oldendays

Thunder-power your right.. but lets be honest about this, competition effectively ended once Abramovic et al entered the game. Further more, the financially doped 4 clubs are the only ones able to win the league and this cannot change in my lifetime unless some other multi billionaire throws an immoral amount of money at it. Aside from Liverpool, Spurs and Everton, the remaining 13 clubs to more or less of a degree, are effectively fighting not to go down (to be fair even Everton are only there due to loan deals that skew the numbers).

I'm not an accountant either - the info came via our CFO (i work for a large'ish business in London) who got the club scored as though we were going to begin trading with them But if you have investible liquid assets (you know if you sold your stock in a huge bank say) a 5-9% return across as many years as you like with a pretty much guaranteed recovery (plus loads more no doubt) should you decide you wanted out. Add to that a globally recognisable brand whose physical infrastructure is not in need of any investment and whose playing staff are doing ok. A strangely sound bit of business, no? why would he invest more?

I'm led to believe his holding company (Reform Acquisitions) get a 5% return on all debt - effectively Randolphs Wages!

I'll just leave this here.. I did a credit check on the Villa last month and the wage bill currently stands at £51m pa. which is a in the bottom 10 of clubs in the division. Although it isn't quoted I believe the debt at the club to be currently at £122m. Both of these are manageable when you consider annual turn over and TV bonuses. Lerner takes his 5% cream of the top and to be fair the club is mid table (To be expected all things considered) I can't see any changes this month

Hi, new to this and this may have been said already but.. I'm not sure throwing money at clubs on transfer fees is the answer as the amounts available mean our potential purchases will not be from the top shelf and therefor less likely to make the impact we so desperately need. I recently read "Soccernomics" which threw up some interesting stats: Vast sums of money paid for players via transfer fees on average will improve your performances and points totals by 18% (from memory), However, investment in players wages i.e. paying more (to both existing and new) will improve performance by nearly 80%. I realise this is stating the obvious, but the maths don't lie surely? Would we not be better off looking at players nearly out of contract putting in a few cheaky bids with the promise of eye catching wages? Out of contract this summer: Andrey Arshavin Kolo Toure Brede Hangeland Sylvain Distan Anatoliy Tymoschuk Moussa Sissikho Rod Fanni Siaka Tienne Vasillis Torrosidis McDonald Mariga Mathieu Flamini Douglas Maralim Sulejmani Keisuki Hondo (ends in Jan/Feb) Some more than others but I reckon theres a few there that would help immensely (this obviously excludes "fanni" as we struggle enough with being taken seriously)