The Championship 2020-21

We've rarely struggled for goals since I can remember. Historically one of our strongest positions.

 

Before my time, I'm afraid.

 

An absolute Rolls Royce of a player. Shame about his off-field exploits, though.

 

Sorry, Folkestone, my enthusiasm for Forestieri doesn't run as deep as it seems to for many on this forum. Good to have in the Championship at the time, but too inconsistent, too selfish and a bit too much of a showman. Too much of a cheat as well. Mercurial and capable of delighting us at times, but not often enough, and too self-absorbed to be a really good team man.

 

Get out

 

Lol. Once the Pozzo’s sell all our stars and giraldi still has the same job this place will be the same.


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Maybe it says more about me as a person, but all of the things you mention as perceived negatives, are exactly why I loved him as a player. Particularly the cheating, self-absorbed, and inconsistent parts of his game.

 

Whilst I vehemently disagree with your characterisation of Forestieri, what I would say is that I hope we absolutely cheat the **** out of the Championship next season.

I want us to dive, roll around, surround the referee as much as possible. I want stats at the end of the season that say we had the most penalties in the league. I want journalists to write articles that say that we are the reason why 'VAR needs to be in the Championship'. **** them.

We tried playing nice for 5 years and all it got us was an embarrassing cup final humbling and pundits and newspapers slagging us off as we circled the drain.

I want us to be hated as we win the Championship by 10 points.

 

I liked Forestieri. He was, at times, our Championship version of Deulofeu (with far less skill and quality). He did get himself in trouble a lot in his early days with us but after that season, (aside from Wolves away where he cheated to get their man sent off) he had mostly cut that out of his game. Benefitted from the others around him but was still a very talented footballer.

I'm also rewatching that promotion season, I remember Ighalo's penalty against Brentford to get his first goal- was a terrible penalty and got lucky with the rebound. Having said that, a lot of his goals were like that- he had a knack for being in the right place at the right time. He didn't score the glamourous goals Abdi did but was always in the right position when we needed him to be. That team was ridiculous- 95% of that season everything went right for us. Final day aside, everything clicked and there was definitely a feeling within the team that we would be going up. What happened to Nic at Wolves seemingly sealed it; the team knew they had to get promoted

 

Absolutely, would love a player like him at the club (not the actual Forestieri these days mind you). The racism is obviously a huge black mark against him though

 

Yep. I thought Id have to put my tin hat on now. I give you he was entertaining. But the Championship was his upper limit.

 

Stefano Okaka scored the winner tonight for Udinese. Latched onto a ball fed to him by Kevin Lasagne.
Another win with three Watford reject.

Marlon King: Is he still inside?
What a good player he was for us. Amazing how he got himself into the Chop Shop car business.
What is he doing now, if he is out of Jail?

 

Ok, just read that he has moved to Zambia with his wife.
I guess they don't mind his reputation. Upon seeing his charge sheet, l now think what a piece of trash. A complete perpetual offender.

 

Don’t know how reliable this guy is but his following suggests he knows what he talking about.

Anyway here is an overlook of our finances and Bournemouth’s.

He states that our wages to turnover for this season was 57%

Bournemouth’s is 85%

Lots of other interesting columns to look at. He’s done one for all Prem teams and most championship teams.

https://mobile.twitter.com/SwissRamble/status/1290209602575818753

https://mobile.twitter.com/SwissRamble/status/1290189777178750978

 

I would imagine that this guys figures are pretty accurate about Us & Muff.

I say that because over recent years we have lost out on a regular basis to Muff on signing players we have both been interested in, and the only reason I would have thought players would choose Muff over us is that they were willing to pay BIGGER wages.

After all what other reason would a player have to choose Muff over Watford FC

 

I take it you've never had a stroll through Boscombe

 

Very interesting that wages went down in 2019. Anyway we still need to cut them in half within 12 months if we fail to get promoted.

 

Dunno how much he would have been on, don't think he would have been one of our very biggest earners, but as the Richarlison sale appears on the 18/19 accounts, it's bound to look better for us than it would have done for the last accounts we've released

 

I think this is really why we do need to cut the owners a bit of slack.

We have amongst the lowest wage bill, we mostly break even or make a net profit on player trading yet we still have debt. Why? Because they’re not rich, Bournemouth’s owner is worth 10x as much as the Pozzos but they still went down as well.

Unless you’ve got billionaire owners it really is an up hill battle.

 

This was talked about on a recent podcast I listened to as well, I thought it was an interesting lsiten.

https://podbay.fm/podcast/1488521447/e/1595526748

 

Looks interesting but I'm far too stupid to understand it.

 

I just posted it to look good. With my financial knowledge, which is very limited, basically we’re in a much better financial position than Bournemouth and we don’t need to sell as many players as people think to balance books.

Our wages to revenue income is actually pretty decent.

However if we don’t get promoted this season, then next summer will probably result in us having a quick fire sale and starting all over again.

 

Its reasonably accurate IMHO bar

1/ The accounts are for last season (so to 30/6/19) when we reached the cup final and a high (for us) league position. For the season just finished our revenue will look more like 2018.
2/ The debt of £88m is not to the owner but to the parent company of the football club Hornets Investment Ltd (owned by Gino). Its that company which has borrowed the £88m and lent it to the club. The owners have lent £4m to "us". Compare that to BMuff -their owner has lent them £100m.

No one knows for sure but i suggest its better to owe money to your owner-assuming he doesn't want it back in the short term than unrelated third parties who will want it back. That's not to suggest BMuff are in better shape but to put what is a good article into context

 

What is wrong with Boscombe (Little Poland)?
Drink, drugs, shoplifting, begging, a dog on a rope, many shops closed down and some English spoken.
What more could you ask for?

 

Exactly. It's delightful.

 

The finances worry me tbh.

I understand to purchase players to compete, you borrow against future income, which was guaranteed tv money in the top league, but our debt continued to rise every year. We also need to sell players to gap the covid defecit if no matchday revenue is coming in until jan or later.

If we fall out of the sky and got relegated again, how would we rebuild with that debt? Sell the entire squad and start again?

I would like to see Burnleys data.

 

I agree. The soundest financial plan would be to sell most of our 10-15 highest paid players and play a team like: Bachmann West ham dude Wilmot +1 Estupinan Hughes Quina Chalobah Pedro Suarez Sema. Fill the gaps in the squad with loans and free transfers. I personally would keep Gray as insurance. He proved with Burnley and Brentford that Champo defences are cannon fodder to him.

 

Championship 'it will never happen' dream team:
Ben 'relegation man' Foster
100% permafit Janmaat
Any 2 apart from Dawson
Estupinan
Hughes
Quina
Capoue
Sarr
Suarez
Del boy

More realistic dream team:
Foster
West ham dude
Wilmot
Kabasele
Estupinan
Hughes
Quina
Cleverley
Gray
Suarez
Pedro

 

I guess though if that team then got us promoted you’d have to hope a lot of them ‘come good’ and prove themselves to be prem quality. Otherwise if we win promotion you’ve still got to chuck a load of money at the squad to make it prem quality or risk being relegated again. So in an ideal world or would be useful to try and retain some of out decent players, either way it’s a difficult one to get the balance right.

 

Christ, that second team would struggle to be top half of the table

 

Sema and Massina up the wings. We ate going to tear this league up back in the Pozzos favourite 3 5 2

 

Same attendances and similar overall revenue-their TV money also similar. Wages also the same at £84m.

However the big differences are

1/ They have £40m cash and no debt to either owners or 3rd parties. They owe £5m (net) in transfer fees. We owe £50m in transfer fees and had £88m of debt.

2/ They spent £113m on players in last 3 years and sold £71m so net £42m .We spent £159m and sold £57m-net £102m

3/ The only other cash deduction (so not the write down of players purchases each year which is a non cash item)- after wages -Burnley have is "other expenses"-£14m in each of last two years so £28m in total.

In the same period, Watford had a total of £68m of these other expenses so £40m more-no one knows what they are for and the club provide no detailed information in their accounts. Even Crystal Palace who have higher turnover and attendances as well as a £120m wage bill only deduct £20m each year for these "other expenses"

Summary . Burnley are more profitable thanks to player trading and less expenses and have spent less on players so there is a difference of £178m between our respective financial positions-as at end of June 19.

 

Top half of the table and balanced books would be a big achievement. Best case scenario: 50 goals from Pedro Suarez and Gray.

 

I honestly don’t know much about the Championship anymore! Before I would moan at my Arsenal supporting friends that they should take more interest and that good football fans would keep an eye across all the leagues. However, five years of Premier League football has left me lazy and complacent, much like our owners over the last couple of seasons.

 

25, 23 and 2?