https://www.theguardian.com/footbal...wsletter-relegation-zone-clubs-premier-league Promotion to the Premier League is tough. But is survival effectively impossible?
No. It's not worth us getting smacked for 38 games then Gino going crazy with the prize money (or not). I would rather we get promoted in a few seasons when we are more financially stable and have a squad capable of having a chance of staying up built using a foundation of a group of players we have developed at a lower level with a stable head coach.
You know this is impossible, right ? We won't get the chance to gradually build up a "promotion winning/staying up capable" side. Each year we are in this league we will need to sell on our better players to cover operating losses due to reduced TV money. Our only real chance of promotion (other than being bankrolled by a new owner) would be a Aidy-type out of the blue promotion I fear, and then we would be red hot favourites for relegation the following season.
Ah yes, well said. I will also add I wrote that on the assumption that we are still 'Debt Free' (c)2023 Scott Duxbury Inc. All Rights Reserved.
I think to stop debt rising we will need to keep selling our better players, e.g presumably Chak this summer ?
Better players followed by the players' on the highest wages no doubt. As our squad gets' weaker and weaker each season. God the more I think about it, the more pathetic my OG post to this thread sounds. Nice forward thinking there Skyla
The key will be to keep finding the new Chaks, Vatas, etc so that we keep a throughput of developing promising players for when we sell on our stars. Eg against all odds we have coped well without Kone & Hoedt this season.
After becoming debt free, we made £30m on Asprilla so that is 6 years of losses covered. With the great crypto windfall and the proceeds of Chak we now have a 5 year window to build over several years with a £25m war chest! Unless the owners have been telling fibs? You know that owner debt that Gino will NEVER ask to be repaid until he sells.
Something that I don’t believe is helping the cause is managers seem more and more insistent on sticking to their own individual principles and protecting their own brand. I appreciate that it’s very much a catch 22, because the elite managers don’t bend their principles, the very best managers all have a play style and a methodology, and rarely if ever adapt to the opposition, so how do you get to that level without sticking to yours? But, we’re seemingly seeing it more and more, the likes of Kompany, Martin, McKenna, Farke previously etc. refuse to adapt to the circumstances in front of them and just try and play as if they’re still in the championship. It clearly doesn’t work for survival, but these managers are either too principled or too scared to adapt. As I said, I understand why, but for the clubs in question it just doesn’t work. Of course that’s far from the only issue, it just seems to me at least to be something that is becoming more and more common, and partially the reason we ended up initially staying up, because we hired a specific manager for the job in hand.
Sadly, we don’t have the elements needed to be a stable premier league club. We lack the population base, status, history, marketing opportunities, worldwide appeal or financial backing of an oligarch or State sponsored sports washing operation. But we may challenge for promotion occasionally, and, if we succeed, we will struggle badly with the big guns. That is stating the obvious and realistic. The short term advantage that we had some years ago, with our world scouting network, is no longer unique to us. What is also realistic is that I want to get promoted, notwithstanding the likely miserable (results wise) following season. If football supporters were rational, they would not be football supporters.
The prem is very different to the league we were promoted to in 2015 but one of the reasons we stayed up was that we switched to a pretty defensive set up and then played a fair bit of long-ball to a front 2 which was just so different what most teams were facing week-in week-out and by the time they has sussed how to cope, we were already safe. I do think trying to play beautiful possession "play-it-out-from-the-back" football with vastly inferior players was a recipe for disaster for Soton but I guess Martin didn't want to ruin his "brand" and chances of getting a role at a bigger prem side in the future ? For all his gritty success, Dyche will never get to manage a fashionable side with a proper budget due to his "brand".
There has definitely been a slight shift as far as managerial appointments are concerned, from purely being based on results and achievements to play style. Just look at Kompany to Bayern or Maresca to Chelsea. I don’t think 5/10 years ago either of those appointments would remotely happen based just on their achievements. I think therefore more and more managers are opting to stick with a defined style of play, and even if they fail at the incumbent club there is now a much greater chance that a bigger club will believe that they can succeed with greater resources, whereas in years gone by nobody will have looked past a relegation or low PPG record on their CV. That might be a good thing in the long run as far as producing better managers is concerned, but it doesn’t seem to help the clubs they’re managing in the here and now. I do think it’s admirable to want to stick to your principles, but the gap is just so large now that short of pumping £100m+ into your squad, it’s just suicide as far as survival is concerned, you can’t just outplay vastly superior teams, you have to think of other ways to stop them and get results.
Nottingham Forest in this aspect are the one that went against the grain. I think what they did when they got promoted was very risky and could of backfired. Changing their entire squad over the course of Summer almost and then saying "go on then, stay up" and they did (just about). Since then they have gelled more and more and look like not only a stable PL club, but one that is capable of challenging for Europe or even more in the next few seasons. Nuno is not my favourite manager and far from it, but he had years of experience with Wolves and that has helped him develop Forest into a very hard to beat and well drilled side. Of course, any club can do that if you had millions to spend over a Summer (I dread to think what the outgoing costs would of been). As the years of gone by, I do not think even £100M gets' you anywhere near suitable upgrades. £150m+ is fast becoming the norm, which is a shame as it widens the gap between the PL and the leagues below it every time that sum increases.
Let’s not forget that Florist have also done well with the mix of their signings. The likes of Chris Wood and Gibbs-White seemed a little questionable at the time, but have repaid their fees in spades. It was not all simply throwing as much mud at a wall as possible.
And the other problem is the obvious impossibility of holding onto those academy players that may be good enough to form the bedrock of an affordable, competitive Premier League squad in the future. No way would we be able to hold onto such as Cally, Jackett, Terry, Roberts etc for long enough for them to play for us in the top tier.
Is it worth it? No. Premier League football is pretty dull to watch in most games, and for teams in the bottom 6/8 it’s not only dull but miserable as well. You don’t have to look too far online to find fans of newly promoted teams quickly coming to the view that it isn’t worth it, and it is widely accepted now that the journey is better than the destination. In 99% of cases, relegated teams end up in financial hardship as they’ve spent too much trying to keep up. It’s a false economy. Fandom *should* mean wanting to watch your team compete at the highest level, but the top flight has been butchered beyond recognition. It’s a TV show now, nothing more.
As you say, the financial implications of trying to stay up and gettting relegated are tough to cope with. How many businesses can cope with a drop in revenues from say £120m to £20m in the space of 3 years when they can’t just sack/make their highest earners redundant. Luton had the right approach. Pocket the money and spend it on infrastructure.
Luton's approach financially made sense, but even they are struggling with the other side of it that comes with a season in 'the promised land'. Fan expectation increased, disgruntled players...I heard recently that there are some internal struggles labelled as 'an attack on their culture'. Once some people (fans, players, directors) get a taste of that life they become the gambler chasing one more bet.
A rare sensible post from a19tgg - blimey! I do agree with you that managers do seem increasingly concerned with sticking to their principles and brand - but I don't think they are the only ones; clubs and to a lesser extent players, also have similar ideas and motivations. For clubs, while it may in some cases make it easier for them to stay up once promoted to hire a more pragmatic manager, or encourage their manager to be more pragmatic, there are also advantages to them in continuing to try and play football "the right way" on promotion. One of the main reasons is that if these promoted clubs want to attract the best loan players from bigger PL clubs, then the loaning club, or potential incoming player, will likely look more favourably on them if they are playing football in a fashion to which they are more accustomed to and as such will help develop them with good habits for the top level. That's particularly important now as the the big PL clubs horde so much young talent with a view to later loaning or selling them. Similarly, if the promoted club is looking to buy a player with a view to developing them and selling them on for a profit in future to a bigger club, then if they can showcase them playing in a style which the top clubs also favour then this could help that aim (and also make them a more attractive potential stepping stone for the young talented players they try to buy). On a slightly lesser note, some clubs such as Ipswich may consider that they don't really have the financial means to survive in the PL anyway even if they changed to a more pragmatic approach - in which case it might make more sense for them to stick with what got them promoted from the Championship with the view that if the almost inevitable happens and they do get relegated it'll be easier for them to make another promotion push once back in the Champ.
Yes but they get their stadium and don’t have to get huge earners / long contracted “stars” off their payroll. A poor season but they will still have parachute money next season.
Yes financially they've played it well. To get a new stadium with only a small mortgage to pay is worth the season of misery. Not sure many of them are clamouring to go back for more top flight football, though, and it is a real shame that fans feel that way. It has been debated on here before and some hold the view that if you don't want to be in the Premier League then you lack ambition but I'm not sure it is that simplistic. Being in the top flight should be the aim but it is just downright miserable for most teams and it brings long term pain. Football is broken.
Is it worth it? At the time no, hated the way we were treated as commodities and not fans. But looking back? H*ll yes! That win against Liverpool, just bl**dy amazing, ruined every accumulator going and on TV too. David de Gea's regular howlers against us. The first Arsenal game and the mobile phone lights, then they scored and returned the favour Igalo Harry and Palace Etc. I really prefer lower league stuff but we made some memories up there.
Go up 2024/25. Spend fark all on players (or spend a on promising championship players for the 2026/27 season). Get royally spanked every week. Come back down with £150m in the coffers. Rebuild with some actual cash and zero debt. Create an actual balanced and capable squad to challenge and stay up in 2027/28. I'm not sure if that is viable. I've had alcohol.
That was once known as the Charlton Athletic model. The reason it doesn’t really work now is that you can’t get PL level players to join a Championship club. So you can only do your ‘rebuild’ once you’ve actually been promoted and then time is usually too short. As referred to earlier, the Forest example of extreme short-term squad building was an anomaly.
The idea though is to go up, spend nothing, come down and clear all debts. Have maybe £100m in the bank to spend on players. Keep the decent players we already have - Chak, Baah, Pollock, Festy, Larouci, Andrews, Vata, Morris, Dwomoh, etc. Pick up 6-8 £8-10m solid top level championship players. Pick up 5-6 solid £4-5m championship players. (I'm sure someone better than me can list plenty of players available that fit these criteria easily) A club with £0 debt and sustainable. A squad capable of top 6 yearly for a few years if not another promotion. You may say I'm a dreamer. And I'm probably the only one!
