Revised transfer budget!

People have been talking (including Aidy) about having £8million to potentially spend but surely he has between £12million and £15million as he hasnt spent any of the money due prior to Ash leaving.

This is the figure I expect to be spent eventually, realistically by end of Jan next year..... who is with me?

 

I totally agree about the amount but I don't think Aidy will spend it in January, even if he wanted.

Decent players just don't want to come here at the moment.

 

of aidy doesnt need to spend it by the end of then, than he souldnt waste it.
if the board need it they can have it, why are you so anti-board?

 

There's no point in spending anything if the right players aren't available.

 

I suspect that some of the budget will be used for wages (or possibly the player/s will get a signing on fee to compensate for lower wages to keep them within our current salary structure).

Also, we have spent at least 4 Million so far... Shittu, Francis, Smith, Hoskins and Williamson.

 

It's up to us as fans to keep pressure on the board, its every fans duty as we'll always be here whereas they chop and change all the time.

Im not anti board period, there are just one or two (maybe three) things that over the last couple of years havent added up.

Elton John (probably our most famous fan of all time) and the clubs life president, was told in no uncertain terms that the money he donated from the concert profits would NOT be spent on players by Garham Simpson.
Since then, Elton has not made a single comment about the club even after our promotion in May. For a man thats been so heavily involved since the seventies, dont you find that a bit odd?

Personally, I dont entirely trust the board. Graham Simpson comes across as a fantastic chap, and he's certainly pulled off some master strokes (Aidy for one) but I cant help but feel that a lot of everything thats been achieved is more down to luck than judgement. Ive seen Graham lose his rag one or two times over the most ridiculous things, one minute he's cool as a cucumber (remember he;s an actor by proffession) but as soon as you push him on something controversial he loses the plot.... IMO there have been far far far too many fall outs with sections of the media and people within the club as well as far far far too much "political" spin.

People have such short memories.... Heidar should NEVER have left for £1.1million. Scoops three awards including player of the season and we essentially stick him in the shop window. Does anyone on here not think for a minute how bloody lucky we are that no-one bidded for Young during that summer? Because for 500k, they would have let him go!

What I am saying is that money has a habit of dissappearing at Watford Football Club. With such an incredible amount of money, all im saying is that I expect Youngs money plus what should but wasnt spent (roughly £5mil IMO) should be kept available for transfers.

As far as Im concerned, promotion secured our finances AND helped fund the redevelopement.

 

I can see us spending a few million, but just because the money is available, doesn't mean we're going to use it all.

 

The Ashley Young money is being paid in installments by Villa, so we certainly won't have much of the final figure for a while.

 

It works both ways . We will be paying for players in installments as well.

 

by the way we normally spend money, i hardly expect us to be splashing the cash around. if we do then great.

 

My responses are in bold.

 

I thought Aidy said Elton calls him every week after the game or something like that????

 

My recollection was that Elton's concert was specifically to pay towards paying off the mortgage on the Ground (or buying it out of the lease-back deal or whatever)

 

Hmm I think you may be on to something here Siggy - wasn't it called the buy back the Vic concert or something like that?

Let me pre-empt the response that Elton wanted the money spent on players....

He agreed to a concert aimed at helping clear debts his opinion on how the money should be sent after that agreement is just that - an opinion of a fan

 

we put in a 3.25 mil bit for john so we had that to spend, then we got 200k for spring and 8 mil for young. thats means we should at least have 11,450,000 to spend.

 

Which is about what I reckoned... 15 million minus 4 million is 11 million.

However, 20 grand a week is basically a million quid, so a three year contract is effectively 3 million quid without even considering the transfer fee. Yeah, I know that ideally we would calculate the wages under operating expenses rather than capital expenses but the reality is that we do not have the income to afford even one 20K a week player in the Championship.

Aidy and the board have to assume that we will go back down this year (just to be sensible in their budgetting... always better to expect the worst) and so they will be using the transfer budget to manage the operational costs of any new players. That way, the club does not bankrupt itself no matter what.

Heck, we have all seen teams that spent a b*ttload of dosh trying to win promotion only to fail and have to give away their best players to avoid the wage bill and stay in business. I don't want Watford to make that same mistake.

Yes, they need to invest in success. But if the investment is more than you can afford to lose, it's called 'gambling'.

Frankly, I suspect that the Collins John deal assumed that Ashley was going to be sold. The transfer fee was probably the left over transfer kitty from the summer, but his wages would have had to come from the sale of someone.

 

Blimey chewy, your response is a little harsh dont you think?

I think what we're forgetting a little is the massive injection of cash after promotion.

Sure there are parachute payments to consider, but its still an awful lot of money. People may say that some of the money has been spent on improving players deals, but what about the huge extra income that comes in via gate receipts plus the merchandising and sponsorship (which have all increased)

Out of interest, can anyone on these boards actually tell us what they perceive to be the current financial situation at the club? (ie monies in after promotion, where it goes, on what, wages, transfer budget etc etc)

From where im sitting, regardless of Ash's sale, we'd made a bloody fortune and now he's gone, almost £10million out of nowhere. No one could have predicted that six months ago.

So come on, how much have we brought in and wheres it all going?

(chewitt, please take this a little more lightly.. im just trying to create balance and understanding thats all)

(....and to the guy who mentioned "sack the board".... im no where near saying anything as daft as that... just want a couple of q's answered thats all)

YOU HORNS!!!!!!!!!!1

 

I have enough to do without running a football club. Graham Simpson does that and you couldn't find a better bloke to run your club. He is a fan, he has chartered the way out of the ****** disaster, found the money to buy back the Vic, bought the pub across the road, negotiated stadium development, and engaged an amazing completely unknown manager who took us from relegation fodder to premiership play-offs in one year. I really don't feel I need to be looking over his shoulder, scrutinising his every move. I trust him to do what he thinks is best for the club.

 

Take the pragmatic view.

1. We are in debt - let's pay that off.
2. We were going to take loans to fund the (awful) ground 'improvements' - let's use cash.
3. We should expect an operating loss over the next few years in the Championship or where-ever - let's plan for the future.

If you then take into account that the 'transfer budget' doesn't just include the transfer fee, but also includes the new players' wages, insurance, agent fees, all sorts of tax, any bungs, bonuses etc, etc. That's a lot of extras. Ash has received a not insignificant amount of his transfer fee himself, so that's a slice of that gone already.

We've sold Springy and Ash, who combined earned £10K plus bonuses - you can add that to the warchest.

How many £20K a week players can we afford? One player at £20K a week is £1Mil+ a year. Sign him for 3 years and thats over a third of the Ash fee already, even without the transfer fee and associated costs.

Don't expect more than one medium-sized signing at the most.

 

it would be nice to say spend all the money now, but a club exists for longer than one transfer window. There will be long term aims for that money which won't unfortunately yet understandably include lots of expensive new signings.

 

A good summation of my views in general. KJ has some good points too particularly the poor PR of late and the apparent inability to take criticism.

 

Out - Ashley Young £8mil
In - Kabba £500k

That should tell you everything you need to know!

 

Great bit of business - surely Ash is not 16 times better than Kabba.