Saint Without a Halo

The timing of Koemans departure will surely leave us playing catch up on the transfer market in that we will want to wait to see the new managers thoughts and any player will surely not want to sign up before knowing who our manager is Surely that puts us at a disadvantage compared to all others who are currently already well into negotiations and setting up deals? we need to move quickly on a new manager and limit the amount of catch up

The Wanderers Corinthian Casuals and The Royal Engineers have a great history joking aside so do Wolves Forest Leeds and Preston doesn't have much currency in today's world does history What counts is the nowl!

If you want to pay a manager who will not commit to more than one year 6m per annum and pay us 5 m to take away what is effectively a lame manager who was going in 12 months anyway, I call that stupidity not ambition. Let's hope he stays more than a year with you. The problem is he will only stay if he fails at your place not really ideal for an ambitious club s it?

We usually buy young players wishing to get into the premier league to showcase there skills they are not usually in the driving seat in terms of negotiations hence we are more likely to get our way leading to the general absence of such clauses

I think it was Gary Player (that once said, in response to being accused of winning through luck), " it is very funny but the harder I train the luckier I seem to get" Saints in the top 8 three times in three years and Leicester winning the league each achieved over 38 individual competitive matches is highly unlikely mathamatically to be entirely down to luck a fact that can easily be proven through statistics

Me too

Good luck with your gamble We let him go because 1) We are not prepared to pay silly money to someone who will move on again anyway if he committed to more than one year and meant it we would have tried harder to keep him 2) We are not prepared for our very successful planned growth to date to be compromised by growing our cost base faster than our income (something Everton should be concerned about now ) given the examples of Leeds Blackburn Portsmouth etc 3) We want a manager committed to growing our Club and not just his bank Balance and career prospects especially when the two don't line up 4) We will not let any one person get in the way of our Ambitions and plans for steady managed sustainable growth and if we would only stay for big money and a big transfer budget we are better without him

I see Everton want to also appoint a Director of Football to work with their manager! Louis Van Gaal ?

It would be as a loan

Agreed our managers have been good but not all the recent success is entirely down to them as our back room staff perform very well A fact always missed by the press who believe that all success and failure is down to the manager alone

Good luck with your gamble as you are proposing to do a Leeds Koeman sees you as a stepping stone to Barca Arsenal or Holland over the next year or two where you end up when he is gone is not his concern

Don't kid yourself Macker You are only getting him ( assuming he signs) because you are going to spend money on him your squad and wages and because you are easier to improve on given your 11th And not because you are a big club This is the type of risk we are not prepared to take as we are looking at slow sustained improvement within our means that has served us well so far if your investor can put money in and abide by the a financial Fair Play rules you will increase your cost base beyond your ability to pay as a club and will be dependant on your investor to bail you out. Should and should he ever get bored with funding the difference you may be in trouble and end up doing a Blackburn Wigan Newcastle or Villa Good luck as you roll the dice

and he is limited in what he can put in by the FFP

The sun is a sensationalist rag that even if it wanted to doesn't have the intelligence to understand the way Saints want to grow and cannot ever understand how we have succeeded in bettering ourselves in 7 successive seasons

They believe Koeman is now an elite manager having proved himself at Saints in the premier league just like Poch was for the North London Yobbos both clubs have been prepared to give our recently proven managers the funds they believe they need to get them to the next stage in their careers and that saints ambitions were to slow for them Everton have always been frugal whilst trying to buy established players it has not worked for them under their current chairman Bill Kenwright or their recent managers Their new investor from Iran Farhad Moshri appears to want to throw money in a a gamble to get them up to the top 4 or 5 level where they believe they belong hence the 100m budget before any sales if indeed this is what he is doing it Certainly appears to be a change in their strategy and a gamble from where they currently sit It could succeed but it could also fail with calamitous consequences

Getting back to the threads title as and assuming we continue to improve commercially our growth and ambition targets can speed up bringing them more in line with those of our players and managers We are going out of our way to find young ambitious managers and players as this is the strategy we have chosen and change and churn will always accompany this We could try and do what other clubs do and buy established players passed their sell by date who are less likely to want to move on but we have chosen to develop and buy youth with ambition So until we are at a level where we can commercially and safely keep those we want both in terms of pay and the planned speed of our growth we will continue to lose personnel In a rather perverse way the more we lose the more successful we are As I said before we need to get the balance right and it is far from easy to do

Everton are gambling do we want to match them? If we get good sustainable investment then I would say yes otherwise we are doing the right thing Anyway players and managers are leaving for two interlinked reasons One is money and that motivates most But the other is a mismatch of ambitions Poch and Probably Koeman want to kick on it is important for their career the club with the longer term view is more cautious It is a matter of balance in limiting risk by not growing the cost base to far ahead of income and at the same time ensuring some stability and continuity in personnel A very difficult tight line to walk and on the whole Les has done more right than wrong so far

A mega rich owner is not sustainable growth as once the cost base has been lifted artificially it leaves the club in big trouble if the owner decides to move on and he cannot be replaced with another of equally deep pockets that is why financial fair trade has been brought in to ensure clubs spend within their means The way to spend more is to increase commercial growth and this is precisely what Ralf and the FD are there to oversee Therefore any investment needs to be sensible and in parallel to commercial growth not instead of it also it must comply with FFP Everton appear prepared to gamble the clubs future we are not! Look what happened to Blackburn Wigan and Pompey once their investment slowed and dried up

We have achieved success on the field that has outgrown the speed of our commercial growth Success on the field helps the club grow its commercial base worldwide and its brand recognition all of which in turn helps speed up commercial growth To compete better with the clubs around us on a spend and wages basis requires us matching them commercially as well as on the field Every year we manage to compete well on the field gets us closer commercially but we are no where near them yet

Our strategy is to pay less for young ambitious players and live within our means we will only buy established stars when we can afford to indeed we have been significantly better at buying the Manes Tadics and Wanyamas than our one foray into a big established star such as Osvaldo that Poch wanted (wrongly as it turned out to accelerate our growth). It is understandable why ambiltious players and managers want to move quicker and where that is deemed likely to risk the clubs steady growth and financial stability We need to cash in on them

It is a question of different growth rates and as stated above our committed strategy of keeping to budgets and wage ceilings whilst giving platforms to ambitious young and often unproven players and managers in the premier league . The players and managers that are successful then want to grow at a faster rate than the club can afford to particularly given the length of their careers and their ambitions in coming here in the first place This differential in the rate of growth and the time taken to achieve respective ambitions is always going to produce changes Indeed our strategy of gradual growth needs change to be effective The conundrum is always getting the balance of change versus stability right so that change is built around a solid spine to reduce risk whilst also slowly lifting our budgets and wage ceilings as our commercial position improves The question therefore is always have we got the balance right and can we continue to find a greater percentage of gems than duds in our recruitment policy however as our strategy gets more and more recognition it will inevitably attract the type of players and managers we need

So Koeman wants to leave the good work he has done on the South Coast for more money but apparently Eddie Howe doesn't if we are to believe the telegraph

Well I think they were very accurate about Liverpool its teams depend on history and their trophys are so old they have built museums to house them as antiques As is their music They have also had to resort to prayer for success as all else failed and this has now attracted so many converts they need two cathedrals to house them

It may well be that Koeman is prepared to stay but will not sign a new one year extension a one year extension even if he leaves at the end of next season ( as would be likely) means we would get compensation The board do not want to go into the last year without an extension as they do not want the team to play the way Man C did when they knew Pelligrini was going looks like they would prefer he went now when we would get compensated are in a good position to attract a good replacement and we have funds for the new manager to spend rather than a departing Koeman If that is the case the issue revolves entirely around whether we can get him to sign a new two year contract