The ‘be patient’ brigade

[Paulus]

At the start of the season I couldn’t see how we could avoid the bottom three, we have fuck all money in the boardroom, we lost the 5 most influential players from last season, we’ve got one of them back but we’ve filled the empty spaces with unproven newbies. As a club the last month has been horrendous, the preparation for the season was horrendous, none of this has been Hecky’s fault, I really don’t see what we would gain by getting rid of him. Stop fucking dreaming that we can survive support the boys and show some loyalty to the boss and his assistants who got us into this position despite fuck all support from the boardroom last season.

 

[biggiesablade]

You’d need to explain it to me first, it’s up there with Hendo’s on the ‘things I don’t get the fuss about’ scale!

Just say hot beef water please

 

[Houston_Blade]

Do with have the money to learn from it? With a smaller spend we ended up in severe financial difficulty. Of course, we may have stayed up and got the reward, but we may have ended up going bust. Speculating with other people’s money is easy.

People talking about late preparation this season fail to grasp that we were simply skint, and in need of sales to fund purchases.

We ended up in severe financial difficulty because we went cheap and bought shit players on long contracts with little or no sell on potential/value. The only 1 with any value we’ve since sold to a rival for less than we paid. That’s despite being told that our strategy was the opposite.

People still swallow this line from the club that we’re ‘buying players with potential to sell on in future’, history tells me we’re not very good at that and we’ll end up lumbered with players who aren’t actually very good. Archer might be decent and we’ve got to give him back if he is.

 

[Houston_Blade]

Houston may have a problem, but I don't.

When you throw your cards in we’re all fucked.

 

[alcoblade]

We ended up in severe financial difficulty because we went cheap and bought shit players on long contracts with little or no sell on potential/value. The only 1 with any value we’ve since sold to a rival for less than we paid. That’s despite being told that our strategy was the opposite.

People still swallow this line from the club that we’re ‘buying players with potential to sell on in future’, history tells me we’re not very good at that and we’ll end up lumbered with players who aren’t actually very good. Archer might be decent and we’ve got to give him back if he is.

Stop buying shit players then. I bet that will be a revelation - if only they’d known before!

 

[Davalon]

The same ones moaning about not spending more money would largely be the first to complain if we did and ended up in the financial shit next season.

 

[Houston_Blade]

Stop buying shit players then. I bet that will be a revelation - if only they’d known before!

But this is the point, you don’t pay PL money for players and you end up not on the PL.

We wouldn’t pay the money for Watkins or Bowen, turns out even if we’d have got relegated we could have cashed in. Unlike the 2nd rate shite we’ve bought over the years instead.

 

[Paulus]

We ended up in severe financial difficulty because we went cheap and bought shit players on long contracts with little or no sell on potential/value. The only 1 with any value we’ve since sold to a rival for less than we paid. That’s despite being told that our strategy was the opposite.

People still swallow this line from the club that we’re ‘buying players with potential to sell on in future’, history tells me we’re not very good at that and we’ll end up lumbered with players who aren’t actually very good. Archer might be decent and we’ve got to give him back if he is.

App of this might be true but we have fuck all money to buy or pay “better” players

 

[Paulus]

All

 

[alcoblade]

But this is the point, you don’t pay PL money for players and you end up not on the PL.

We wouldn’t pay the money for Watkins or Bowen, turns out even if we’d have got relegated we could have cashed in. Unlike the 2nd rate shite we’ve bought over the years instead.

No, I agree do a degree. With hindsight it’s cost us more. But hindsight doesn’t put cash in the bank at the time.

If we’d turned a profit I’d be really annoyed. But we’ve got into a financial mess. There’s no guarantee it wouldn’t have been worse, and the owner just isn’t rich enough to push the boat out further.

 

[Houston_Blade]

App of this might be true but we have fuck all money to buy or pay “better” players

If we had a few years in the PL we would have, but we’ll never spend the money required to stay there and the owner doesn’t have the cash to do so. Catch 22, we could raise (more) finance, go for it and maybe stay there. Or just give up and go down like we are doing.

4 years ago are where the issues began, with poor investment decisions. We are now paying the price for these.

 

[alcoblade]

If we had a few years in the PL we would have, but we’ll never spend the money required to stay there and the owner doesn’t have the cash to do so. Catch 22, we could raise (more) finance, go for it and maybe stay there. Or just give up and go down like we are doing.

4 years ago are where the issues began, with poor investment decisions. We are now paying the price for these.

Why doesn’t every club lend more money to make it to / stay in the premier league?

 

[Houston_Blade]

Why doesn’t every club lend more money to make it to / stay in the premier league?

The established clubs have, that’s how they’ve got there. Burnley are trying it (and might fail) us and Luton aren’t even trying.

I wouldn’t advocate mortgaging the future in the Championship, it rarely works, but as a PL club we should be doing our best to stay there and build. Using this strategy we will be a yo-yo club at best but more likely we’ll go down and the likes of Archer and Hamer become bargain basement replacements or youth prospects. It’s a self fulfilling prophecy.

As it stands Luton will be in a better place than us both on and off the pitch next season unless we recruit very well in the summer.

 

[Panini]

Is it the fans issue to worry about the financial health of the club or just expect to be entertained and compete on the pitch?

I have an interest in finance because that’s what I do for a living, if I didn’t then I really wouldn’t give a shit.

I'm sure asking this question to 100 fans would receive 50 different answers.

My priorities, in order:

1) club exists and plays matches, is part of the community it sits within
2) the football on offer is entertaining, fun, attacking etc
3) the team is objectively competitive

We might not have 2 and 3 as much as we'd like but we'd never have them if 1 wasn't true.