Saint86

I think the fact they kept it quiet means there is probably something in it. If it was false, the club wouldn't care overly about it being put out there and then make a big deal of rejecting it as part of a summer momentum drive. Its a bad time for a sale frankly - we have a massive rebuild on the cards and players (both existing and signings) will want confidence in where the club is headed.

But would you take 17th place if offered it right now? 🤔

I don't think its definite that they'll all leave. Long contracts in most cases and saints should be in a reasonably strong financial position this time around. At the very least, we can play a game of "put up or shut up" with regards to transfer fees for all of them - so if we do sell THB, Ramsdale etc at a profit then happy days frankly. The exception is dibling, where we will largely be forced to sell under any decent offer due to his contract. I think relegation wage clauses, last season's profit, 2 years now of paying down that loan substantially, and this season's access to the enhanced tv monies, should all stand us in a far better stead than after the 22-23 relegation at any rate. Pretty comfortable that we'll get decent money for our better players - it will just come down to how well we reinvest it.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-14647067/Wrexham-Premier-League-Nathan-Jones-Phil-Parkinson.html 'We'll finish, we'll debrief, we'll breathe a little bit and then we'll move forward with Wrexham. 'It's a bumper game, we have to go to the circus and see what we can get.' Parkinson responded by accusing the former Stoke manager of being disrespectful towards his side. 'It is a lack of respect to our owners, the team, the staff, the supporters and the heritage of Wrexham Football Club. 'But we will just concentrate on what we've got to do.' Jones has since tried to defuse the row and claimed his comments were 'misunderstood'.

https://www.owlstalk.co.uk/forums/topic/338649-danny-röhl-thank-you/#comments

Portsmouth vs Hull for the last game of the season. Suspect that is Hull relegated. In other news, Nathan Jones doing his best to give Wrexham a precession to play us next season - and not looking to happy about it on sky either 😂

That was inevitable. Absolutely shocking for almost the entire match. No plan or idea, other than to park the bus and try to kill the game. And to think, people want rusk to get the job 😂

Yeah, that goal isn't on bednarek, THB and Fernandes like little lost lemmings that both stood in nomansland.

Absolute joke defensively there. Fernandes absolutely no idea where Smith Rowe was.

Archer pulled back as he was shooting there....

Only a matter of time...

Carry on with current intensity and i can only see another loss.

No way? I had Glasgow down as Heisenberg and "love and light" 😅

Would love to see him being given a chance alongside THB next season. Chances are that bednarek is going to leave given rumoured interests - a shame as ability wise I'd rather we kept bednarek out of Stephens and him. ABK still kicking around but will surely be gone this summer? We've got woods and that young french kid as additional squad depth as well, so not too shabby at CB. Full/wing back wise, we've got bree, sugawara, wellington, Taylor, and manning. Not setting the world alight, but also good enough for most championship teams - so defensively we look okay without too much major work to be done?

If he doesn't sign a new contract the club will pretty much have to sell this summer to maximise value. Similarly there isn't much point developing him for a year only for him to leave in the cheap next summer.

And who can blame him. A huge part of their fanbase are now mobilised against "the despot" chansiri, the players aren't getting payed on time reliably, and the chairman behaves like he's unstable (blaming fans, the manager, and "declaring war" on saints... In a forum that was called last minute and went on past midnight 😅). Big fan protest planned for them this weekend I believe, and Simon Jordan is pimping them out to potential foreign owners... A good reminder actually - as shit as things can be as saints, we don't have the Wednesday chairman for an owner 🥳

I haven't given up home that we keep ramsdale. As mad as it sounds, I think financially we aren't too badly off re relegation. Profit last season, likely a profit this season. And a rebalanced squad with almost certain relegation wage clauses in them. Surely the only way we sell ramsdale is if it's considered to be worth it by the club? Which means we get a good slab of profit, and we have a goalkeeper considered both good enough for the champ and who can step up to the prem.

Based on the Wednesday presser. Rohl is deffo the hell out of there 😅

If he gets them promoted this season I think a lot more clubs will be looking at him. Would be a very respectable one club run in football manager, let alone the real world.

There are some really disappointing names on that list.

The owners have provided cash injections to fully underwrite the losses, so as a business they're basically debt free, and they're within the loss PSR rules. The following is for the 23/24 reporting period - so not this season, although i would imagine they're fine after a year in the prem. https://www.twtd.co.uk/ipswich-town-news/49240/town-accounts-show-�39.3m-loss-and-turnover-increase-by-71-per-cent Town's accounts for the year to June 2024 show a total loss of £39.3 million and turnover increasing by 71 per cent to £37.3 million. The loss, an increase of 116 per cent on the previous year (£18.17 million), was wholly expected in the season in which the Blues, newly risen from League One, climbed into the Premier League at the first attempt with £16.3 million of those losses promotion costs. Without those promotion costs, bonuses etc, the increase in losses is reduced to 26 per cent. The entire loss was covered by cash injections by the owners of £39.2 million with the club having no external debt, aside from the £391,000 in loan notes issued in the years following the club’s spell in administration just over 20 years ago. The 71 per cent increase in turnover to £37.3 million - £21.8 million the previous year - was led by league, retail, commercial and ticket incomes. 
As was the case last year, Town have published their Profitability and Sustainability (P&S) position - Financial Fair Play limitations - with eligible losses £34.9 million over three years and the threshold £39 million, giving Town headroom of more than 10 per cent. EFL per season losses are £13m per season (giving the £39m limit). After a year in the premier league, they can replace one of the £13M per season loss limits with a £35M (premier league) loss per season. So their allowable losses at the end of this current season's reporting period will be £61M. I also doubt whether they'll have made much of a loss this season with a largely EFL squad and premier league monies. So with owners that are seemingly prepared to underwrite losses, i would imagine they can spend a shit load of cash by championship standards with minimal concerns over balancing the books. Conversely, saints made a profit of £5M last season due significantly to transfer sales - and within that paid down our debts by a significant amount (think it was like £20M or something). I assume we'll have done the same again this season re the debts. But like it or not, Ipswich are gonna be spendy spendy for the championship i suspect next season (subject to the owners continuing to back them), and unless Dragan wants to back saints, i doubt we'll match them.

I wonder if we'd go totally left field and check out Dave Challinor at Stockport... Rasmus and co are always going on about untapped potential... Challinor has managed for 14 years across 6 divisions and he's never finished lower than playoffs, so there must be something there and he seems destined to get to the championship sooner rather than later. He's taken Stockport from 9th in the national league to the verge of the championship in 4 seasons in that time... Look how much money Wrexham have spent to do similar... I'd say he's got at least got a comparable pedigree to McKenna had before Ipswich's championship promotion season (especially given their league 1 bankrolling). Would be a ludicrously ballsy appointment for sports republic and a hell of a gamble for saints generally... But I reckon he's one to watch for the next few years to see where he gets to. Also, from a Saints / SR perspective, he's already had some successes and bettered selles this season in league 1, so that probably rules him out of being "unrealised potential" 😆

Depends if they lose McKenna to a prem side, which could happen. They're bankrolled to the hilt by their ownership group unfortunatley, right on PSR loss limits last season and the owners paid all that off to keep them debt free. Its a very good job for McKenna.

For comparison, here is a selection of Bournemouth's business over the past 2 seasons, Huijsen (19 years old) cost 15M euros, Kepa was a loan, Kluivert (24years old) was 10M euros, Alex Scot (19) signed for 23M euros. Similar Southampton signings, THB (22years old) 23Million euros, Ramsdale (26) for 21.5M euros, Fynn Downes (25) for 18M euros, Fernandes for £15M euros. In themselves, these aren't bad signings comparatively. Bournemouth also spent nearly 40M euros on evanison for example, whereas we spent 17.5M euros on Archer... The issue for me is that we got relegated and had to sell sell sell to meet PSR restrictions (we got relegated and turned a £5M profit). But the squad is now threadbare with regards to depth for premier league, and far worse than the last squad that got relegated. Players like those listed above were required, and we'd have struggled to make significant savings on them. The issue is where we've tried to build squad depth across a large part of the team with bargain basement players (BBD for 8.5M euros, Sugawara for 7M euroes, Wood and Edwards for 7M total (not in themselves bad buys for the future, but not for this year). In a lot of ways, saints were damned if they do, and damned if they don't - yes, these players aren't good enough - but trying to get good prem players for the sums of money they cost was always going to be a hard ask. In that vein, there were also some bad loans and freebies (cornet, Gronbaek, Fraser, taylor) etc. Although Lesley hasn't been too bad in the end. Having no real DoF at the club meant were always destined to be up against it recruitment wise, in what was a compacted and crucial summer window - and that is on Sports Republic!

Martin played good football badly. He will likely develop though, and he may prove ultimately to be a top level manager. Time will tell whether we'll ultimately regret binning him off. He was not keeping us in the premier league however, and the decision to sack him when we did, with no clear plan in place was a poor one. Either we should have done it far far far sooner, or we should have committed to him knowing we'd be in the champ anyway. What we actually did was just an almighty mess.