And this is what so many have been overlooking while they fawn over the excel spreadsheets and praise the profit margins. The footballers who are out there putting themselves through it in pursuit of achieving something have had to deal with essentially being shown that their efforts are potentially unwanted. “We don’t want you to lose too often, but for god’s sake don’t get promoted you maniacs!”
We have brought in over £5m this season - people forget the £2m we got for Whyte as well as the £3m we just got in January. Plus over half a million in cup runs. So that’s around £5.5m in sales and cup revenues, which we’re told is essentially two full years of losses being covered, and we’ve barely put a penny of that back in to restocking the shelves. Why would we do that? Why when the model is working and they’re buying low, selling high, wouldn’t they WANT to keep doing that? If we’re being told to think of the business economics, then let’s focus exclusively on them for a moment. If we sold £5m of talent every season while spending, let’s say £1m on new additions, and then factor in around £3m for losses, then that’s a profit of around £1m per year. Without a single penny in cup runs which could easily whack hundred of thousands more on to that. So why shy away from that, and why keep the value of the players at L1 levels? Gavin Whyte was sold as a mid-table L1 player for £2m. If he were sold as a freshly-promoted Championship player, he would be sold for double. That’s how it works. So why have we tried to hard to avoid that of late?
I have my own theories which the people who accuse others of being bed wetters would wet the bed over, in a delicious slice of irony, but let’s see how the season and next summer play out first.
I still hold out hope that we will go on a run and get into the playoffs, just to spite what the board have done. I’d love nothing more than to be sat at Wembley watching a playoff final and knowing that some of the people in the royal box would be sweating the entire time ?
