I said you’d have to be ******** to not understand that players without a work permit can’t play for us, as you well know. The system directly benefits our club and the team, if it didn’t we wouldn’t have spent the last five years in the premier league. To say it works against it is baffling.
It benefits our owners. I disagree about it benefitting our club. In most cases the two are completely competing interests.
That makes no sense. One would’ve thought £140m a year in revenue would be of interest to our owners, even if we as a club aren’t and therefore by definition our success is directly linked to their personal interest. We can only attempt to compete and maintain status as a premier league club through player trading, they’re worth £100m there is quite literally no other way of being able to compete and therefore benefiting their interests, not one, player trading, that’s all they can do.
Well I’m struggling to think how a player who doesn’t even have a work permit to play for us yet had any impact over that period?
Do Burnley player trade. Nope. They are just well run, develop their first team squad and have no debt. We on the other hand are in the championship with large external debt. Bravo Pozzo.
Nothing wrong with buying low and selling high. It's buying players we don't need, not buying players we do need and leaving our team woefully under resourced, whilst we focus on building a network of global journeymen.
So I think what I've learned in this thread is that because we buy players that need to develop, some of them are crap. That by corollary means that the "finished product" ones that we by are all good. Like Jurado, Sema, Zarate, Dja Djedge, Ndong, and Paredes. Glad we got that sorted.
Sure. But they are premier league and have no debt. We are Championship and have large external debt and ballooned “other expenses” in the accounts. What is your point?
I don’t want to get drawn into the debate about Burnley again. I think we need to see them go through at least one material change before we can compare the respective merits of how we operate vs how they operate.
The comparison is clear in both division and financial position. Hopefully you won't make the bizarre comparison with Stoke and WBA this time.
The trouble is compare us with Burnley and of course we come out 2nd best. Compare us to the 20-30 larger clubs below us in the league and we of course come out best.
Do we though financially? And step forward a year if we don't get promotion how do we look then? For example are we in a better position to Stoke who owe all their debt to Bet365, their owner? The extent of our external debt cannot be underestimated in how the Pozzos have performed.
Stoke had not been in the premier league for 23 years, Pullis took over, got them promoted in his second season, got them to the FA cup final And also got them into Europe. They were a comfortable Premier league side for 7 years until the fans grew weary of their style of play. He was sacked and in came mark Hughes and relegation shortly followed. They’ve been nowhere near the premier league since and almost got relegated again this season. So was their success down to how well run they were run as a club just by sheer coincidence at the exact time Pullis was manager? Or was their success predominantly down to the manager, who once removed saw the club plummet back to their previous level?
But you're completely ignoring facts. Under Pulis they finished 11th and below. Hughes was the succession plan and he finished 9th three years in a row. Unheard of success in terms of league position. Top half 3 years on the bounce never threatened by Pulis. Then back to 13th and then a disastrous season that got them relegated a full 5 years after your key man left. Your attempts to rewrite history to suit your argument are simply comical.
Can't wait for this guy to bang 15 goals in before January when we call him back to fire us to 100 pts
To me this, along with taking some time to remember our precarious position when the Pozzos took over, is the central point. Whilst a comparison of the merits of our model and that of Burnleys is valid (clubs of similar size and in similar positions when the Pozzos took over, albeit Burnley more successful historically), we can't ignore the fact that the approach we've taken since 2012 has massively increased the equity of the club over the past 8 years and put us in a position we wouldn't have thought possible at the time change call moated to many others. Had we not taken the Pozzo course do you really think we would have had the Zolacoaster season, our promotion year and spent 5 years in the Premier League? Would we have made the improvements to the ground and made the other general improvements around the club? Would we have got to an FA Cup Final and challenged for a European spot (before our form fell off granted). Or do you think it more likely we would be in League One right now, having continued to stagnate and punch above our wait for a couple of years before an almost inevitable relegation. Probably our natural position in the order of things by the standards of 2012, considering our condemned stand, 50p squad and lack of real future prospects. To me the least likely scenario is that we'd have been able to build up the club in the way Burnley have, adopting a more traditional model playing good old fashioned football under a stable regime with gradually acquired shrewd signings. To Burnleys credit that they have run their club well and been able to do it, but most others haven't and there is little to demonstrate we could have gone another way successfully. I'm quite happy with the excitement and success that the Pozzo model has brought us in the grand scheme of things, and don't think we can judge the model on 18 months of frustration after 6 years of relative success.
FWIW, I think it's very difficult to continue to have a 'model' once you get to the Premier League, as the players and manager, unless they are absolutely exceptional, will only last so long before fading away/getting sacked. After that, it's really hard to continue to get players with the same level of hunger (this is perhaps where Bournemouth fell down once their players who had been with them throughout the journey started to leave, and of course we throw that accusation at our players all the time), yet who are also Premier League quality (obviously difficult to judge), and who are stylish enough to stave off any accusations of boring football (let's see what happens at Burnley if they end up getting dragged into the bottom half more often than not). Burnley have done a quite exceptional job, and (barring a disaster which I don't think is forthcoming) they'll be sound financially once they go down (maybe not in a position to bounce back with some of the money sloshing around in the Championship, but of course bouncing back can be very difficult indeed). However, I do think that's an exception, if we happened to keep Dyche and happened upon a Burnley-esque board rather than the Pozzos, there's no guarantee that we go up in the first place, let alone get into Europe or reach a cup final. It's so easy to say 'let's be like Burnley', but a lot harder in practice
In the Championship, the Pozzo model worked an absolute treat (minus the awful 2013-14 where we were without Vydra, Abdi was injured and we didn't yet have the key players who came the year after, but which happily ended up as a blip). Sexy football AND success? Yeah, we can have regrets about Wembley (could be a blessing in disguise anyway as I think we'd have gone right back down had we gone up then) or missing out on the title, but with the fine margins at the top, I don't think any of the minor disappointments we had in those times can be put down to failures in the model
I remember when someone said it was good that we signed Zeegelaar because he would be bringing in loan fees...and then proceeded to claim it would be about 100k p/m.
Tangent, but massive highlight of 2013-14 was Abdi's return at Bournemouth away. 20 minutes of non-stop Almen Abdi chants out of relief and celebration.
The Pozzo’s have been great for us. Sometimes things go wrong for clubs our size that punch above their weight. In fact not just sometimes, it’s inevitable. C’est la vie. One day even the wonderful and much loved Burnley with their beautiful total football will be relegated, it is inevitable. When Burnley get relegated will it negate all that they have achieved? Last season was disaster but as a long term fan of this club I think it’s pretty amazing we are in a position as favourites to get promoted from the Championship (this in itself is a testament to how far we have come). After the massive disappointment of last season I’m already excited again about the new season. A small minority of posters being meanies to poor little Gino just makes me like him all the more. Shame on the Gino haters, shame on you all.
The players we bought in also had completely the wrong attitude required for promotion. Lloyd Dyer, McGugan etc.
Out of all of the promoted clubs in the last 10 years, Leicester are the ones to aspire to. They’ve cemented themselves as a top 10 team and they tend to play attractive football Sod Burnley and their ‘model’. I’d hate to support a Premier League team that plays the way Dyche gets them playing. I think it’s fair to say that even though it can get you results, the lacklustre attempt at football is so pathetically boring that not only does it not look whimsical, it drains the atmosphere of matches Get me in the Championship with a team that plays sexy football and happy days
I would add Wolves to that too. Leicester and Wolves are the clubs to aspire too......it's a shame both of those clubs have gutter trash fans, otherwise they are excellent examples to follow.
I don't want to downplay Leicester's achievements at all, but that title win was obviously a once in a generation thing, it's not something they expected or even planned for. Do they become an established PL club if they just had a moderately good season? West Ham and Southampton also did well that year but have found themselves in relegation trouble since
