This.Originally Posted by Mambo
We a month on from the season and people have already forgotten what brought us promotion. Chucking money around might be exciting but it guarantees nothing.
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This.
We a month on from the season and people have already forgotten what brought us promotion. Chucking money around might be exciting but it guarantees nothing.
Spent wisely, it's the closest thing to a guarantee in football..
Well of course, because of hindsight. No one who got relegated ever 'spent wisely'.
We obviously need something a bit different in the middle of the park but I would be disappointed if we start next season with less than 8-9 of our current 'best XI' playing (accounting for injuries).
People are talking as if we only have two options, either rely on Bosmans, loans and Scottish League players or another 2013 style spending splurge. It feels like the discussion is being held in black and white terms, when the sum involved is so big that there is a huge amount of grey in the middle.
Have you considered the £25 - 50M in wages we’ll have to spend too? If we spend £40M on transfers/loans then I reckon we’ll have spent everything we’ll earn. I’m of the ‘let’s be prudent’ view and think this would be up to £40M excluding wages in my view.
Andre Ayew cost 20 million, twice. No dig on him, he is a decent top flight player but that is now pretty much the average for an established attacking player signing for a premier league side. I just don't see how we compete without looking for bargains.
I must admit that the "experienced Premier League" criteria which it is said we are going to be using baffles me a little, because, unless we are talking about veterans looking at their last season or two, it's the worst market you can shop in surely? Far better surely to look at Football League like Burnley, the team who are supposedly the template for us to follow, do rather than looking for Andre Ayew types.
Talking of Burnley, their accounts for 16/17 showed total salary costs of £61 million
http://www.lancashiretelegraph.co.uk...bill_increase/
that's considerably more than than ours is, yet they were still able to post a profit for the year.
Whether you believe figures like the ones used in this website
http://www.spotrac.com/epl/burnley-f.c/payroll/
is up to you (I must admit a total salary of almost £28 million on the playing side in 2018/19 does not sit well alongside a total salary bill more than double that in the previous season, but I notice signing bonuses are not included, so I suppose it could be possible for the figures to be correct if they are just a basic salary without any bonuses). However, the important figure to me is the £35,000 per week - if we made that the most we would pay any player at the club, then we are talking an annual salary of just over £1.8 million. Let's say we spent £35 million in transfer fees to bring in six players who were all on that club max figure, you are talking in terms of slightly over £47 million.
This would be added to a total salary figure for the players still at the club who were being paid £20 million according to the 16/17 accounts (let's assume that figure increased by a quarter in 17/18, so it's £25 million now). If that doubles with our promotion, we are talking about a total spend of £97 million which is more or less what we are going to receive in television rights and then we have all of the other income streams available to the club and we will, surely, be raising income through player sales and loans with subsequent wage bill reductions.
My focus in 2013 was more off the field, but I feel that it wasn't so much the spending splurge that tripped us up when promoted but the types of players signed and the gaps of quality left in the side. For example, we had Taylor (no pace) or John (almost not prior game time) only as left-back and immediately opened us up down that side, asking too much of Cb's/GK, while there wasn't a real attacking threat so not enough going through other way either. Stoke this year made a mess, despite spending a lot of money last summer, and frankly they were hoping to survive til this summer from the first game of the season. They signed two full-backs quite cheaply in January (one on loan) and immediately had a much better chance.
Spending a lot of money on big names or spending a restricted amount of money can either improve key positions and form part of a plan to stay up or can leave gaps in the starting line-up/squad and give us a mountain to climb.
Think it's positions and qualities that we need to talk about rather than sums of money.
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