I went to Old Trafford yesterday with a Fulham mate (away end). We got onto the topic of the championship with a few, they (Fulham fans) keep a track of Burnley because of Scott Parker and have seen some games but what I did find amazing was how good they thought Leeds were and the difference between if the current top 3 came up vs chances in the Premier League. They wrote us off completely (which on current squad is difficult to disagree with) but it was Leeds will stay up. My point on that was unless they have at least £100million to invest in the squad they, us or the play off winners (if that's how it turns out) are all in the same boat of struggling. If you look at the 3 that went up last season all of Leicester. Ipswich and Leeds finished the championship season on 90+ points with Southampton only 3 behind before they won the playoffs and all 3 of them are occupying the bottom 3 Premier League spots. Since Fulham's promotion from the Championship, they have spent £100's of millions in both infrastructure with a brand new £100million stand plus signing players such as Berge for £25million plus many others, their 3rd summer back was a spend of nearly £90million, yes they sold Pereira for circa £50million to Bayern which helped but they did buy him for £25mill 2 seasons before and for a club where their average attendance is under 25,000 matchday revenue streams are limited and they rely on "tourist fans" and corporate "fans" in that new stand where a single regular ticket is £80-120 !
To compete in the Premier League you have to either gamble like Forest did or have another thing you can offset FFP against such as infrastructure. Ultimately though it means we need to be investing around £100million every season into the playing squad and more if there are other projects to try and make the club sustainable. Although the Premier League is the "promise land" it does get frustrating in a sense of yes we could get up this season but realistically the knives will be out as soon as we are losing a few.
