I'd imagine we are also owed a fair bit in outstanding transfer fees though, that just seems to be how deals are structured. I'm thinking Estupinan, Doucoure and Suarez mainly but possibly some other outstanding fees.
They have an absolutely brilliant midfielder in Rodrigo Javier De Paul. Problem is think Liverpool and Man U were after him at over £30 mill in Jan so won't be coming to us but if he did he'd be a great player in Midfield[/QUOTE] So not a player ‘we can pick up’?
Certainly not. There will be an auction for De Paul. I wouldn't be surprised to see him as one of the top 5 transfer deals of the summer. He is such a versatile player (for Liverpool he could play as one of the 8s or LW) and he is one of those players like Grealish who is just head and shoulders above their teammates. One of the best players in Serie A, and almost certainly the best player not playing for an Italian Champions League club. There is the smallest of small chances that the Pozzos decide - knowing PL valuations as they do - that shifting him to us would be the best way to secure the price they want for him, perhaps a little like the Deulofeu transfer appeared to be. But that's a big risk and I think he is desperate to play in the Champions League, especially with the World Cup coming up.
Not sure we need to spend big on defense relative to our other needs. If we stay on our current pace, we'll have the least goals allowed of any Championship squad in the last seven years (as far as my records go back) and barring a total collapse we'll be no worse than second. We have a promising and cheap young keeper to boot. Of course, PL is a big step up from Championship but this would seem to be a relative strength. I do agree that we really need a quality young attacking midfielder and a quality forward. We really lacked attacking creativity in the midfield in our last few PL campaigns. And a player like Deulofeu was so critical for us because he could make something out of nothing. (i.e. his chip goal vs. the Wolves in the FA Cup) And when you're a PL team at the bottom half of the talent stack, you are going to have "nothing" a lot, so this kind of player is critical. If he is healthy and could be gotten relatively cheaply he would be great to bring back. An above-average competent player at the Championship level (and we have several of those) can be worse than useless in the PL, because they only function well as part of a team where you have a few players who are substantially more talented than the opposition. We had that this season, but we're not going to have that in the Premier League. But overall, I think we are likely to head up in much better shape talent-wise than we were when we were last in the PL. We're going to shed our biggest contracts sooner rather than later without hurting our talent, and key players like Sarr, Pedro and Bachmann are clearly young guys on the ascent with real promise rather than glorified Championship players or overaged marginal Premier League guys on the decline. If we can hang on for a couple of years while some of our young players hit their primes, we could actually make some noise in the Premiership.
I feel we need 4-6 first team starters. In order of priority: ST (£20m) LB (£8m) CM (£10m) LW (£15m) CB (£10m) GK (£5m) Bringing back Cucho would be useful too. From a financial perspective we need to ditch ageing, expensive deadwood as others have said. Put approximate transfer fees next to the incoming players. Signing all 6 would set us back a good £70m or so. Clearly we won't be spending this much in the summer. I can't see the Pozzos spending that much on a striker and they will possibly avoid the GK and CB positions. In that case I forsee an outlay of ~£40m. If we can't afford that much... sh*t.
I feel compelled to point out that Deeney was signed from Walsall (in a lower league) at the age of 22 for £250k rising to £500k as a potential replacement for Danny Graham. His signing does not fit with the others you mention. I agree with the general point, though.
A couple of first team players will come in on frees or loans or loans with an option to buy. Ashley Young will most probably be our LB. But it’s also important not to obsess too much over transfer fees - wages are generally more important. Spending £5m on a player on a four year contract at £30k a week is an overall cost of £11m over the lifetime of the contract. But signing a player on a free on a four year contract at £60k a week is an overall cost of £12m.
I suspect there will be some real bargains available this window. After over a year of zero gates, many clubs are going to have to offload in order to stay in business, and buyers will have less cash than usual. The flip side is we're likely going to struggle to offload any non-performers who are on a high wage. I'd guess that most clubs are unlikely to want to take significant risks while cash is scarce.
We can't afford to have everything, so what cash we have needs to focus on a striker and left wing imo (assuming we bring in Young alongside Masina) I don't imagine Gino is going to break the habits of a lifetime, so expect players from S America, France and Italy to be on the agenda (Kolo Muani and Diego Simeone were suggested previously)
When we went down it was because we had to: A) Play deep to protect our slow back line B) Dedicate 2 and sometimes 3 midfielders primarily to defending and C) Never generated either numbers forward in attack or significant threats from much of anything other than counterattacks and the odd bit of brilliance. We and by we I mean the ownership, clearly had the mindset of just hanging on, then we'd bring in Estupinan, Cucho, Suarez and Pedro and we'd be on a upward track, just like you suggest. We failed and lost half of that lot, along with Deulofeu. Gino will need to invest to protect the future. But the needs to make sure first that one injury won't turn the team defensively into a sieve, and change the whole mindset of the players to a bunker mentality. We've seen this before. Our bench is made up of glue and match sticks - in the Championship. It's be a disaster to try that in the Premiership. The Premier League players are faster and more skilled than the Championship. Femenia is 30 now and both he and Masina have had injury problems. We all hop that N'Gakia is one for the future - but we know Navarro isn't. We hope that Sierralta and WTE (especially Sierralta) can handle the Prem, but can they? WTE has looked shaky several times this year? What's plan B? A 33 year-old Cathcart, a 31 year old injury-plagued Kabasele (flanked by Navarro and Lazaar)? No thank you. We have to plan for the "unhappy path". Players will get injured and their backups have to bring something to the table (e.g. size, pace, passing, ability to get forward... something). Most of our defensive backups do not. To your point, "glorified Championship players or overaged marginal Premier League guys on the decline" are exactly what we have on the bench. We replaced the likes Deulofeu, Welbeck, Dawson, Pereyra, Doucoure, Capoue, Janmaat, Pusseto and Holebas with a couple of promising youngsters (NGakia, Sierralta, Sema?) and a collection of journeymen who were out of contract or castoffs from other clubs in our situation. Many of these players have done well this year, arguably saved the season. However, we'd be naive in the extreme to assume that they can all make the jump. We'll be lucky if more than 3-4 of them do. They also clearly have less raw talent than many who left (admittedly many of them made up for that with attitude and drive). We need to be ruthless and realistic. The worst thing you can do is have a team that heads into the season thinking that it's just trying to survive - until youngsters come along and save them/take some of their jobs.
Fulham spent £34m (according to Transfermarkt), the biggest fee of which was Anthony Knockaert for £11m (must have agreed a loan to buy last season, because otherwise that is utterly mental). WBA spent £38m, made a few mil in sales, but both sides made extensive use of the loan market, especially late in the summer window and in January when they were desperately rolling the dice after making bad starts. We'd have the benefit of a full pre-season to make our decisions (hopefully we can start to plan from Saturday!), but I wonder what our financial situation is compared to theirs?
The £50m was at June 19 and excludes the sale of Richarlison which we had borrowed against so netted off If you are going to includes those 3 and more you have to include what we spent since June 19 being Sarr, Pusetto, Pedro and Dawson -say £40m outlay with the only income being the sale of Lukbakio-yes its thats long ago since we had any idea of what our potential finances looked like
Exactly. Half of our best players this season have already proven they can't cut it in the Premier League. We would be foolish indeed to have learned nothing from relegation and expect that Kiko, Sema, Cleverley and Masina will magically step up to a level they've failed at previously. Optimistically, JP, Chalobah, Sierrelta and Sarr will make the step up to some extent. The previously named can be back up at best. Gray, Navarro, Lazaar, Deeney, Success, Kabasele, Catchart, Foster all just need cutting completely. Get rid by hook or crook. We need massive improvements and a coach who can whip them into shape. Remember we went down with this lot, plus the magic of Deulefeou and the (waning power) of Doucoure and Capoue. There's no way we stay up with this crap.
I saw we were interested in Karl Darlow for £6m, a good keeper, but I'm not sure we should be spending that fee on Newcastle's second choice, think we could get better value elsewhere. Looks like Young and Cucho are our LB/LW options, which wouldn't cost us a penny in fees, just wages. Just one CB needed, I'm sure we could get one in the region of £5m, ditto LB, think we could get a decent striker for about £10m too tbf
Looks about right if a little uninspiring. Should Young arrive don’t think we need another LB. £10m or so for a striker. £5-10m on a CB who would complement Sierralta nicely. Maybe another similar outlay on GK or CM. And then one or two opportunistic loans/frees. Doesn’t sound like much but I suspect the money will go a lot further than summer 2019.
Yeah, if we’re paying that sort of money for CB, I want it going on some hulking long-haired shitbag from South America who eats his morning cereal with iron filings sprinkled on top. Let him and Sierralta shytehouse the opposition strikers to death. Not some plodding English journeyman.
If my rudimentary understanding of Companies House filings is correct, it looks like a couple of days before promotion, we paid off a couple of loans we took out with Santander back in 2018 (I take it that's what "Satisfied a Charge" means). Couldn't work out how much those loans were for. Grateful for any finance people that can explain what this might mean!
In 2018 we borrowed £25m from Santander secured against the future payments in July 19 and July 20 from Everton for the sale of Richarlison. So we already had the money in 2018 and when Everton paid the money would have to go to Santander not the club but the underlying security we gave to that bank could be released-quite why it was released in April 21 when it could have been done in August 2020 is not clear-maybe just tidying up some admin/forgot to do it Anyway no new money arriving just because the security was released.
I don't really have time to check the filings now but that is the long and short of what it means (although obviously it could be that we satisfied the charge by a refinancing and taken out a new loan on different terms).
Another Loan (amount not disclosed) taken out from the Australian Macquarie Bank against the outstanding transfer fee owed by Udinese for Gerry D. We were due €11.4m by Feb 2023 on top of the €8m due from them for Roberto P in Feb 2022. The filing at CRO says the gross transfer fees were €12m and €8.5m respectively so £18m for the pair.-well that's what it look like to me. Security deed executed by Scott Duxbury. No accounts for 2020 filed yet
Its cheaper than Udinese doing it. Or something. Certainly better that they get our players, and don’t have to pay for them, and we pick up the finance costs on top.
How can we still be short of cash when we just made £140m by getting repromoted to the Greatest League In The World? And it's live!
Probably got to pay out those bonuses... I have no idea really because we don't hear much about our accounts.
Costs? What if the loan is dirt cheap? What if the loan is being used to finance current signings now for Watford, rather than us having to wait to get the cash later from Udinese? What if the Pozzos expect that they can earn more interest or make more profit over the next couple of years by keeping the money in Italy and transferring it to the UK later, than the interest rate on the loan would cost in the mean-time? Again as I've said previously, there are plenty of possibilities with regards to the Pozzos' overall finances which means that making such snap judgements over limited information is difficult to conclude.
