Some of the European sides on the same budget as us have improved by buying players at 8 million, improving them for a couple of seasons and then sell for 15 million. Replace him with a 12 million player and bank three, two seasons later sell him for 18 and replace with 16 mill player and so on until they have a squad of top players with little lay out.
Our board prefer to bank all the profit for bonuses and buy as cheap as possible for replacements
That’s what I can’t grasp with this lot and why i go on and on about them.
You have 60,000 paying punters, surely you'd want to provide the best product for them considering their loyalty and their annual stipend plus merch and extra tickets.
Rather than 52 million (barrowfield aside) doing SFA, a balance could have been 30 million in the bank gathering dust. The other 22 million could have been used to buy 3/4 players further on in their development along with 4 projects instead of the 8/9 we did buy. The other 10 could have been used to cover the uplift in wages over the duration of their contracts. There are no guarantees, but if Mark Lawwell is the chosen one, have some fecking faith in him.
You may pay 3/4/5 million extra but your getting a player that should be wiser and further along in development, thats still got a bit to go yet.
I also don't accept that we can't attract a level of player better than we have.
The last 10 years are littered with crackers and we have a few gems now, another 3/4 and we could really be a talented 11. But you have to be willing.
While we’re at opposite sides of the financial spectrum, it works in our favour that we’re next door to the richest footballing country in the world. We get exposure that other countries don't.
I’m sure there’s the exception to the rule (Jota is an example), but almost every big money sale has been to an English club. Now i know that our league is not the best but its no coincidence that almost all of our big money sales have performed in CL. These English teams buy based on that exposure not what they do in SPFL. It helps that they played in fairly decent teams.
So i'm surprised that the business model isn't polishing potential gems instead buying youngster miles away from CL ready. The other night Jagerbielke's 2 bookings were just naive and the bhoy Holm is just a fucking idiot as well as a tidy player. It was their first CL games, they've maybe never even been in a stadium as a supporter for a CL game at that level. Thats what the manager was left with and i reallt don't blame him for that, but you have to take that medicine when your blooding kids at that level.
We effectively paid Benfica 11 million odds for Jota to make 16 million so theyve done it before, why not again. They showed a bit of creativity to get Jota/Edouard/CCV, it has been done.
I get that the names Barkas/Ajeti are out there, but whoever bought them wanted their jotters, ludicrous signings who left us to go to erm, er....... they found their level.
But it is summed up best by our chairmans recent comments on the bank balance
'It is important to highlight that, given the increasing gap between the sums able to be earned between the Champions League and the Europa League, it is vital that we retain a cash buffer in reserve. History tells us that we will not always qualify for the Champions League and the benefit of holding cash reserves affords us the optionality of managing through seasons where we participate in the Europa League with the ability to retain our squad as opposed to selling key players to bridge the income shortfall between both competitions.
'as opposed to selling key players to bridge the income shortfall between both competitions',
FFS they've sold every cracker we've had and will continue to do so if the right offer is on the table so this is utter pish'
'we will not always qualify for the Champions League and the benefit of holding cash',
aye not while you lot are in fucking charge we wont. A coefficient that puts us straight into the group stages if we beat a basket case in the SPFL, surely to feck you could try and raise the bar to protect your coefficient, maybe even improve it, fuck win 2 out of 6 games and you get 5 million quid. Instead this cunts planning for when we end up where they've reduced us to.
Imagine one of them showed a bit of initiative, here's the deal, we'll set up a bank account 'the transfer fund' and supporters can pay whatever they want into it, it will go straight to the transfer budget and they have provide what they would year on year. Now i know a lot of guys pay a lot already, but there's hundreds of thousands/possibly a million out there like me that don't have a book or stay overseas. I would happily pay £20-£30 a week to that.
Instead we're penny pinching incase we have a bad year, FFS your jobs to make sure we don't by putting the fans resources where it really matters.
Thats what running our club's while ruining our clubs standing.
