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Great article from a City fan


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To put EFL spending caps into perspective, we're allowed to lose £39m over three years yet we'd have to spend £70m to get a team of Lucas Joãos. Or £50m for a team of Abdis. 

 

We want to build a team to take us to the Premier League and stay there, yet we can't shop for Premier League players, other than those on a downward trajectory, like Abdi. We can't afford to spend £15m on a young, hungry premier League striker because one player doesn't make a team, we'd need a few others along the done if the team. So instead we spend £10m on a Rhodes.

 

There is another way, buy young players from the lower leagues but a genuinely talented lower league player will be hoovered up by the Prem nine times out of ten so you're looking at the next tier down - players too good for League One but not that good. That might work but it might not, you could very well end up with the best team in League One with that approach, so instead you spend anything up to few mill on a foreign player in the hope you pick out a diamond.

 

Without EFL rules (or if you go balls deep and just ignore them like Wolves) and with a decent scouting department you can spend the sort of money to more or less guarantee even an underperforming expensive squad will still perform adequately to fire you into contention.

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1 hour ago, paulrs said:


There’s some truth in that. There didn’t seem to be much of a blueprint as they went through the likes of Robson, Blackwell, Speed, Adams, Wilson, Weir, Clough and Adkins. You’d think eventually they’d roll a six - they tried often enough.

 

However their commercial operation and academy setup has been a step up from ours for some time. I was thinking their academy hadn’t developed much of note in recent years and then realised there are at least 6 players recently gone into the Prem that they played some role in developing (Lowton, Brooks, Ramsdale, Adams, Maguire & Calvert Lewin) and they made about £20m in sales from those six alone not including any sell-on fees. 


The last players I can remember coming through our youth/reserve setup and playing in the Prem were Bromby, Geary and Quinn - and of course it’s a depressing irony that they did it playing for United and we made no money off them. 
 

You couldn’t make it up. 
 

Good post.

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34 minutes ago, Flat Owl said:

Great considered piece.

Apart from a few seasons, an ongoing story of mismanagement, incompetence and missed opportunities...

 You missed out possibly the main conclusion he makes, that it is the EFLs ridiculous interfering rules that are currently holding us back.

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Guest LondonOwl313
6 hours ago, lanzaroteowl said:

 

We have more.

 

We can't spend  it.

Do we actually though? I can’t see much evidence that we have significantly more to spend than has been spent already. In fact, there are a few things pointing towards the opposite:

 

the stadium sale was done in instalments rather than the chairman pumping in the full amount in one go

 

lots of hair brained schemes designed to bring through revenue from 5 years forward

 

most importantly, the outlay so far as a % of Chansiri’s net worth has been creeping up.. there will be a limit on what he can put in

 

Think we will see in the summer tbh as the team needs major investment again or it won’t be competitive. And FFP should be resolved as 2015-16 and 2016-17 will drop off the rolling 3 year period for 2020-2021 plus we have the stadium sale included in the 3 year period so even with ongoing losses we probably have lots of headway. In other words, if the funds were there there’s nothing stopping him having another go like in summer 2015 as FFP will be resolved for a few years. But I doubt that happens as I don’t think he has the cash to put in £30m more which is what’s needed 

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Guest LondonOwl313
6 hours ago, lanzaroteowl said:

 

We have more.

 

We can't spend  it.

Do we actually though? I can’t see much evidence that we have significantly more to spend than has been spent already. In fact, there are a few things pointing towards the opposite:

 

the stadium sale was done in instalments rather than the chairman pumping in the full amount in one go

 

lots of hair brained schemes designed to bring through revenue from 5 years forward

 

most importantly, the outlay so far as a % of Chansiri’s net worth has been creeping up.. there will be a limit on what he can put in

 

Think we will see in the summer tbh as the team needs major investment again or it won’t be competitive. And FFP should be resolved as 2015-16 and 2016-17 will drop off the rolling 3 year period for 2020-2021 plus we have the stadium sale included in the 3 year period so even with ongoing losses we probably have lots of headway. In other words, if the funds were there there’s nothing stopping him having another go like in summer 2015 as FFP will be resolved for a few years. But I doubt that happens as I don’t think he has the cash to put in £30m more which is what’s needed 

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8 hours ago, Animis said:

Nostalgia from opposition fans will gradually fade as they get older and football changes. For these fans, Hillsborough's like a day out at a museum of football days gone by.

 

As has been said, DC can invest into the ground without breaching FFP but he either doesn't have the long-term plan; the cash; the interest or he sees our future elsewhere.

 

And the ground needs attention

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