I admit, I am concerned about the future. We are spending so much money it's crazy. And we're banking on most of these young players working out and not having to buy much in the future, and that we'll get European football money.

We've seen many many expensive/promising players not work out. I can name loads off the top of my head just at Chelsea:

Lukaku, Morata, Torres, Bakayoko, Koulibaly, Havertz, Werner, Pulisic, Kepa

All costing 50m or above, I think. Most of them came in with lots of potential, some were supposed to be the final article. And how many of them worked out? How much money did we waste on their transfer and wages over the years?

There is no guarantee that these signings will work out. And it's not like we can just sell them easily if they don't. We'll have the likes of Inter offering loans and optional 10m fees at the end, because when we want to sell a player who hasn't worked out, we are at the disadvantage in the deal, and everyone knows it, and they will take the piss.

 

Maybe it'll all work out okay. But the pessimist in me is quite worried for the long term.

11 minutes ago, Zeta said:

I admit, I am concerned about the future. We are spending so much money it's crazy. And we're banking on most of these young players working out and not having to buy much in the future, and that we'll get European football money.

We've seen many many expensive/promising players not work out. I can name loads off the top of my head just at Chelsea:

Lukaku, Morata, Torres, Bakayoko, Koulibaly, Havertz, Werner, Pulisic, Kepa

All costing 50m or above, I think. Most of them came in with lots of potential, some were supposed to be the final article. And how many of them worked out? How much money did we waste on their transfer and wages over the years?

There is no guarantee that these signings will work out. And it's not like we can just sell them easily if they don't. We'll have the likes of Inter offering loans and optional 10m fees at the end, because when we want to sell a player who hasn't worked out, we are at the disadvantage in the deal, and everyone knows it, and they will take the piss.

 

Maybe it'll all work out okay. But the pessimist in me is quite worried for the long term.

No guarantees, no. But 2-3 will turn out to be great, we'll sell the rest of them, hopefully with profit. And we'll keep moulding the squad as always.

Besides, waddayamean the pessimist in you? You're one big lump of pessimism! That's what I love about you, I'm a beacon of sunshine compared to you! And to @axman2526 of course 😁

18 minutes ago, Zeta said:

I admit, I am concerned about the future. We are spending so much money it's crazy. And we're banking on most of these young players working out and not having to buy much in the future, and that we'll get European football money.

We've seen many many expensive/promising players not work out. I can name loads off the top of my head just at Chelsea:

Lukaku, Morata, Torres, Bakayoko, Koulibaly, Havertz, Werner, Pulisic, Kepa

All costing 50m or above, I think. Most of them came in with lots of potential, some were supposed to be the final article. And how many of them worked out? How much money did we waste on their transfer and wages over the years?

There is no guarantee that these signings will work out. And it's not like we can just sell them easily if they don't. We'll have the likes of Inter offering loans and optional 10m fees at the end, because when we want to sell a player who hasn't worked out, we are at the disadvantage in the deal, and everyone knows it, and they will take the piss.

 

Maybe it'll all work out okay. But the pessimist in me is quite worried for the long term.

Problem with a lot of players you listed is many were done at the whims of a managers wishes with instant results in mind and/or no particular big thought (Torres, Lukaku, Bakayoko, Kepa) or we waited until the cat was out of the bag before cashing in (Pulisic).

Havertz and Morata were largely inconsistent yet we got most of our money back, that combined with the ages and (relatively speaking) smaller wages would mean I'd like to think they'd be a competitive market for most of the players acquired January and beyond.

Edited August 16, 20232 yr by Argo

7 minutes ago, Valerie said:

No guarantees, no. But 2-3 will turn out to be great, we'll sell the rest of them, hopefully with profit. And we'll keep moulding the squad as always.

Besides, waddayamean the pessimist in you? You're one big lump of pessimism! That's what I love about you, I'm a beacon of sunshine compared to you! And to @axman2526 of course 😁

 

22 minutes ago, Zeta said:

I admit, I am concerned about the future. We are spending so much money it's crazy. And we're banking on most of these young players working out and not having to buy much in the future, and that we'll get European football money.

We've seen many many expensive/promising players not work out. I can name loads off the top of my head just at Chelsea:

Lukaku, Morata, Torres, Bakayoko, Koulibaly, Havertz, Werner, Pulisic, Kepa

All costing 50m or above, I think. Most of them came in with lots of potential, some were supposed to be the final article. And how many of them worked out? How much money did we waste on their transfer and wages over the years?

There is no guarantee that these signings will work out. And it's not like we can just sell them easily if they don't. We'll have the likes of Inter offering loans and optional 10m fees at the end, because when we want to sell a player who hasn't worked out, we are at the disadvantage in the deal, and everyone knows it, and they will take the piss.

 

Maybe it'll all work out okay. But the pessimist in me is quite worried for the long term.

All transfers come at a risk and every club runs the risks you talk about 

We are extremely lucky in that we have a significant number of really promising youngsters who can be coached and some we really haven’t paid, in modern day thinking, that much of those some will inevitably fall by the wayside.

There are two ways of looking at long contracts one your stuck with them if they don’t work out but the counter is that you have protected your asset. 
 

What you  need to factor in is that the new owners are addressing income and that is key. There will be some hurdles they need to overcome but under RA we really didn’t advance the commercial income by close to the numbers that others have.

Will all the players work out ? No of course not but I for one can’t wait to see how this group develops 

With the new pay structure, none of them should have wages that put off prospective buyers. They may earn big money, but only IF we are successful. But the basic wage is much lower.

I think the idea with signing all these youngsters is to protect us from the ridiculously inflated prices in the future. Nowadays a decent player is 50-80 mil, a genuinely good player is 80+ mil. By stockpiling all this young talent at a relatively cheaper price, we're hoping to not spend these amounts in the future or to sell players for these amounts.

25 minutes ago, Valerie said:

No guarantees, no. But 2-3 will turn out to be great, we'll sell the rest of them, hopefully with profit. And we'll keep moulding the squad as always.

Besides, waddayamean the pessimist in you? You're one big lump of pessimism! That's what I love about you, I'm a beacon of sunshine compared to you! And to @axman2526 of course 😁

I'm up and down with how I feel about the money being spent. On the one hand, it's always exciting signing players and especially when you beat your rivals to signing them, but on the other hand, it feels like it has to work because of how much is being spent.

It's not like before where an expensive signing could be a bust and we could still go and get somebody else, these players must work out. If they don't work out, where does that leave us? how would we be able to afford the rest of their transfer fee over 4,5,6 years if we have no Champions League money coming in? If they don't work out, it won't be possible to replace them because we would still be paying 10m here, 20m there and 30m over there over multiple years.

I think the biggest risk of this failing is the lack of experience with these players. So many of them have under 100 appearances at senior level, Caicedo and Lavia combined only have 134 appearances at senior level. One season wonders are very frequent in football, so the odds that we have signed a few of them are very high. Another issue I have is goals, hardly any of these players have a goal to their name at senior level. I haven't checked the numbers, but I wouldn't be surprised if Sterling has more goals in his career than the rest of the squad combined. So the likes of Jackson, Mudryk, Madueke, Olise (if we sign him) Enzo, Chuwuemeka, Gallagher, they must start scoring goals right now, we can't have them scoring 3 or 4 a season and waiting for them to grow into top players. A few of them must hit double figures this season.

^ Yeah, totally @Scott HarrisI do have modest expectations for this season however, with so many new faces in the squad and staff top 4 is too much to expect. Nice dream though.

Edited August 16, 20232 yr by Valerie

4 hours ago, Sconnie Blue said:

There's that FFP accountant (who used to work for City mind you) who is stating that Boehly/Clearlake have full intention in breaking FFP and taking the fine. 

Two things wrong with that. 

1. If we were so bent on breaking FFP, we wouldn't have had that massive clear-out in June/July. 

2. This bloke isn't considering the pre-existing amortization we have now gotten rid of. (Transfers pre-Boehly + last summer). 

 

His suggestion is based on the fact we are adding onto the pre-existing amortization with these new signings, and as you have perfectly laid out, only Chilwell really remains. We've reduced the wage bill + replaced the amortization. Hardly adding on to it. 

 

That dude sounded very unprofessional and almost as though he was speaking from a place of bitter hurt.

I wonder why.

1 hour ago, Scott Harris said:

Another issue I have is goals, hardly any of these players have a goal to their name at senior level. I haven't checked the numbers, but I wouldn't be surprised if Sterling has more goals in his career than the rest of the squad combined. So the likes of Jackson, Mudryk, Madueke, Olise (if we sign him) Enzo, Chuwuemeka, Gallagher, they must start scoring goals right now, we can't have them scoring 3 or 4 a season and waiting for them to grow into top players. A few of them must hit double figures this season.

Probably a tad surprisingly, this comes out as Sterling 164 career goals at club level, vs rest of squad 354 (granted some of these are at lower league levels).

Amusingly, Chukwuemeka is the only outfield player who hasn't scored in his career in a senior club fixture, although he did have a pretty good strike rate at the England U19 level.

Edited August 16, 20232 yr by Sexyfootball

31 minutes ago, Sexyfootball said:

Probably a tad surprisingly, this comes out as Sterling 164 career goals at club level, vs rest of squad 354 (granted some of these are at lower league levels).

Amusingly, Chukwuemeka is the only outfield player who hasn't scored in his career in a senior club fixture, although he did have a pretty good strike rate at the England U19 level.

I'm going to guess that a bulk of those goals come from Nkunku, a player we won't see until the new year at the earliest.

56 minutes ago, Scott Harris said:

I'm going to guess that a bulk of those goals come from Nkunku, a player we won't see until the new year at the earliest.

86 !

Next after that is Thiago Silva with 47 - admittedly equivalent to about 2-3 a year LOL

4 hours ago, Zeta said:

I admit, I am concerned about the future. We are spending so much money it's crazy. 

Think of the young players as assets - they're most likely increase in value due to the inflation in football transfer prices, and likely increase in value due to the fact they'll get better as they develop and become more experienced. In 3 years we could have an incredible portfolio of assets, combined with the academy players coming through. We keep the best and sell the rest - for huge money.

3 hours ago, yaz said:

I think the idea with signing all these youngsters is to protect us from the ridiculously inflated prices in the future. Nowadays a decent player is 50-80 mil, a genuinely good player is 80+ mil. By stockpiling all this young talent at a relatively cheaper price, we're hoping to not spend these amounts in the future or to sell players for these amounts.

Underrated comment. It's unfortunate that football is becoming a business but it is what it is at this point. In real estate, you acquire property when prices are down to reap profit when prices continuously rise. A lot of the players we bought aren't going to make it through our team but the inflation in footballing transfers means we will most likely make a profit from them in the future when those that don't make it/or want out are sold.

I'll admit I thought Boehly was an absolute clown when he first came, the signings in the first window, the Potter appointment was for me by far the worst thing he did. But then January came by and we looked a lot different in the market. Started exploiting loopholes to sign the very best players, nabbing them from the best teams who clearly wanted them.

I've been very impressed with Clearlake this calendar year. They finally realised Potter was a terrible choice and got in the right manager. 

They're taking a big gamble, but they have to. People need to understand when Boehly came in this thing was a mess, we lost two of our best CB's on a free because the Government are arseholes and didn't allow us to negotiate with them. It really wasn't that easy for the American owners to keep us an elite winning team. They've had to make these top tier signings for us on long contracts to keep us back in the game more sooner than later. Otherwise, with the likes of Newcastle coming on the scene we would gradually fall behind if we were to play by the rules and sign 1-2 good players per year. 

 

I don't expect all the signings to work out but I think we've hedged our bets here by signing all those young, talented players we're sending out on loan. And the fact that apparently, we've saved tens of millions in wages with the squad overhaul is good to know. I imagine they have a proper plan. It's definitely a much better summer than last year (understandably so). 

I remember we were debating on a summer clearout thread that we wouldn't be able to sell that many players we wanted shifting, yet we've done far more than most would have expected. Which I think Clearlake have done a fantastic job at. 

And we've still got time to get rid of more deadwood before the window shuts.

I was having a look at our squad, and we've still got the likes of Sarr, Lukaku, CHO, and Ziyech to sell. 

If it's true that we need to make 40 million from sales, then Instead of selling useful players like Gallagher and Hall, maybe we could get at least 40 million from the 4 above? Probably a big ask but it's possible. I've heard absolutely nothing about Sarr and very little about CHO but I'll be surprised if I see them two after the window shuts. Ziyech is becoming extremely frustrating to shift with his failing medicals, and Lukaku, I do have a feeling that some mug would think he's worth a punt. 

3 hours ago, Victor90 said:

I remember we were debating on a summer clearout thread that we wouldn't be able to sell that many players we wanted shifting, yet we've done far more than most would have expected. Which I think Clearlake have done a fantastic job at. 

And we've still got time to get rid of more deadwood before the window shuts.

I was having a look at our squad, and we've still got the likes of Sarr, Lukaku, CHO, and Ziyech to sell. 

If it's true that we need to make 40 million from sales, then Instead of selling useful players like Gallagher and Hall, maybe we could get at least 40 million from the 4 above? Probably a big ask but it's possible. I've heard absolutely nothing about Sarr and very little about CHO but I'll be surprised if I see them two after the window shuts. Ziyech is becoming extremely frustrating to shift with his failing medicals, and Lukaku, I do have a feeling that some mug would think he's worth a punt. 

They've done an excellent job of cleaning house. Most of the hard work is now done, but still these 4 "problem children" to offload.

At this point, I think it will actually cost us money to get rid of Sarr and Ziyech. We can't even get shot of Ziyech on a free transfer LOL. If we want them gone, then I think we are in Bakayoko territory.

Someone will probably take a punt on CHO if he and his agent/brother aren't too greedy. We won't get much of a fee though.

Lukaku is an issue as his amortisation is still huge. If we can get anyone to pay £30-40m for him, that might well be the outgoing deal of the summer 🙂 

13 hours ago, abister1 said:

That dude sounded very unprofessional and almost as though he was speaking from a place of bitter hurt.

I wonder why.

He is a KC and maintains that City have nothing to answer when  it comes to those pesky City charges. He might be right but it’s abundantly clear that him isn’t in full possession of full information and like us all sometimes doesn’t get things right.

That was proved to me when he suggested that the £386 million mentioned in our 21/22 accounts related to just our summer 22 activity and based on this his conclusion was that the 22/23 transfer activity alone was £1 billion 

41 minutes ago, Sexyfootball said:

They've done an excellent job of cleaning house. Most of the hard work is now done, but still these 4 "problem children" to offload.

At this point, I think it will actually cost us money to get rid of Sarr and Ziyech. We can't even get shot of Ziyech on a free transfer LOL. If we want them gone, then I think we are in Bakayoko territory.

Someone will probably take a punt on CHO if he and his agent/brother aren't too greedy. We won't get much of a fee though.

Lukaku is an issue as his amortisation is still huge. If we can get anyone to pay £30-40m for him, that might well be the outgoing deal of the summer 🙂 

100% with you on this.

Sarr hasnt actually got any fee to be amortised but Ziech still has circa £14 million so I suspect the club will balance the savings of around £5 million in wages in each of the next w years and hopefully it will be a free transfer at worse as opposed to having to pay him off

51 minutes ago, Sexyfootball said:

They've done an excellent job of cleaning house. Most of the hard work is now done, but still these 4 "problem children" to offload.

At this point, I think it will actually cost us money to get rid of Sarr and Ziyech. We can't even get shot of Ziyech on a free transfer LOL. If we want them gone, then I think we are in Bakayoko territory.

Someone will probably take a punt on CHO if he and his agent/brother aren't too greedy. We won't get much of a fee though.

Lukaku is an issue as his amortisation is still huge. If we can get anyone to pay £30-40m for him, that might well be the outgoing deal of the summer 🙂 

I can see CHO, Sarr and Ziyech ending up going out on loan if they haven't been sold. Lukaku though, god only knows what happens with him, maybe we just drive him to the woods saying were going for a walk, throw a stick for him then leg it back to the car and leave him.

1 minute ago, dkw said:

I can see CHO, Sarr and Ziyech ending up going out on loan if they haven't been sold. Lukaku though, god only knows what happens with him, maybe we just drive him to the woods saying were going for a walk, throw a stick for him then leg it back to the car and leave him.

Just a drive out to the woods you say? I'm sure there's a fitting episode from the Soprano's that covers that.
 

 

15 hours ago, Zeta said:

I admit, I am concerned about the future. We are spending so much money it's crazy. And we're banking on most of these young players working out and not having to buy much in the future, and that we'll get European football money.

We've seen many many expensive/promising players not work out. I can name loads off the top of my head just at Chelsea:

Lukaku, Morata, Torres, Bakayoko, Koulibaly, Havertz, Werner, Pulisic, Kepa

All costing 50m or above, I think. Most of them came in with lots of potential, some were supposed to be the final article. And how many of them worked out? How much money did we waste on their transfer and wages over the years?

There is no guarantee that these signings will work out. And it's not like we can just sell them easily if they don't. We'll have the likes of Inter offering loans and optional 10m fees at the end, because when we want to sell a player who hasn't worked out, we are at the disadvantage in the deal, and everyone knows it, and they will take the piss.

 

Maybe it'll all work out okay. But the pessimist in me is quite worried for the long term.

I agree with a lot of this.

I’m split between excitement and genuine concern.

Ultimately, it feels like we have rolled the dice over the last 12 months. If most of our long term, lower wage players turn out to be really good players, we can cement our place at the top table for another decade or so.

If most flop and we’re stuck in 6-7 year contracts, we could be in real trouble imo.

I really feel our future of competing for titles is right in the balance right now. Big year ahead for us and Strasbourg - as they need to develop our assets into higher fees for all this to work.

Edited August 17, 20232 yr by Adamrb

I don't see why people believe the new ownership are taking big risks, their entire business is about moderating risk, removing it entirely if possible to create the best investment solution for people. I cant see why they would do a complete 180 on that model when they bought us. I know they aren't infallible, and they no doubt have failures in their portfolio along with successes but they arent just throwing money around here willy nilly hoping it works out, there is a proper business plan behind all this, and I expect an attempt to future proof the business against increasing fixed costs such as player wages, transfer fees etc.

Now Saudi are involved theres every chance the costs will rocket up again, we are already seeing average wages increasing hugely, while our new owners seemingly have circumnavigated that with the bonus based model. We now are set for 4/5 years at least with a building squad that will hopefully need minimal additions over those years, with some from the academy filling in alongside a few transfers.

It could all go to bollocks, but then anything could. Basically this ownership groups entire business plan is to mitigate risk, they wont be now just taking huge chances after buying us.