In (sort of) defence o' t' Prince

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JJ Sefton

JJ Sefton

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This season is shaping up to be a total disaster, but consider the situation the club is in: we have an owner who simply doesn't have the cash to fund a club at our level. So, he has three options:

1) Sell us
2) Try and run us on the cheap
3) Borrow to fill the funding gap

T' Prince is trying to do 1 but nobody - with any cash, anyway - is buying. So what does he do in the meantime?

If all of the above follows - let me know if it doesn't - then out of options 2 and 3, 2 is the sensible one. Sure, we'll take the sort of spanking a High Court judge would pay for and get relegated, but we won't be in existential peril. In my view, the worst course of action would be to try and chuck a load of borrowed money at keeping us up, especially when borrowing is likely to have become costlier for clubs like it has generally.

I'm trying to find positives, granted.
 

Romano on twitter announced verbal agreement
 
WalthamstowBlade said:
This season is shaping up to be a total disaster, but consider the situation the club is in: we have an owner who simply doesn't have the cash to fund a club at our level. So, he has three options:

1) Sell us
2) Try and run us on the cheap
3) Borrow to fill the funding gap

T' Prince is trying to do 1 but nobody - with any cash, anyway - is buying. So what does he do in the meantime?

If all of the above follows - let me know if it doesn't - then out of options 2 and 3, 2 is the sensible one. Sure, we'll take the sort of spanking a High Court judge would pay for and get relegated, but we won't be in existential peril. In my view, the worst course of action would be to try and chuck a load of borrowed money at keeping us up, especially when borrowing is likely to have become costlier for clubs like it has generally.

I'm trying to find positives, granted.
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He is trying to sell us but we never seem to be an attractive club to purchase and this goes back to before PA was here.

Saddling the club with unaffordable debt is something we should avoid.
 
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I think the sale of Ndiaye forced out hand a little. I think Berge was always going to run down his contract. It makes no sense to keep him now that Ndiaye has gone. Get whatever fee we can for him and reinvest. With the amount of contracts expiring next summer we need to start replacing some of them now.
 
Sitting in the quiet, heard footsteps on the
croft's path... the postman delivers letters
and a flyer, post-marked 'Sheffield S2'...

1691433544991.png
 
I’d be surprised if it he doesn’t leave now.

I’m on the fence really about it. On the one hand selling our two best players (on their day) before the season starts is awful.

On the other, both wouldn’t sign new contracts. And Berge blows hot and cold and also has had his fair share of injuries. I’d rather he go now than saunter around the pitch doing nowt for much of the season and getting a move to a crap league for free for European football like Lundstram.
 
I have said the same in different terms elsewhere - no true Blade wants us to court disaster and people don’t seem to realize how close we were if we hadn’t gone up.
My nightmare scenario is landing back in the Championship (not disaster in itself) but then the parachutes running out before we have cleared the whole of our substantial debt (on the McCabe assets including the ground and from the forward borrowing against PL income).
Whatever the objectives on the football side , the existential aspect means that should we arrive back in the Championship , we must budget to clear all our debt before the parachutes expire
 
WalthamstowBlade said:
This season is shaping up to be a total disaster, but consider the situation the club is in: we have an owner who simply doesn't have the cash to fund a club at our level. So, he has three options:

1) Sell us
2) Try and run us on the cheap
3) Borrow to fill the funding gap

T' Prince is trying to do 1 but nobody - with any cash, anyway - is buying. So what does he do in the meantime?

If all of the above follows - let me know if it doesn't - then out of options 2 and 3, 2 is the sensible one. Sure, we'll take the sort of spanking a High Court judge would pay for and get relegated, but we won't be in existential peril. In my view, the worst course of action would be to try and chuck a load of borrowed money at keeping us up, especially when borrowing is likely to have become costlier for clubs like it has generally.

I'm trying to find positives, granted.
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Option 4) Drop the price a little considering he's already made a lot of money out of us to fund his LA mansion
 
This may be out of the Prince's hands but the timing of Ndiaye and Berge going is awful - after they have featured heavily in our pre season. With Berge in particular, it would have been better to sell up and get a replacement in earlier.
 
1973Blade said:
This may be out of the Prince's hands but the timing of Ndiaye and Berge going is awful - after they have featured heavily in our pre season. With Berge in particular, it would have been better to sell up and get a replacement in earlier.
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Just said largely those same words on Twitter.

Don't necessarily disagree with the concept of selling players that won't renew - we aren't rich enough to be in that position.

The timing of it all is awful. Like really, really, really bad. We may well get 5 players in but they won't have time to gel. We'll be lucky to get coherent performances this side of Christmas.
 
WalthamstowBlade said:
This season is shaping up to be a total disaster, but consider the situation the club is in: we have an owner who simply doesn't have the cash to fund a club at our level. So, he has three options:

1) Sell us
2) Try and run us on the cheap
3) Borrow to fill the funding gap

T' Prince is trying to do 1 but nobody - with any cash, anyway - is buying. So what does he do in the meantime?

If all of the above follows - let me know if it doesn't - then out of options 2 and 3, 2 is the sensible one. Sure, we'll take the sort of spanking a High Court judge would pay for and get relegated, but we won't be in existential peril. In my view, the worst course of action would be to try and chuck a load of borrowed money at keeping us up, especially when borrowing is likely to have become costlier for clubs like it has generally.

I'm trying to find positives, granted.
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If he's going for option 1, it only works if he says the value has been significantly reduced so I'll do the same with the price. I don't think he will.
 

What we need is a signing to steady the nerves and then a few more to follow, Berge was running down his contract getting a fee for him isn’t that bad for a player that imo is too slow for the Premiership. We’ll miss him but I think we could do far better.
 
cooperblade said:
If he's going for option 1, it only works if he says the value has been significantly reduced so I'll do the same with the price. I don't think he will.
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But he bought a Championship club and we are now a Premiership club. We have lost Ndiaye, but anyone valuing us, say, three months ago would have known his contract situation so that would have been priced in to a large extent.
 
WalthamstowBlade said:
But he bought a Championship club and we are now a Premiership club. We have lost Ndiaye, but anyone valuing us, say, three months ago would have known his contract situation so that would have been priced in to a large extent.
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The price should drop a little every day as our main assets get a little closer to being free agents.

There were (unconfirmed) reports that the sale price is based on the squad being worth £120m. Unless Anel is worth £95m, I'd say that's optimistic as of today and utterly ridiculous by next summer.
 
WalthamstowBlade said:
But he bought a Championship club and we are now a Premiership club. We have lost Ndiaye, but anyone valuing us, say, three months ago would have known his contract situation so that would have been priced in to a large extent.
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That we may be but if we're being brutally honest, anyone buying us at present isn't buying a PL club, they're buying a 24/25 season championship club. Everything about the business done so far has been about trying to add "value" to the club and offset the terrible contract situation we're in with the existing squad (presumably in an effort to justify the selling price). Selling assets before their value runs out and then getting in new, young players with vague fuzzy potential and flashing them in prospective buyer's faces saying "they're gonna be class, this lot and they're tied down for a bit unlike the rest."

The Ndiaye extension attempt was less about realistically trying to stay up and more about hoping to get another angle for a selling pitch.

It all hinges on us actually getting anything in though and progress there is so infuriatingly sluggish that's hard to be optimistic about it. Our negotiating techniques appear to all start with "Step One: shoot self in foot"
 
cooperblade said:
The price should drop a little every day as our main assets get a little closer to being free agents.

There were (unconfirmed) reports that the sale price is based on the squad being worth £120m. Unless Anel is worth £95m, I'd say that's optimistic as of today and utterly ridiculous by next summer.
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You may well be right that the club is overpriced.
 
The Prince is trying to sell us 🤣🤣🤣 It's like me putting a 15 year old Ford Fiesta up for sale at 25 grand (whilst removing the wheels) and telling people I'm trying to sell it. If he was serious about selling it, he'd have kept N'diaye and Berge in the hope that the new owners could offer them contracts he couldn't. He isn't realistically trying to sell us. My worry is, what is his plan? Why asset strip something you are trying to sell? I have a very bad feeling about the next couple of years.
 
Tom Bott said:
What is the club worth ?

We could get Brown Mcleod to value it, the company that valued The Rust bucket at £ 60 million.
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Ultimately its value is what someone is willing to pay for it.
 
1973Blade said:
This may be out of the Prince's hands but the timing of Ndiaye and Berge going is awful - after they have featured heavily in our pre season. With Berge in particular, it would have been better to sell up and get a replacement in earlier.
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My only gripe with selling them, we should have been more tough and said if you don’t sign when we return for pre season then we make you both available, then it’s in our hands, sell them early and also plan their replacements. Now we’re scrambling around.
 

Business wise it sort of makes sense IF we have actually properly tried to retain Sander. I'm not sure on that front really whether our offers have been quite sub par given he's going to Burnley. (yes they have bigger budgets but still).

From a footballing sense and a team morale sense, disaster is perhaps too far but feels not far off it.

I hope we can bring in Souza and another before the weekend but Princes mate suggests only Souza.

Either way though even without Sander going the way the club have approached signings this summer is ridiculous in terms of timings.
We should be talking about already having signed 6 before Sander leaves. And then to be bringing in a further 3-4.

Does feel like Prince is fairly happy to sacrifice the season. Obviously financial footing is paramount but it just doesn't quite stack up entirely.
 
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