The Summer clearout / Coming in thread. Updated 27/8

[Svlad Cjelli]

We weren't that well behaved before, Madejski was propping us up like the others in danger.

I think the current situation is a reaction to the fact that once we were in the premier league it proved (to Madejski) to not really be worth the investment he put in so if we want to be in the premier league again we have to do it on the clubs own merits.

I think with a "normal" season we stand to lose about £2M each year with current attendance levels - that's before the reduction in the FL TV contract this year.

It's also a reflection of the fact that the downturns in property and publishing mean that SJM has no liquidity at the moment - just about all his money is tied up in one investments or another and he's made the decision that this business unit will be self-sufficient and self-financing.

Which is fine by me - because once you decide to start putting money in to a football club, where do you stop....? And also, the fact being overlooked by most of the critics is that the deal is not just no money in - it's no money out, either. It works both ways and that should (but won't) shut up the "where's the money gone" brigade.

[Hoop Blah]

It was SJM's long stated aim for the club to be self-sufficient and no longer reliant on his money.... long before the 2 years in the PL.

It might've been his aim but we didn't break even let alone return a profit until we got up to the Premier League so I'm not sure what relevance it has.

It's my aim to win the lottery and retire this weekend but I doubt it's going to happen.....

[Royal Rother]

My post was in reply to Zac who surmised that the current "nil investment" model only came about because, having been there, SJM didn't fancy the PL too much.

[ZacNaloen]

It was SJM's long stated aim for the club to be self-sufficient and no longer reliant on his money.... long before the 2 years in the PL.

I know that, however, my point was that Madejski probably saw being in the premier league as the route to that. When it became apparent that really wasn't the case and we'd eventually start losing money to wages even in the prem he is now content to let the club be self sufficient at championship level as well so we aren't pushing for promotion as aggressively.


It could just as easily be that Sir John has no liquidity at the moment, it's all summation.

[Royal Rother]

Ok, but I don't really detect a difference in how the club is being run now to how it was in the early-mid noughties.

BTW Zac, is that Chris Carrabba on your Avatar...?

[Hoop Blah]

My post was in reply to Zac who surmised that the current "nil investment" model only came about because, having been there, SJM didn't fancy the PL too much.

Which probably isn't too far from the truth, once you factor in the economic climate and Madejski's reduced wealth.

That his stated aim was for the club to be self-sufficient doesn't have a lot to do with it. If that was the main driver he would've implemented it years ago.

[Royal Rother]

Pretty much everything he has done over the last 15 years has been with that stated aim in mind.

The entire vision was underpinned by the requirement for the club to be self-sufficient. The current state of the economy, his reduced wealth and the previous dalliance with the PL are irrelevant.

IMO of course!

[Hoop Blah]

Ok, but I don't really detect a difference in how the club is being run now to how it was in the early-mid noughties.

The accounts probably would though....

I think part of the difference now is that other clubs are actually interested in our players and making bids for them. That didn't really happen 10 years ago from what I remember.

I think we're a little less free with our cash in the transfer market since we got relegated. We've spent very little money, less than we did most seasons from 2000-2005 probably. Mills and McAnuff are perhaps the exception to the rule, so maybe that's a tad unfair, although if you're selling £m's worth of players you should probably be reinvesting more than when you got the odd '000k in instead.

[Vision]

I think the big spending days (relatively speaking and certainly in terms of transfer fees) were in trying to get out of the 3rd tier. Burns in particular spent a hell of a lot of cash for that division

However we weren't the only ones (Wigan were especially big spenders at that level). I'm not sure of the timelines but I think the whole ITV Digital thing for a brief while bumped up perceived revenues at that level. When that subsequent revenue turned out not to be forthcoming it forced a lot of clubs into financial turmoil. We were lucky that we had SJM to cushion the blow but I certainly think that whole saga made him rethink our strategy somewhat. Paying the sort of money we did for the likes of Murty,Forster,Butler etc is hardly financially sound when we were operating on gates of around 8k in a shiny new plastic stadium.

Actually this next bit might be more appropriate for the "Defying conventional wisdom" thread but alongside a number of other things the major upturn in our fortunes coincided with Pardew taking on board Niall Clark and the whole sports science approach. Very few if any sides outside of the top tier invested in this area in the way we did and its lead (Rodgers' brief sojourn aside) to us being as fit as , if not fitter than our competitors.
I remember a midweek (3rd tier) game where an Andy Hughes inspired! Reading team absolutely rang rings around Paul Jewell's very expensively assembled Wigan side. Jewell went on record as saying he was astonished at our fitness levels and after chatting with Pardew and Clark they concentrated on focusing on sports science and fitness levels as much as throwing money away on expensive signings.

[Hoop Blah]

Pretty much everything he has done over the last 15 years has been with that stated aim in mind.

The entire vision was underpinned by the requirement for the club to be self-sufficient. The current state of the economy, his reduced wealth and the previous dalliance with the PL are irrelevant.

IMO of course!

The only thing that wasn't with that in mind was spending a couple of million a year more than we had coming in right?

When we went up, or maybe the year before, our payroll was bigger than our income. That's not doing everything you can to be self sufficient, it's chasing the dream like everyone else (albeit with the money in mind to reinvest in infrastructure and the good things which will help the club in the future).

[Hoop Blah]

Vision, totally agree on the fitness side.

I think losing Clark was a massive loss for us, and have said so many times, and I think it took a couple of seasons for it to hit home. A lot of the work he put in with the players probably helped us when we went up because his influence was still around in the players he'd worked with and that helped us to play such a high tempo attacking game that teams just couldn't live with.

[ZacNaloen]

Ok, but I don't really detect a difference in how the club is being run now to how it was in the early-mid noughties.

BTW Zac, is that Chris Carrabba on your Avatar...?

Hah no, Chris Carrabba would have been reasonably cool

It's Zac Efron

[Royal Rother]

I may have missed that somewhere along the line but I find it very hard to believe that our wages were ever bigger than our income at any time.

Ok, last go on this - the long-term aim was financial stability. The main long-term investment to achieve that was in the Academy but that took years to produce the goods. Now that it has we can reap the rewards.

The fact that we were losing £2m a year and now aren't and no longer require ongoing support from SJM has nothing to do with the PL - it is because the Academy is producing players.

[Ian Royal]

I think we're a little less free with our cash in the transfer market since we got relegated. We've spent very little money, less than we did most seasons from 2000-2005 probably. Mills and McAnuff are perhaps the exception to the rule, so maybe that's a tad unfair, although if you're selling £m's worth of players you should probably be reinvesting more than when you got the odd '000k in instead.

Don't think that's particularly true. I don't think we've ever spent much more than £1.5m in transfers in a season at this level. I don't have time to go through and check whilst at work - strap has a lot of information that might make it pretty easy though.

Rasiak, Mills, McAnuff, Cummings & Howard certainly amounted to a significant amount more than that. Yes we've got in a lot in transfers in the last few years, but Madejski had the money to put more prior to 2005. And we also had a Prem wage bill problem to deal with.

I'd be interested in seeing a comparison of transfer fee spending since 2000. We definitely splashed the cash in tier three, but we've not really upped the ante from when we finally escaped it.

[Hoop Blah]

Relatively speaking I think we've reigned in a bit but I'd agree that Rodgers was given a reasonable amount of funds but without putting that into context of what was happening at the club at the time it's a little misleading.

McDermott has invested a lot less so far during his couple of transfer windows though. That's not a lot to go by of course but I'd say that since the summer of 2007 our transfer spending, relative to inbound fees, our main competition and the level we were competing at, is less than it was during Pardew and even Coppells time (I think the inbound transfer fees is quite an important point).

[Wimb]

Depends really because it's my general understanding that it's wages that have gone up far higher than transfer fees, but fans still just look at the bottom line of how much has gone in/out in transfer fees.

Is it any coincidence that the fair play rules throughout Europe are being brought in to combat wages rather then large transfer fees?

A player signed on £10k a week is going to cost the club over half a million pounds a season, that's not including bonuses, signing on fees, agent fees, insurance etc etc. Even having 10 players on this figure would then cost the club £5 million. Add another 10 players on half of that and it's £7.5m a year. Off the top of my head you'd think that McAnuff, Mills, Federici, Tabb, Long, Hunt, Kebe, Griffin, Harte and Howard would all be on over £10k with Gunnarsson, M Williams, Cummings, Church, Manset, Morrison, Pearce, McCarthy, Hamer, Karacan and a host more on that £5k level.

The club may have spent £800k on the likes of Caskey, Murty and Forster in the tier below 10 years ago, but the net cost of signing an £800k player now is likely to be far far higher given the way wages have gone up.

[songvip]

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Zurab to Kayserispor

[Hoop Blah]

Depends really because it's my general understanding that it's wages that have gone up far higher than transfer fees, but fans still just look at the bottom line of how much has gone in/out in transfer fees.

That's a fair point, although I'd say that the players we've sold have been on higher wages than the ones we've kept or brought in, so it's really the same difference.

Our wage bill will be a lower now than it was 2 years ago that's for sure, and I wouldn't be surprised if we're getting back being lower down the wages league now than we were in 2004 (once we finish getting rid of the higher earners and if we continue the trend of replacing from within with long term relatively low cost gambles).

[Svlad Cjelli]

Yes, although we are still in the top half of wage bills in the division - although we have fewer high-earners, we have a big squad on smaller wages, and it all adds up.

[ZacNaloen]

Which is healthier, Big Squad which adds up to high wages or small squad with lots of expensive players?