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S-Clarke

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Everything posted by S-Clarke

  1. We're all assuming that the loan is for player transfers. Do we know exactly what that's paid for? Nope.... I assume it was to cover the enormous shortfall of almost a year without match-day revenue or hospitality revenue, that is massive. And that shortfall will be felt over many years to come and that loan will help cover that over numerous years. I think it's naive and daft to think ''Oh, we have an 80m loan - just spent £40m on Abraham' - that is EXACTLY the mentality that gets you relegated and in League 1 with Wigan and no money. At least with this approach, whilst we may still go down, we're not going to be suffering from having spent over our means in the recent years. Let's also revisit some of those mega signings we've made in the past that were supposed to propel us: £18m Boufal - Fail £20m Carillo - Fail £17m Hoedt - Fail £16m Lemina - Fail £18m Osvaldo - Fail Our best value has come from the Armstrongs, KWP's, Bednareks, Tadic's, Mane's - that £10-15m bracket. Yes, values have changed over the last few years, but they're still out there if the scouting is good enough. I'm desperate for us to improve the squad and invest, but as we are today the answer isn't just spending £40m on one player when as a club we clearly cannot sustain that under the current ownership model.
  2. Anyone who thought we were going to spend £20m on a striker is going to be incredibly disappointed, we cannot do that. The scouting is going to need to be as shit hot as it's ever been to get this right. It's not impossible to buy a super player for 'cheap', just need to look in the right places.
  3. The club 'now' is being run quite well, I think. That might seem like a crazy thing to say, but after the crazy and wasteful years under Wilson, Kruger, Reed etc we have an actual local board who I trust with my club. I know what they are doing is with the best interests. There's no agenda, no fluffy bollocks - I've listen to Martin Seemens a few times and he's straight to the point, no bollocks with him. All you got with Kruger was an hour of management fluffy buzzwords that meant nothing. As I said the other day - see the club as two parts. The invisible, non-entity ownership, and the actual board who are now running the club amazingly well in the circumstances they are in.
  4. I think the club identified how utterly terrible the U23's were last season, that had a knock on to the u18's as we had to keep picking apart their squad with players that weren't ready. So I think there has been fair focus on that this year.
  5. Not having a dig at your source, but that feels a bit far fetched to me. The words 'hate' seem a little unlikely to me.
  6. We have no money, that's why we can't replace before we sell. So we will always remain on the back foot until we get new ownership. It's a consistent theme over most recent windows to be honest. We're good for the first signing, Salisu or Perrud - 10ishm outlay. We seem to be able to do that, I'm guessing that's paid for by commercial revenue, bit of the PL riches or the new sponsorship deals etc. But then anything else we want to do has to be fully serviced by the players we sell. And that money has to be in the bank before we can move for our targets.
  7. I don't disagree, I still don't think we should overpay by 10mill though or however much (speculative figures by me, but that's what I've read). Most other clubs are baulking at that as well. We'll see what happens. It's a huge bit of scouting, biggest this 'new' lot have had to do and they've had a fair amount of time to draw up the targets to be fair.
  8. Very clear, concise and honest. It may upset some Villa fans if they thought they were about to go on a £100m shopping spree though (they've already done it), he was very keen to play that down! I hate the usual ''Jack wanted to play Champions league football' bollocks though. He did yes, but he also wanted the life changing amount of money he was about to get!
  9. Just because we have money shouldn't mean we pay over the odds, we still have to be careful. If we were talking the odd mill here then maybe we should just bite the bullet, but I think we want to pay around £10m but Blackburn want 20 odd, that's a huge difference and having money shouldn't automatically mean you overpay by that amount. It does sound like the club are going to revisit the 'lower value' targets first to see what is available. At the end of the day this fee needs to stretch to a few players, not just one.
  10. As expected, Villa have already spent the Grealish money. Their CEO just confirmed that Bailey, Benduia and Ings represent all of Jacks quality's across 3 players and that supporters should be excited to see the 'new' team and the exciting new academy players coming through.
  11. Still believe he'll stay at Barca. It's just a political move by Barca to get La Liga to budge with their wage caps, which I'm sure they will if there is a risk that the leagues most marketable player is about to exit.
  12. What was stopping them putting up a quick article announcing his departure? The Ralph article is just the managers feedback on it, not the official club stance. No official club wishes or thanks in any of that. Something sour went on I think. For a club like Southampton, not known to kick up a fuss and always play by the book, to not even say 'goodbye' is probably a damming indictment of what has played out.
  13. It's not about Barca not affording it, everything was agreed. But because La Liga have halved Barca's wage cap they do not have the space in their budget to accommodate him on the terms they agreed. As another said, it feels like a political move by Barca - it'll make La Liga look at what it's imposing and maybe reign in a bit, losing their number one marketable asset is a huge deal breaker. Still expect him to be at Barca come September. Although if we had ambition we'd have signed him by now ffs.
  14. Have I missed something or have we still not officially announced this? Obviously it's happened, I just don't quite understand why we haven't done the usual ''we thank Danny for his efforts with us etc''. It's all very odd.
  15. Evans is out for 2-3 months, they're looking at starting the season with either a young kid Nelson or NDidi apparently. Obviously they're down Wes Morgan as well.
  16. Nothing to do with the board, let's be fair here. They provide Ralph all of the money they can within the constraints they are ordered to operate in. So no, we won't be spending £35m because we don't have £35m. We have about 20-25m in the bank from Ings, no more than that I wouldn't have thought. We have to make that spread around a bit.
  17. They're looking at loan deals apparently.
  18. If we can get a new GK and still replace Ings and add to CM, then i'm all for it - let's do it. I don't think we can though, and as others have alluded to - there's over 100k p/w hooked up already in our two average goalkeepers, it's like a weight around our necks. I think before we get a goalie we need to shift one of McCarthy or Forster - but there isn't anyone crazy enough to provide either the wages they are on now, so as they're entitled to they're not going to kick up to move. So we're stuck.
  19. How do you know he is a close friend and not just a 'work colleague'? People I worked with have gone on to join more impressive organisations, some could argue sideways in some situations, but I wasn't pissed off because most people don't think like that. You're happy for them, but it doesn't automatically mean that you are going to force a move yourself.
  20. There's no denying that we've regressed, I don't disagree. I've just kinda accepted the situation as it's not going to change. It's been a decline since Koeman left, but massively accelerated once Gao took full control and we had Reed and Wilson overseeing the clown years. We wasted so much money, maybe on the naïve thought investment would top that up, but it never did. I know people argue that Gao 'keeps out of the way, and lets the guys run the club' - but bollocks to that. The bloke has been a charlatan since day one, hasn't ever shown any interest, hasn't ever shared any plans. The proof is in the pudding - the regression of the squad and the sale of players to 'mid table' teams just so we can 'compete' to keep our heads above the water is his legacy. Oh, and he still hasn't muttered a single word to the fan base in what must be 5 years of ownership. Relegation is only ever around the corner with a model like this, but we just have to hope and pray that new ownership comes before relegation. Otherwise it could get a little bit messy.
  21. What if we financially can't do that? That's not a fault of the club. It's a fault of the external non-ownership we've been lumbered with. We apparently offered Ings 100k, going to make him our best paid player. If Villa have offered him more than that then good on them, they can swim into the sunset paying £120k for a 29 year old. We couldn't sustain that.
  22. No one is denying that. Our goal is to remain competitive through creative means, thus selling players where we see fit which then allows us to evolve certain things. It's not sustainable, not at all. But...we have no choice. Until we get new ownership this is how we have to operate because we have no input or help from whoever this owner is. Dump and run is all he's done, same as KL, she's as guilty. Martin and co are certainly not operating a shambles - they're holding it all together pretty well given the ridiculous constraints they've had placed upon them by the shambles beyond this country.
  23. If you have a look at Armstrong and watch him, you'd be mistaken for thinking you're watching Ings. They play a very similar game, look very similar players. His goal totals, albeit at a lower level, are huge. The fee, if that is the fee, is way too much and we've overpaid...but that doesn't mean he isn't a suitable replacement.
  24. That is a hell of a lot of money for him if true, and pretty much the entire budget gone on one player. Overpaid if that's the fee. 15m tops for me.
  25. Leicester have made an offer as well? That's new news. Explains why he's literally been no where near the squad if there are two genuine transfer bids hanging around.
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