The Randy Lerner thread

[TrentVilla]

 

 

 

Talk about loading the dice.

 

The above is completely flawed given that you assume Lambert would sign a player of the type he is quoted as saying he won't sign and who he hasn't touched since being here. 

 

 

Yes, but when he did sign a couple of players of the type he is known to favor the Lerner haters slated him for not backing Lambert.   You have to assume then that they wanted to sign players who cost more on higher wages (i.e., the type that could cause financial trouble if we went down).   Otherwise, you're saying Lambert can't spot value in a player, in which case the problem isn't Lerner, but Lambert, and spending bigger would be even more disastrous financially. 

 

 

I don't agree with your conclusions or logic at all.

[KHV]

not off the pitch. the club has no money and Kenright refuses to sell up even though he says he will.

 

They are like us under Doug financially and are blessed they had Moyes as manager

?? Think you will find Everton out perform us off the pitch. We are in a terrible state with more losses to be announced.

Our net debt is £110m already.

[Folski]

Didn't amortization of player contracts equate to roughly £30mil anyway? I'd imagine this figure may have dropped a bit though?

[CI]

Didn't amortization of player contracts equate to roughly £30mil anyway? I'd imagine this figure may have dropped a bit though?

Exactly my point. Our assets are the players and we're still taking huge write downs on values

[KHV]

not off the pitch. the club has no money and Kenright refuses to sell up even though he says he will.

 

They are like us under Doug financially and are blessed they had Moyes as manager

?? Think you will find Everton out perform us off the pitch. We are in a terrible state with more losses to be announced.

Our net debt is £110m already.

Actually our net debt was 121m compared to Everton £46m. We posted losses last time of 17.7m compared to Evertons £9m

[legov]

How are Everton not breaking even? Don't they spend less than the other top sides?

[KHV]

How are Everton not breaking even? Don't they spend less than the other top sides?

Turnover was about £80m but their wage bill is 75% of turnover. Sounds familiar!

[Big_John_10]

I'm still confused by this logic than in January we could only sign cheap players, one of whom contributed nothing or sign expensive players that would be no good long term and cause us financial problems.

It's just stupid.

[blandy]

I think that whatever budget Lambert was given, he spent it all in the summer. Any signings in January would have been above the budget for the season, unless he could save or raise money via players going out. I think he managed to get a free loan of Dawkins and Sylla in because he managed to offload some other players on loan, thus keeping within the budget by saving X million in wages, which he spent on Sylla and Dawkins.

 

So I think the logic isn't about signing expensive or cheap players, it's about signing players within the budget that was set and agreed for the season. Because of the likes of Hutton, Warnock, Dunne, Given and all the others on high wages, expensive players were never going to be possible, because there's no way Lambo could have saved all their wages or sold them for enough to fund expensive signings, even if he wanted to.

[Big_John_10]

expensive players were never going to be possible,

But the argument was that we need to strengthen in January. As shown with other signings this idea that we could only sign what we did or expensive signings with no long term value doesn't make any sense.

And he may have spent the budget in the summer but when you could potentially lose a shit load of money by relegation and possibly damage the long term future of the club, surely that can become flexible.

[KHV]

expensive players were never going to be possible,

But the argument was that we need to strengthen in January. As shown with other signings this idea that we could only sign what we did or expensive signings with no long term value doesn't make any sense.

And he may have spent the budget in the summer but when you could potentially lose a shit load of money by relegation and possibly damage the long term future of the club, surely that can become flexible.

Lerner has already damaged the long term future of the club. Its a financial shambles

[sharkyvilla]

It's not just about spending. It's depreciating the assets on the books ie. the players we've wasted tens of millions on who are now virtually worthless eg. Ireland, Warnock, Dunne, Hutton, NZogbia, given etc etc etc

 

 

Exactly.  Thankfully Lambert seems a bit wiser and has added upwards of £30m to the value of the squad in one year whilst decreasing the wages, along with increased TV revenue due to come in.  I think last season really was a turning-point for the club.  I doubt the club will ever achieve profit but then very few teams do.

[CI]

I think if we can keep our wages in check now with the new tv money by 2014 or 2015 I reckon we can return to making a profit. If Benteke for example goes next summer for say £30m then we should definitely post a profit that year.

[blandy]

 

expensive players were never going to be possible,

But the argument was that we need to strengthen in January. As shown with other signings this idea that we could only sign what we did or expensive signings with no long term value doesn't make any sense.

And he may have spent the budget in the summer but when you could potentially lose a shit load of money by relegation and possibly damage the long term future of the club, surely that can become flexible.

 

The argument other people made, that "we could only sign what we did or expensive signings" doesn't make sense, only because we could NOT sign expensive players, as we'd spent all the money we had. The point about "potentially lose a load of money by relegation and possibly damage the long term future of the club, surely that can become flexible." has been addressed by others. Basically that spending with no assurance of the signings working could have left us even worse off. It was a judgement I'm sure they talked about, and credit to the club, they got it right. Newcastle spend a fortune and got nowhere with it.

[TrentVilla]

Basically that spending with no assurance of the signings working could have left us even worse off. It was a judgement I'm sure they talked about, and credit to the club, they got it right. Newcastle spend a fortune and got nowhere with it.

 

 

Well that is a little more debatable than you are perhaps suggesting Blandy. Had Newcastle not signed the players they did it is a distinct possibility that their slide could have been far worse, for instance they could have lost the game at home to us. It comes down to a "we will never know", sure Newcastle's spending didn't see them shoot up the table but it is perfectly reasonable to suggest it might just have stopped them sliding further.

[blandy]

I don't think I'm in any way implying it's not debatable, Trent - that's what we're doing - but it's just my opinion. We can speculate forever about what would have happened if Newcastle didn't spend big, or if Villa did. My point really was more about we didn't have the funds. That Newcastle did, but didn't on the face of it seem to get that much value in terms of improvement is not really something I give a hoot about

[TrentVilla]

I think we had the funds as in the club/Randy could have afforded to, we just opted not to use them which is very different.

[Ironsid]

My problem with the January window was not that we spent very little to ensure our survival, but that we spent on the wrong type of player. Sylla proved to be a good investment but I didn't see the point of Dawkins on loan when it was the defence that needed attention. We got away with it and our improvement towards the end was great but it was a hell of a gamble.

Although, thankfully, not the sort of gamble Flash Harry down at Q.P.R. took with blowing the nest egg on the likes of Samba.

Spend wisely and grow the value of our assets seems a good policy to follow.

[abdulaziz1]

 

expensive players were never going to be possible,

But the argument was that we need to strengthen in January. As shown with other signings this idea that we could only sign what we did or expensive signings with no long term value doesn't make any sense.

And he may have spent the budget in the summer but when you could potentially lose a shit load of money by relegation and possibly damage the long term future of the club, surely that can become flexible.

 

 

I think Lambert didn't have a players at the time that could change the situatuion .. so he might fount that even if he paid it wouldn't affect us match .. So even if the worst happen .. Atleast we didn't pay in January ..

[Jarpie]

My problem with the January window was not that we spent very little to ensure our survival, but that we spent on the wrong type of player. Sylla proved to be a good investment but I didn't see the point of Dawkins on loan when it was the defence that needed attention. We got away with it and our improvement towards the end was great but it was a hell of a gamble.

Although, thankfully, not the sort of gamble Flash Harry down at Q.P.R. took with blowing the nest egg on the likes of Samba.

Spend wisely and grow the value of our assets seems a good policy to follow.

 

I agree that we should've gotten defender or two but what if they couldn't get the right player for us? Would've you gotten just anyone just for the sake of getting defender, it's about getting the right player for the right value. Dawkins probably didn't cost us anykind of fee and probably had salary of 5-15k/week and it was obviously an extended trial, and very much just backup player since Albrighton got injured and Ireland was pushed aside.

 

I'd say Sylla was very important transfer, he brought much needed steel into our midfield and formed good trio with Delph and Westwood, also gave more freedom for Delph to be more advanced/adventurous midfielder than he had been previously.