SJH has covered most of the main points – great stuff !
There are a couple of areas I noted that I think are worth sharing.
INVESTMENT
On investment / getting back to the Premier League, McCabe outlined 2 approaches:
a)The Academy approach where our academy investment pays off and we emulate the Norwich / Southampton / WBA model in getting back because we develop top class young talent
b)The Billionaire route
He stressed that SUFC would only be sold to someone who would care and look after the club, its supporters and the local community. We will not be sold as some rich person’s toy – beware Portsmouth, look what happened when they were sold to the wrong people.
He did cover the $500M Scarborough United Group investment. He reiterated what we already know in that Nigeria is rich in minerals and is forecast to grow rapidly. He made it clear that this is primarily Real Estate but they will look to funnel some funds to SUFC. Jacob Esan is an Investment Banker and that is what he is doing with Nigerian institutions. If he’s successful the funds will be secured around the middle of next year.
Scott McCabe now seems to have the responsibility for wider investment opportunities. Very interestingly, SUFC has been approached by 2 potential investors recently: one Scott has already met and has a track record in football. And next week he is meeting someone else in Europe. Obviously, any details are confidential but I was surprised that there is current interest and KM was quite candid about it. Of course this might lead nowhere.
WHU MONIES
McCabe confirmed WHU are paying on time and the final payments will be January and August 2013. He said he thought £6.5M is outstanding (it was £8.5M when the accounts were drawn up). This just removes the Santander debt and doesn’t count towards turnover (and hence SCMP wages).
SCMP etc
All clubs are heavily audited and everyone had to submit their latest forecasts last Friday in readiness for the January window. Craig Burns does all this and he said we are close to 60% of turnover – if you go over that limit you are heavily scrutinised but not penalised until you hit 65%. Given we don’t know if / when / where injuries might hit, this is sensible in my view.
ACADEMY
Simon McCabe has responsibility for this and as SJH mentioned we’ve invested further in coaching staff for the academy. He talked about the key role John Stephenson has. Stephenson met with McCabe and Esan to get contacts for Nigerian footballing talent. They are quite clear that work permits might be difficult and some players might have to spend 3 years in Belgium before coming to the club. Yes we haven’t had success with this previously but in my view it’s worth exploring again.
WHAT WOULD DANNY WILSON LIKE IN THE JTW
-Wide areas
-Central midfield (as proven again today our Achilles heel)
-Maybe another striker (“you can never have enough, they win games”)
Do not take this as us having funds, he was responding to a question about where we had weaknesses.
In general Danny was very honest with his answers and actually quite entertaining with his quips.
