Originally Posted by
the other bob wilson
Right, let's see what I'm actually saying as opposed to what you and others assume I'm saying.
In my only blog piece I've written since our relegation, I didn't even mention spending plans for next season. All I did was advocate that what would be a fairly modest sum be spent on someone with the requisite knowledge and experience to study things like our youth development and recruitment and suggest how things could be improved because we have an Academy that does not produce first team footballers and a transfer committee that has not signed a single player on a permanent basis in the past eighteen months who would be regarded as an automatic first choice in the side, despite the fact that we have spent something like 40 million pounds in transfer fees during that time (this does not include the 15 million fee for Emiliano Sala).
Apart from that, I've made some messageboard contributions and in not one of those have I advocated anything like the sort of transfer spending seen by the likes of Fulham and some of the clubs with financial problems that have been mentioned in this thread. Indeed, in the first reply to the OP in this thread I spoke of how, if he continues as our manager, I would be wary of giving Neil Warnock substantial transfer funds this summer because of his record in that department since 2017.
It's worth remembering what was I believe to be a prevailing view on here this time last year. The feeling then was that we should not break the bank during the summer in a repeat of what happened in 2013, far better to err on the side of caution and then accept the probable relegation which followed in the knowledge that we'd be a stable club with the opportunity to have a real go at promotion the following season.
Go back a year before that and there was no talk whatsoever of buying our way to promotion - people accepted that approach and were all in favour of spending within our means. In the event, that approach was working so well that it was only in January with the six million pound spent on Gary Madine as promotion began to look more like a probability that we started behaving like most would expect a promotion chasing side to behave when it comes to transfer expenditure - until then, we had been a club that hoped for a promotion rather than expected one in the manner that so many in the Championship do.
When it comes to transfer expenditure, our policy during the summer of 2017 was exactly right for the type of club we were then. As for the summer of 2018, it's more arguable whether there should have been more ambitious shown, but, as I said, I believe the prevailing view on here at least was that the club's approach was thought to be the right one.
However, let's look at what has changed since the summer of 2017. First of all, promotion has resulted in far, far better income than had been budgeted for. I don't have the exact figures to hand and people better versed in football finances than me may want to put me right here, but it seems to me that promotion will have netted us around 200 million pounds in terms of TV money and parachute payments. Furthermore, a bonus of promotion was that the planned conversion of nearly 70 million pounds of club debt into equity by Vincent Tan, which had been prohibited under Football League rules, was able to be completed at this time last year.
So, in essence, Cardiff City Football Club has benefited to the tune of around a quarter of a billion pounds compared to where we were in 2017 and where we were budgeted to be in the summer of 2019 - even if I've got those figures wrong and we are only benefiting by half of what I say, the financial landscape for the club has changed hugely in the last two years.
On top of that, our average home attendance in 16/17 was 16,564, this season it was 31,413 - I make that a rise of 89.6%. Now, I'm not stupid enough to think that, even with Aston Villa 2017 type spending this summer, we will average anything like that next season, but why should a figure 50% up on 16/17 not be achievable?
I don't care what people think of me using the term "plucky little Cardiff City", I'm going to keep on using it because it sums up a mentality that says "isn't it brilliant how we can do the same as other clubs that are far bigger than us", when the truth is that, for now at least, we are on the same footing as these "far bigger" clubs and we can match them in so many ways. The sort of small team mentality being portrayed by some in this thread would, in my opinion, see us slowly revert to the sort of club we were in 16/17 where we were, basically, hoping to get lucky - there is an opportunity now which may not be here even this time next year, but it needs to be grasped, not feared.
