We're down

[Baron Goblet]

On course for less than 50 points, a new manager, load of injuries. Terrible run of results with a few rays of sunshine.

The good news would be that we have signed some new recruits and we still have an experienced squad to blend with the extra pace.

Ten or so games to pick up more than one point a game.

It is looking mighty close, the trap door is opening.

 

[Roger]

My Sunderland supporting work colleagues tell me that their squad is in a state of disarray since Beale took over. The majority were surprised at the sacking of Mowbray and that it’s gone downhill since then.

It is indeed a good time to catch them.

Get the champagne out!

 

[Risc]

Get the champagne out!

I wouldn't, apparently getting announced he's leaving today.

Nice boost for the mackems.

 

[Andrew - North Hill]

You truly are in your element on this thread aren't you. Somewhere to lurk, and shirk your responsibilities as a proper fan.

Why on earth do folk like you bother to pretend to support our club when all you do is revel in our losses and slink away when we win ?

You seem to be cut from the same rancid cloth as our perennial doom mongers. With minimal logic, rationale or substance to your tedious, chip-on-the-shoulder bleatings. Pity.

Stick to your snooker, darts and tiddlywinks.

Oh dear, I appear to have touched a nerve with the poster who everyone else on here seems to regard as a Cardiff fan stirring the shit.

I'll not be able to sleep tonight now, being told I'm a "pretend" supporter by a Canton Stand-dwelling infiltrator.

 

[jasper_T]

It's been on the cards since the first summer after relegation when the Yanks conducted a panic firesale flogging most of our best players for less than their market value. That set the tone. I don't think any of us expected we would hold on to our highest earners but many might expected the club to use the parachute payments to make sure we weren't taken for a ride on the fee. Not a bit of it. Anything that wasn't nailed down, it was gone for a bag of footballs and a Mars bar.

Ever since then we've been on the back foot, because other clubs have known they can make derisory offers for our players and we'll take them. Coupled with our own poor hit rate with bringing players in, it's compounded matters.

If you look back at our sales we got great value for DJ, Rodon and McBurnie. Championship-to-lower-PL players, 8 figures apiece. We didn't accept the first offers either. Sometimes it works out (McBurnie), sometimes it doesn't (Jordan Ayew, Wood, Obafemi). Piroe had a wobble when we priced him out of a move that first summer as well. There's no need to resort to fiction if you want to criticise the way we've been run, plenty of legitimate criticisms to be made.

People think "parachute payments" are a cure-all that lets you spend as you like. Never been the case. The clubs that drop and continue to spend big always cover that with enormous ownership loans/new debts. We did "use the parachute payments" for the club to only lose a few million a year rather than go into administration.

 

[Andrew - North Hill]

If you look back at our sales we got great value for DJ, Rodon and McBurnie. Championship-to-lower-PL players, 8 figures apiece. We didn't accept the first offers either. Sometimes it works out (McBurnie), sometimes it doesn't (Jordan Ayew, Wood, Obafemi). Piroe had a wobble when we priced him out of a move that first summer as well. There's no need to resort to fiction if you want to criticise the way we've been run, plenty of legitimate criticisms to be made.

People think "parachute payments" are a cure-all that lets you spend as you like. Never been the case. The clubs that drop and continue to spend big always cover that with enormous ownership loans/new debts. We did "use the parachute payments" for the club to only lose a few million a year rather than go into administration.

Not fiction mate, that first summer we sold Fede Fernandez for peanuts. He was an established PL centre back and we got £2m for him. We gave him away. Mawson, Ki, Clucas, Jordan Ayew, Borja, we just gave them away. I'm not saying we would have wanted to keep any of them, but we didn't extract maximum value at a time where we really needed to do that.

Re parachute payments, my point was that we could have used them to cushion the blow more like a lot of clubs do, I didn't claim they enable you to have a spending spree, those are two different things entirely. You have conflated one thing with the other. By the way, we were quite happy in the second and third season to use them to sustain A Ayew's wages, hasn't it struck you as odd why they didn't do that in the first year when they were at their highest?

Let's not rewrite history. The first summer set the wrong tone, and we have never really recovered since then, despite the best efforts of our coaches (until Duff).

 

[jasper_T]

We kept Andre Ayew those seasons because he'd flopped in Turkey and no one would give us more than pennies on the dollar towards covering his wages at the time. The assets had to go because we had too many liabilities (Bony another huge one). We absolutely did use the parachute as a cushion as you suggest. Our wage bill that first Championship season was still £48.9m despite all the departures, and the club made an accounts loss of £7m even after the DJ money was included. What "a lot of clubs do" that we didn't is match the parachute payment with enormous ownership investment/debt. Personally I'm not comfortable with the club's future being gambled like that, but fans are entitled to want the sort of product they want.

The reality of parachute payments is that you have to cut back from being a £126m income business one year to a £68m income business the next, over a single summer of dealings. And then prepare for more sharp drops each summer after that until you get to where we are now (~£20m).

The club has made a lot of errors, but for me I'd have liked them to be a bit more keen to accept early offers for players who later went for far less (or are currently waddling around the pitch for us), and waste less cash "backing" managers with expensive loans in dead seasons. Well-run clubs can make an impact in this division.

 

[Nocountryforoldjack]

Not fiction mate, that first summer we sold Fede Fernandez for peanuts. He was an established PL centre back and we got £2m for him. We gave him away. Mawson, Ki, Clucas, Jordan Ayew, Borja, we just gave them away. I'm not saying we would have wanted to keep any of them, but we didn't extract maximum value at a time where we really needed to do that.

Re parachute payments, my point was that we could have used them to cushion the blow more like a lot of clubs do, I didn't claim they enable you to have a spending spree, those are two different things entirely. You have conflated one thing with the other. By the way, we were quite happy in the second and third season to use them to sustain A Ayew's wages, hasn't it struck you as odd why they didn't do that in the first year when they were at their highest?

Let's not rewrite history. The first summer set the wrong tone, and we have never really recovered since then, despite the best efforts of our coaches (until Duff).

(Until your beloved chin wig)