Welshspur60
Jamie Redknapp
We only have Romero, VdV and Kudus and maybe some Italian club will buy Vic and Udogie. Yes Grey and Bergvall but no way are we selling those 2. Cant see a stampede for any of our other players.
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Would relegation be that bad?
- Thread starter Gutter Boy
- Start date
thfcsteff
Sonny Walters
I absolutely agree with this.
People will talk about (more recently) Saudi Sportswashing Machine, but we are on a totally different scale. Everywhere we go would be a relative 'cup final', the scrutiny would be insane, I would not at all be surprised to see someone approach us to make a documentary about the season, I think ouir traveling support would tax most local police.
I'd love to know the podcast mate, please post the link as I'd love to hear more...
thfcsteff
Sonny Walters
I think we'd sell -
Van de Ven
Romero
Porro
Kudus
Udogie
Gallagher
Vicario
Udogie
One of Solanke or Richarlison
Spence
Tel
That's just off the top of my head. And if you average 40 mill per player (which is the new 25 and probably about the average for what we could get) that's 400 million without losing a huge amount. Romero, VdV, and Kudus would go for average 50 million each (I think Romero can still get 60 million, VdV 50)...
I think we also need to get used to the fact that we might well have seen the last of Deki in a Spurs shirt, and similarly, I don't know if we can afford to carry Maddison's wages for 20-25 games a season max (albeit his craft and guile would be very helpful for even 30 minutes of championship game).
That would leave us with...
Kinsky, Austin, Dragusin, Danso, Vuskovic, Ash Philips, Dorrington, Souza, Donley, Maddison, Sarr, Gray, Bergvall, Moore, Lankshear, Abbott, Williams-Barnett, Mason Melia, Olusessi, Devine, Takai, Scarlett, Soloman, Odobert, Bentancur, Byfield, Min-hyeok
We would obviously need to buy some more and shuffle some of these players along. I think I'd want one or two hardcore journeymen veterans who know the league:
If Boro do not go up, we should absolutely go for Hayden Hackford. I'd probably think about Demari Gray. I'd consider going back for Jack Clarke. Jack Stephens at Soton is a veteran who knows the league, maybe as a squad vet? If you could get Haji Wright from Coventry, perhaps he would be a good buy given he scores in that league? I am punting a bit here, but I guess my main aim would be to make sure we have a core of players who know the league in there with our young guns...plus IF we could get a Henderson-type...
...etc, etc hahahahaha...
Welshspur60
Jamie Redknapp
Dont see Solanke going as hes crap, but Richy for sure. Gallagher again not sure who would buy him, but his wages says we will try to sell him. Keep Tel same with Spence. They wont be on massive wages??
Mrs Vert
Dean Austin
Wow have times have changed. Actually seeing the players listed from years gone by. Never felt less inspired.
Our years of purchase has been abysmal. And only buying kids for future and mediocre grown ups is why we are gonna be playing QPR
thfcsteff
Sonny Walters
Indeed.
I remember how angry I was the day I heard Paul Mitchell had quit because we wouldn't spend the money on wages for Mane and Winaldjum...I've got older obviously, as there came to be this odd state of acceptance that this was 'who we were'...sad really...but it's either that or exacerbate my aneurysm!
I think people would be surprised by how many players would go. Our team doesn’t gel together but it doesn’t mean there wouldn’t be buyers for the individuals.
Gallagher for instance hasn’t been great for us, but there would be teams in the Prem interested, and I dare say a few La Liga teams who saw him do well for Atletico. Sure, not Madrid and Barca but teams that would be in their countries top league.
Same with the likes of Dragusin for me, hasn’t worked out for him over here but I think a few Serie A teams would be interested in him with a cut price deal. Danso could get interest from lower half teams, and given how many squads like filling their teams with willing runners now, even Sarr could get interest.
I’m not saying absolutely everyone goes that would be ridiculous. However I do think some are sitting there feeling that given how bad our team has been this season, that many would struggle to move - I think a lot of these players would happily go and sit on a bench in the premier league before they played in the Championship.
Gallagher for instance hasn’t been great for us, but there would be teams in the Prem interested, and I dare say a few La Liga teams who saw him do well for Atletico. Sure, not Madrid and Barca but teams that would be in their countries top league.
Same with the likes of Dragusin for me, hasn’t worked out for him over here but I think a few Serie A teams would be interested in him with a cut price deal. Danso could get interest from lower half teams, and given how many squads like filling their teams with willing runners now, even Sarr could get interest.
I’m not saying absolutely everyone goes that would be ridiculous. However I do think some are sitting there feeling that given how bad our team has been this season, that many would struggle to move - I think a lot of these players would happily go and sit on a bench in the premier league before they played in the Championship.
Yes I think youre right, it's actually quite a good position for us to be in. There are plenty of players that we will or should be happy to get rid of and get plenty of cash for and plenty of suitors for them too. Vicario who isn't good enough overall (I don't think he's as bad as some make out) is spoken about as going to Inter, Dragusin is also highly regarded in Italy, Porro is bound to have suitors as he is technically very gifted and Udogie if anyone wants to take a punt on an injury prone player and this is just the defence.
And as much as it shows we have made some poor purchases in terms of suitability of the Premier League, it also will show there is plenty of quality in our team and should not be anywhere near where we are at this stage of the season. I'm not going to pretend to know who makes what decisions at our club, but we really need to be taking a long hard look at who is making the critical decisions at our club now because it just has not been good enough all round....
Silly McSilly Face
Kasey Keller
Silly McSilly Face
Kasey Keller
Saudi Sportswashing Machine looking at Solanke. Think he'd have plenty of suitors at the right price.
Baleforce
Terry Naylor
It's more accurate to say we suffered rather than we managed, watch any MotD from the 90's/2000's, dollars to donuts most of the analysis is on officiating mistakes.
As more money came into the game and raised the stakes, the officiating wasn't keeping up, it was killing the game.
Baleforce
Terry Naylor
I think Danso is one of the best CB's around, he'd interest everyone.
I've just 'predicted' a best - for us - but realistic case scenario for ours, West Ham, Forest and Leeds remaining fixtures. I have us staying up and West Ham going down, with the gap to us five points, Forest two below us and Leeds two ahead. That's all dependent on us picking up the points we'd 'normally' expect to get, which as we know, have been rather hard to come by this season.
Oh well, we have to keep the faith. It's possible if we can just somehow get a result at Sunderland, maybe be a refereeing decisions finally going in our favour (!), I think that could be the catalyst to kick off our charge / stumble to safety.
ricky2tricky4city
Paul Stewart
Got a stinking cold ....poor fella
Finney Is Back
Paul Stewart
Absolutely. Those that think we don't have huge issues in the event of relegation are burying their heads in the sand.
Many of our costs are pretty much fixed (and very high). The only real lever that we can pull to reduce costs is to reduce our wage bill, and even pulling that lever isn't always simple, with it being dependent on us selling players or releasing players and the players have to agree with that and we have to find buyers for them. We would already be likely to be running with losses in the Championship next year. Selling players doesn't necessarily cancel out all of those losses as only amounts over the players remaining net book value count as profits. The championship only allows for a club to lose a max of £15m in a single year. We are in seriously big trouble against that metric.
ricky2tricky4city
Paul Stewart
Muttley
Dean Austin
Interesting that nobody is talking about loans. Surely there is a small quota of loans we can make to get salaries off our books. Take Romero as an example. He can F off to Real Madrid for a loan fee and a high summer 27 release clause. If they don't want to convert that into a permie deal in a year's time, then our asset will still be saleable if we don't go up. Romero has just signed a new contract so we don't need to panic at all.
@thfcsteff was talking about c£400m sales. I think we protect ourselves from the bargain basement bids by doing a few clever loans.
Finney Is Back
Paul Stewart
I think you misunderstand how big a problem we have in terms of losses. We don't have the luxury of being able to just get wages off the books, we desperately also need a large influx of income via profit on transfer fees.
Finney Is Back
Paul Stewart
I tried to do a few loose calculations based on our last few sets of accounts (apols in advance for the long post - split into two!)
Something that I have always pointed out as worrying me is how high our non wage operational costs are. Yes, we make a lot of revenue from the stadium but the operational cost against those revenues are really, really high.
Of course there are certain things that we simply don't know.... do we have relegation clauses in player contracts and do our commercial deals have penalty clauses for not being in Europe and/or the premier league for example and we won't know those sorts of things for certain and only get rumours until we see some numbers in the accounts in a year or two's time, from where we will be able to deduce what's going on.
However, I think we can make a reasonably well thought out assumption that our revenue would be between £300m and £340m in the Championship - so let's split that in the middle and say £320m
Our accounts to year end June 25 have not been published yet (typically they come out in March so perhaps any day now?) so for now we'll have to assume operational costs as per the 23-24 accounts (I can go back and update this post when the 24-25 accounts come out). These saw operational costs excluding football trading of: £454m + amortisation, impairments and other net football trading income and expenditure of £135m to give total costs of £589m.
So if we take the 23-24 numbers (costs are actually rumoured to be higher in 24-25) that is £589m of costs against a likely revenue of £320m of in the championship. A massive £269m gap!
With Championship clubs only being allowed to lose a £15m in one year that means a hell of a lot of cost cutting is required.
Our 2024 staff costs were: £222m (rumoured to be substantially higher now but let's go with the known and published number as a certainty).
So let's consider some likely/wanted player sales, try to guess some incoming transfer fees and also guess at what getting those wages off the wage bill might look like.
Vicario - £15m, £3m a year wages.
Romero - £50m, £6m a year wages
Porro - £35m, £5m a year wages
VDV - £50m, £3m a year wages
Dragusin - £15m, £4m a year wages
Gallagher - £35m, £10m a year wages
Udogie - £25m, £3m a year wages
Kudus - £35m, £6m a year wages
Palhinha - end of loan, £6m a year wages
Bissouma - released, £5m a year wages
Bentancur - £15m, £4m a year wages
Muani - end of loan, £6m a year wages
Solomon - £5m, (no wages on books last year)
Solanke - £35m, £6m a year wages
Veliz - £5m, (no wages on books last year)
That's a total of around £320m in transfer fees (and I think I'm being generous in most cases) and £66m off the wage bill. Great!.... Job done right?!?...
Something that I have always pointed out as worrying me is how high our non wage operational costs are. Yes, we make a lot of revenue from the stadium but the operational cost against those revenues are really, really high.
Of course there are certain things that we simply don't know.... do we have relegation clauses in player contracts and do our commercial deals have penalty clauses for not being in Europe and/or the premier league for example and we won't know those sorts of things for certain and only get rumours until we see some numbers in the accounts in a year or two's time, from where we will be able to deduce what's going on.
However, I think we can make a reasonably well thought out assumption that our revenue would be between £300m and £340m in the Championship - so let's split that in the middle and say £320m
Our accounts to year end June 25 have not been published yet (typically they come out in March so perhaps any day now?) so for now we'll have to assume operational costs as per the 23-24 accounts (I can go back and update this post when the 24-25 accounts come out). These saw operational costs excluding football trading of: £454m + amortisation, impairments and other net football trading income and expenditure of £135m to give total costs of £589m.
So if we take the 23-24 numbers (costs are actually rumoured to be higher in 24-25) that is £589m of costs against a likely revenue of £320m of in the championship. A massive £269m gap!
With Championship clubs only being allowed to lose a £15m in one year that means a hell of a lot of cost cutting is required.
Our 2024 staff costs were: £222m (rumoured to be substantially higher now but let's go with the known and published number as a certainty).
So let's consider some likely/wanted player sales, try to guess some incoming transfer fees and also guess at what getting those wages off the wage bill might look like.
Vicario - £15m, £3m a year wages.
Romero - £50m, £6m a year wages
Porro - £35m, £5m a year wages
VDV - £50m, £3m a year wages
Dragusin - £15m, £4m a year wages
Gallagher - £35m, £10m a year wages
Udogie - £25m, £3m a year wages
Kudus - £35m, £6m a year wages
Palhinha - end of loan, £6m a year wages
Bissouma - released, £5m a year wages
Bentancur - £15m, £4m a year wages
Muani - end of loan, £6m a year wages
Solomon - £5m, (no wages on books last year)
Solanke - £35m, £6m a year wages
Veliz - £5m, (no wages on books last year)
That's a total of around £320m in transfer fees (and I think I'm being generous in most cases) and £66m off the wage bill. Great!.... Job done right?!?...
Finney Is Back
Paul Stewart
Wrong!.... All of those players will have some money due to them for the remaining installments of their loyalty payments, so some of the £66m of wage savings will go on that, also most, if not all of them, will have a net book value so that we'll only be a portion of the £320m in transfer fees as 'profit'.
Let's take a really conservative guess and say we'd have to pay around £16m in loyalty bonuses (I think it would be more).
There's also the players currently out on loan that we'd likely need next season if selling a bunch of first team players - Devine, Donley, Vuskovic, Moore, Phillips, Takai, Lankshear - luckily they're likely all on low wages so perhaps £10m a year between them? = Wage savings now £66m - £16m of loyalty payments = £50m
Now let's look at net book values based on original transfer fee spread over length of contract and how long remains on the contract. Probably around £211m of net book value on the players I listed as likely to be sold above (net book values and profit on that NBV shown)
Vicario: £10m (£5m profit)
Romero: £20m (£30m profit)
Porro: £15m (£20m profit)
VDV: £17m (£33m profit)
Dragusin: £15m (£0 profit)
Gallagher: £32m (£3m profit)
Udogie: £8m (£17m profit)
Kudus: £46m (£9m loss)
Bentancur: £5m (£10m profit)
Solanke: £37m (£2m loss)
Veliz: £6m (£1m loss)
So that's only £119m of profit from those player sales.
So income is now £320m + £119m = £439m
Operational costs are now: £589m - £50m wage savings = £539m.
= £100m loss. £85m more than that allowed in the championship.
That means even selling the players above we're still well short of the money we need to bring in and the cost cutting needed to meet the Championship PSR rules.
This means that we're more likely to have to keep players like Solanke and Kudus and instead sell players who have been here longer such as Richarlison or players with little to no net book value like Bergval and Mikey Moore. Of course the problem there is that players like Solanke and Kudus will be high earners, so we probably have to sell all of them.
You see from the above how crippling relegation will be for us with our cost base. It will be almost impossible to meet the championship profit and sustainability rules and get promoted in our first year. If we don't get promoted in the first year then there is a very real prospect of our club having points deductions, sliding down the league and perhaps even going into administration.
We really do need to hope that we have relegation clauses in the contracts for our first team playing squad and also hope that our commercial deals do not have particularly punitive clauses for not being in the Premier League. Otherwise I think we are going to struggle to come up.
This is why I laugh when some on here have some sort of strange idea the we can take a relegation and just come straight back up and it not really affect us much. It will be extremely difficult to get back up with the sort of squad shedding we will have to do.
I think the only way we come back up is if the owners inject liquidity and we ignore the Championship PSR rules, make a £100m plus loss and pay the consequences of that later (I'm not sure they can apply a points deduction unless we get relegated again?)
Let's take a really conservative guess and say we'd have to pay around £16m in loyalty bonuses (I think it would be more).
There's also the players currently out on loan that we'd likely need next season if selling a bunch of first team players - Devine, Donley, Vuskovic, Moore, Phillips, Takai, Lankshear - luckily they're likely all on low wages so perhaps £10m a year between them? = Wage savings now £66m - £16m of loyalty payments = £50m
Now let's look at net book values based on original transfer fee spread over length of contract and how long remains on the contract. Probably around £211m of net book value on the players I listed as likely to be sold above (net book values and profit on that NBV shown)
Vicario: £10m (£5m profit)
Romero: £20m (£30m profit)
Porro: £15m (£20m profit)
VDV: £17m (£33m profit)
Dragusin: £15m (£0 profit)
Gallagher: £32m (£3m profit)
Udogie: £8m (£17m profit)
Kudus: £46m (£9m loss)
Bentancur: £5m (£10m profit)
Solanke: £37m (£2m loss)
Veliz: £6m (£1m loss)
So that's only £119m of profit from those player sales.
So income is now £320m + £119m = £439m
Operational costs are now: £589m - £50m wage savings = £539m.
= £100m loss. £85m more than that allowed in the championship.
That means even selling the players above we're still well short of the money we need to bring in and the cost cutting needed to meet the Championship PSR rules.
This means that we're more likely to have to keep players like Solanke and Kudus and instead sell players who have been here longer such as Richarlison or players with little to no net book value like Bergval and Mikey Moore. Of course the problem there is that players like Solanke and Kudus will be high earners, so we probably have to sell all of them.
You see from the above how crippling relegation will be for us with our cost base. It will be almost impossible to meet the championship profit and sustainability rules and get promoted in our first year. If we don't get promoted in the first year then there is a very real prospect of our club having points deductions, sliding down the league and perhaps even going into administration.
We really do need to hope that we have relegation clauses in the contracts for our first team playing squad and also hope that our commercial deals do not have particularly punitive clauses for not being in the Premier League. Otherwise I think we are going to struggle to come up.
This is why I laugh when some on here have some sort of strange idea the we can take a relegation and just come straight back up and it not really affect us much. It will be extremely difficult to get back up with the sort of squad shedding we will have to do.
I think the only way we come back up is if the owners inject liquidity and we ignore the Championship PSR rules, make a £100m plus loss and pay the consequences of that later (I'm not sure they can apply a points deduction unless we get relegated again?)