid for our other 5 signings:

Tettey- between £1.5 and £2.5 million
Turner- £2.5 million
Butterfield- £1m compo.
Bassong £4m
Snoddy - not sure.

I''m not posting the above as cast iron truth by the way. Does anybody have different thoughts on what we paid for the players? I estimated around £12 million spent in total.



[/quote]

 

I don''t know, but L''Equipe, which is not prone to exaggeration, put the fee for Tettey (who had only a year to run on his contract at Rennes) at 1.25m euros, which at the current rate of exchange is just under £1m.  In any event, the other major factor in the playing budget is wages. A guess, but I imagine Villa''s wage ceiling is higher than ours, which is likely to be one of the two or three lowest in the PL.

[Aggy 944]

But that needs balancing with the point that Villa have got a lot of poor players on high wages! In order to be able to make full use of their higher wage bill (which I will likewise assume they do have), Lambert is going to have to get rid of a lot of deadwood and then bring in his own men - a job that will take more than one transfer window.

It''ll be a question of whether the fans and board will stay patient for one or two transfer windows, or whether Lambert is going to end up wishing he''d stayed with the lower wage bill, and lower transfer fees, until a club in a more stable position than Villa came along.

[fonejacker 0]

I can''t imagine how much the likes of Stephen Ireland are on a week.

You can''t shift players like that overnight.

[Redders Right Foot 22]

most of these are just estimates of what I''ve heard.

whittaker - free

butterfield -1m

snodgrass - 3m

turner -2.5m

Garrido - loan (about 500k + wages)

bassong - 5m

Tettey - 2m

so all in all that''s about 14m. which is probably what we spent combined in the 2 transfer windows last season

[BroadstairsR 2,273]

I''ve been browsing a few Villa forums and they are a very agrieved bunch. PL comes off very lightly, but they blame all and sundry apart from him. Martin O''Neill''s spend-happy ways are seen as the main reason for their decline. Always a well-respected manager and TV pundit in general, MON''s bubble seems to have deflated somewhat lately. In Brumland at least.

 

He splashed £24m on two players last week for Sunderland, so it will be interesting to see whether he spends his way into troubled waters there.

 

I am happy with our spending and the level of it (c.£10-£15m? Was Basson as much as £5m?) and think it just about right for where our Club is now.

 

We needed a right full back. We got one. Ditto, a left full back. We needed a central defender and we have added two. We needed a defensive midfielder and one signed last week. The crucial midfield area has been flooded with options with the acquisition of two more than decent players (hopefully.)

 

We now need another striker IMO, and in the opinion of most others, and then the cheque book can be closed for now. Assuming this happens, I will be satisfied that everthing that needed doing has been done, within our Club''s obvious limitations. I would call it sensible and certainly not akin to the recklessness exhibited by a few clubs in the recent past, with varying degrees of success or disastrous failure. No Martin O''Neills wanted at NCFC just now.

 

I am now, striker apart, perfectly content to take on this season with Hughton''s management and the players he now has at his disposal.

 

It won''t be easy, but we knew that and there will always be ''might have beens.'' It would have been just as hard under PL, IMHO. I feel that the Club is existing within it''s current means, with the next window always there to plug any gaps that there may be.