I didn’t want to post on here anymore but I thought I would pass on a bit of info I heard today.
The problem is that not enough people appreciate the position we are in. It seems from posts that its just a case of Kevin McCabe’s rich, we sold ex amount of players, therefore we have ex amount to spend therefore why aren’t we in the Prem?
It is actually quite a simple equation, when you take into account the wages. It is firmly believed that Billy Sharp was on £10K a week and not the highest earner. But if you take into account Naysmith, Henderson, Morgan, Killa (Upto Jan) etc. Billy’s was about average wages. It is dropping with the likes of Taylor, Wardy and France on the wage bill.
If we take the circa £10K mentioned before and multiply it by 22 (the squad) then £220K per week added the loanees in all on around the same £10K, there has been around 7 or 8 here average at any one time. That’s £290K to £300K during the regular season. The squad have to be paid 52 x £220K = Circa £11.44Mil and the loanees 10K x 7 x 40 = circa £2,8Mil these added together make over £14mil.
Then we have the Ground rent, Ground staff, Stand loans to pay for the Bramall lane corner and other improvements as well as the Academy.
A risk was taken about four years back before the massive hike in Prem money to build a team around Jags Tongey and bring in a good Championship Striker (Hulse) to try and create a prem team that could struggle but ultimately stay up so as to benefit from the hike in Prem money that was in the pipeline. But two snags hit us.
Firstly - Warnocks plans to almost mathematically keep us in the prem by playing an astonishing defencesive away games and horses for courses player strategy that nearly worked but ultimately didn’t.
Secondly - The Tevez saga, Liverpool’s post Euro semi-final strategy and some of the refereeing (e.g.Rob Stiles)
So the problem therefore being that the money risked (what all the belly achers’ want us to do) did not quite pay off. The parachute payments are not as good as the money you get in the prem. The TV revenue dries up as does the sponsorship from companies wanting to be associated with a prem team. (The company I work for latched on to Hull City but have pulled out for next year).
The Tevez money comes in dribs and drabs, no more parachute money and the World economy has dried up in property. So we are left in the situation of a huge wage bill, I didn’t even mention bonus’s which are many and large. A ground build to pay for very little outside revenue.
We are where we are.
On a bright note the guy I spoke to today whose lad plays in the same egg chasing team as my lad works as an outside physio. He told me that many of the football teams he works for have a very divided dressing room lots of little cliques, I can’t name names but its generally the larger Prem teams due to their having players from abroad who just come in and take the money and leave. From what he tells me our dressing room is really close knit. The players all like to hang out together and like being around each other. He says it bowds very well for the future if we can keep some stability. He also informed me that Speed has taken over the McCall done it all been here role and that the board are very happy with what the Management have done. He told me that when he spoke to Nick Monty recently that he was really happy at the lane and would like to stay, we will see what happens there.
I suppose I could be negative but I just thought there is much more to it all than “we sold this much therefore we should be able to spend that much”. We are struggling but I think us Blades fans should put this season behind us and look ahead. The team local to where I work are about to go into the Conference (Blue Square Premier) their fans are still behind the team still want to watch them next year. They blame Brian Laws as to when it all went wrong. One of the guys asked me “What have Burnley the Pigs Grimsby and Scunny got in common?” Ans= All managed by Laws all in danger of Relegation.
I will always love the Blades whatever division whether it be the money grabbing grubby Prem the Cocoa Cola or the Blue Square prem. Just too many memories good and bad to belly ache about them.
AMBITION 
