- Dec 27, 2012
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I hope I haven't missed this but- I thought we poached Broomfield? What happened to him? Where is he?
Our current squad is good if a little large and no way near as poor as the doommongers and the media would have us believe.
And this is why ENIC own us and not you. You're too big time for us. Go take your financial savvy and buy West Ham and take them to the CL
It's easy to say, "Blow £250M now on players", but have you ever earnt £250M? And if you had, would you just piss it up the wall on a high risk venture?
And then there's the issue of would the players come? Yes if the wages were right. Right in this case means CL level & higher.. before we have CL. So the risk is now lengthen and the return lessened.
And if we failed to get CL... we can't sell players who won't move, just look at Lennon & Ade.
And if we used the £250M to help finance the stadium, we'd still be about 8-15 years from recouping that initial investment before we could splash the wonga on players or heaven forbid, use some money to live it up. I mean, ENIC aren't a charity, we can't expect them to not draw dividends.
I do tend to agree with the small time/lack of excercising of Billionaire muscle from Lewis. When ENIC took over, Lewis was worth something like 3-4bn and could've given us that kick long before City and a couple of years before Chelsea and quite possibly made it back already with a full stadium of 60k.
The trouble with criticising ENIC is that fans have been fed a line that there are only two ways to operate in football.
Either be the only club in the PL with a negative net transfer, or do a Leeds / QPR. It's simply not true.
ENIC could go to the City and underwrite the loan, we'd have the money tomorrow.
Why won't ENIC do it? It's nothing to do with risk. They can re-finance the loan, factor in naming rights, profit from Spurs Lodge, Sainsburys, flats, the college - it's not a problem.
They know the business better than anybody, and they know that after 130 years of successful trading, THFCs "customer" base (and I hate the term) isn't going anywhere. In fact it's expanding rapidly across the globe.
It's because Lewis can only leverage his own portfolio so far, before missing out on opportunities to buy other companies.
It's why Glazer was able to buy Manchester United for free. His credit rating.
This is what I mean by small time, any serious investor would have gotten that stadium built years ago.
I don't mind ENIC making a profit, and if they took the club to where they should and sold - heck, they deserve it.
I mind them charging the 2nd highest ticket prices in the PL, for the lowest investment in a poor side - simply because they are making us financiers of a £400m retail and housing development.
If you are happy with that, that's your prerogative - but as Billy Nick said, there used to be a football club there.
Burkinshaw...
(And he denies it).
Its somewhere between "good" and "poor". We might have the best second XI - but our starting XI is poor relative to top clubs. We are also incredibly unbalanced - which makes the entire squad look worse than it is.
Then, when you think about our "best" players - who is in their prime? Lloris. Nobody else really fits - maybe Chadli.