Not Actually that Crucial a Summer as of August 2023...beginning to now think everything isnt fine!

Gasping for a rumour. Don't know how I'll manage this summer.

 

Thing is paddy with ange we don't really get anything until the guys all but signed.

 

Rumors are a bunch of made up *. I trust Ange to find some solid players quietly.

 

Aye, that's why I want one! I actually take most of them seriously these days cos you know something's likely in it.

 

Regardless of what business we do it needs to be done quickly and get it out the way. Let the new boys have a full preseason with rest of the team. With Lawell back I worry this won't happen

 

Since Ange came in our accounting for our transfer spend has been a bit of an anomaly because we signed players before June 30th 2022.

In the summer of 2021 we spent circa £19m

In January 2022 we spent/ committed to spend of circa £5.3m, so spent approximately £24.3m.

For that year we brought in £30.5m in fees (taking of cuts that were due from sales to previous clubs) with the potential to rise to £41m from add ons in Christie, Ajer and Edouard’s sales. I believe a large proportion of those add ons have been achieved in each of those deals between summer 21 and now.

In Summer 22 prior to the 30th of June we committed to a further circa £14.5m of signings in Jota, CCV and Bernabei. This is what @Blochairnbhoy is saying (I think).

Summer 22 post 1st of July we bought Haksabanovic, loaned Jenz, signed Mooy on a free and took up the option of a year deal for Abildgaard under the agreement for Russian based players. I am not sure exactly how much that cost all together but it must have been in the region of £2.5-3m. As our interims which included the signings of Johnston and Kobayashi showed spend of circa £6m on signings. Johnston was £3-3.5m Kobayashi a free.

In the summer we made £1.7m in sales according to the accounts this must have mainly been Julien to Montpelier and fees for development players or loan fees.

Remainder of January 23 (after the 1st we signed Oh and committed to buy Iwata for circa £3.3m and sold Juranovic and Giakoumakis for £11m upfront with £3.3m in add ons, which again look well on the way to being achieved.

So overall if the Ajer, Edouard and Christie add ons were achieved but not Juranovic or Giakoumakis ones as yet we would have the following.

Total sales - circa £53.7m
Total spend - circa £48.1m

So a profit of circa £5.6m. With £3.3m of add ons still up for grabs so could rise to £8.9m.

But to answer the point about transfer budget if you take it in the traditional sense of seasons. We spent £24.3m in 21/22 and £23.8m in 22/23. So actually our budget for the last couple of seasons has been fairly similar.

21/22 was paid for by player sales, 22/23 will be CL income, Sydney tour, insurance pay out for COVID will all see us make a substantial OPEX profit, supplemented by player sales.

When you take into account we have upsides from likely Tierney and Frimpong sales which could be worth between £10-15m, the add ons from JJ and GG £3.3m, likely another OPEX profit from CL, sales of the likes of Turnbull, Siegrist, Welsh, Soro, Barkas, Scales, and Orhoghide, estimating somewhere between £8-10m. At the bottom end you could have a £21.3m transfer budget without selling any first team players or touching OPEX profit.

It is also likely that Abada and another first team player move on for a minimum £20m, possibly more.

All of the above combined with another likely OPEX profit of at least £10m from CL, points towards at the very least a budget similar to the last two seasons of £24m but there are major differences this year.

The first is we don’t have to spend half that to keep star players like we did with Jota and CCV. Upside of £12.5m.

Second we are coming off a season where we will have made an OPEX profit. Upside of circa £15m

Third we are likely to realise substantial income from player sales and add ons that we didn’t last year. Upside of circa £10-30m on sales from this year.

Fourth we have guaranteed CL groups unlike Ange’s first year. Worth circa £18m vs EL groups.

So you are looking at us being £37.5m better off in terms of income and not having option to buy commitments than last summer.

 

And long may it continue...

 

If we are clever and have really put in the effort behind the scenes to expand our scouting network.

£15mill-£20mill ie all we need to spend. Without even taking into context fees we may receive for clauses we had on ex players or sales we might do of exisiting squad players.

We do not need any massive overhaul of playing staff, we are now in a position were I think we can hyperfocus and source talents for specific key areas and have that 1 player, for a lack of better term be our "marquee" signing as then supplement other areas to improve squad depth or fill gaps with possible issues over homegrown status.

If we are clever we could get in 4 signings and it really ignite Ange's vision for next season.

 

Mate you have said that before lawwell is in a token position head of the plc board. Nicholson and Mccart are the 2 main men and trust me Nicholson doesn't suffer fools gladly

 

Cracking breakdown.

 

I completely agree with the fact we need to spend to sign quality players I just worry that the board stand still mate. Hopefully with Nicholson in charge of that department he doesn't allow that though. If we really are ambitious and want to do something in the CL then we have to speculate in order to accumulate

 

We need to move away from the usual £1m-£5m bracket and start signing more £6m-£12m more often. We've seen with Jota and CCV what money can buy. If we really are that loaded then we should be spending Edouard money on 2 or 3 quality players each instead of fulling the squad with cheap players. Otherwise it's just going to continue being disappointing European campaigns.

Look at Benfica, Salzburg and Ajax, they used their model to generate money and upgrade their teams by levelling up their budgets every season.

 

Honestly i hope you're right and I'm just paranoid but we will see

 

That's exactly what ange said at the AGM

 

Posts crossed on this but yeah I would expect £24-30m to be made available.

If we lost Kyogo I would expect even more than that to be spent to get a replacement on top of what else we need.

On upgrades to Barrowfield and Lennoxtown my view would be is we have cash in the bank to fund that activity if we choose to do it. In addition having no debt in a time where interest rates are high again is another positive.

 

Yeah that's quite a good point, didn't take that into account RE the rates.

Be an interesting summer that's for sure. If we get the income at the levels mentioned that's something else from guys who left 3 and 4 years ago!

 

On the Tierney and Frimpong ones it will all come down to exactly what we have in the deals.

Tierney is being consistently put forward as 15% of total sale value. So at £30m to Newcastle it would be worth £4.5m to us.

Frimpong has been said to be between 25-30% of profit. So if Bayer Leverkusen get their £50m, it would be 25-30% of £39m so £9.75m to £11.7m to us. Caveat being if those details and fees are accurate.

Fingers crossed those sales go through.

 

I knew Frimpong was meant to have a solid sell-on clause in his deal when we let him go, but I'm actually a bit surprised if Tierney has a decent one, I remember talk at the time of him leaving Arsenal were trying to do a deal with us for a much lower initial fee with addons/sell-on clauses to potentially bump it up, but we pushed for the big upfront fee over extras at the time.

 

Yeah there was still a sell on, they wanted clauses with UCL and league success lawwell said no. Still irks me that KT was used to allow lennon to buy players that summer, bit of KT wanted to go but he was forced to by lawwell too he couldn't sleep for days by all accounts and has never really settled in London

 

Ajax probably aren't a good example right now, likely in EL next season after spending £100m very very badly.
We still need to get players at £3m under though as they can come good and make you profit.
If we want good value I think we need to look at loan to buys. You can sometimes pay more but if they are * you haven't * £4-6m up the wall.