DuffleCoat said:
Agree to disagree then, I see a potential £24m shortfall needing to be serviced as an extremely big elephant in the room.
Selling players would go to that without any investment. These investments have allowed that debt to be serviced by player sales as well as supplementing the incoming players not just now but for a few windows to come no doubt.
To ignore the loss and to count the sales
vs purchases isn’t giving a true representation of the use of funds and our ability to do work in the transfer market with or without it.
Of course it’s an elephant in the room. That’s why I said a few posts above yours
“ Last year we lost around £24m (alleviated by sale of Downes). That’s a hell of a hole from a cash flow perspective. If Ntcham goes that eases monthly cash flow deficit somewhat as he’s on a large whack, but we cannot run the club on the basis of having to sell £15m each summer and still need loans / equity of £10m +
We have to get closer to break even and cash in on valuable assets to give us a buffer. All that this summer’s equity injections have done is get us to the point where we were by selling Downes (from a cash perspective, not P&L of course). Without a big sale we are still operating at a place where we will need more injections, and at around another £10m or so, just to remain cash neutral.”
when you’d said we don’t need to sell anyone.
The reality is that the equity injections are, for now, alleviating the immediacy of covering our monthly outgoings.
The players brought in have been covered by the players out (with some monthly outgoings also reduced).
You can’t get rid of 10 players and not bring any in since we then wouldn’t have a team we could put on the field.
The owners need to do two things - firstly sell at least one of our major assets (a difficult task, obviously, as we’ve been trying to sell Piroe all summer to no avail). Secondly, we need a reduction in our monthly outgoings. We have achieved that a little so far (Manning was on a big chunk) Ntcham will be a huge weight off our financial shoulders (and I applaud the club for standing up to the bollox from him and whatever that Turkish club is called, but actually we need to get rid at this point), but we need more cost cutting. We will be spending a fair whack on Coleman and that second American that has come over whose name escapes me and our back room costs have been way to high for a club in our position for quite a few years.
The recruitment of Watson seems positive to me, and the recruitment of Duff (getting rid of Martin was excellent in my opinion).
So there’s plenty that seems to be on the right track but they are really behind in sorting out the finances here. People are talking as though we’ve been taken over by the House of Saud - Bristol City have had more money in this summer from their owners and I haven’t noticed anyone ripping them off in the transfer market or suddenly talking as though they’re a shoo in for promotion.
Let’s get a sense of perspective. This is a hard league this year.
But yes, you are right and of course TM will
