Sly

I’m at West Midlands Safari Park, with zero signal and a sore Achilles. Bu the sound of it, I’m winning not being able to watch this game.

Longer term it will be, however if we’ve got a deficit this year, then we’ll need to clear out before the 30th June I believe to try and comply with next years potentially sanctions.

As we know and have discussed to moon and back, we are potentially in a bit of a mess with an our finances and complying with FFP. This leaves us with the possibility that we will need to sell assets that makes us money. These will need to be players with no outstanding financial outgoings or write downs in the accounts (i.e minimal book cost left). I’ve done some quick numbers against book value vs potential transfer spend. Player Contract Expiry Book cost Transfer fee? Profit Marc Albrighton 30th June 2024 £0 £0 £0 Jannik Vestergaard 30th June 2024 £0 £0 £0 Dennis Praet 30th June 2024 £0 £0 £0 Jamie Vardy 30th June 2024 £0 £0 £0 Wilfred Ndidi 30th June 2024 £0 £0 £0 Kelechi Iheanacho 30th June 2024 £0 £0 £0 Danny Ward 30th June 2025 £0 £2,000,000 £2,000,000 Daniel Iversen 30th June 2025 £0 £3,000,000 £3,000,000 Luke Thomas 30th June 2025 £0 £5,000,000 £5,000,000 Conor Coady 30th June 2026 £5,000,000 £2,500,000 -£2,500,000 Ricardo Pereira 30th June 2026 £0 £9,000,000 £9,000,000 Harry Winks 30th June 2026 £6,000,000 £10,000,000 £4,000,000 Boubakary Soumaré 30th June 2026 £7,200,000 £8,000,000 £800,000 Patson Daka 30th June 2026 £9,200,000 £10,000,000 £800,000 James Justin 30th June 2026 £0 £10,000,000 £10,000,000 Stephy Mavididi 30th June 2026 £5,600,000 £12,000,000 £6,400,000 Sammy Braybooke 30th June 2026 £0 £1,000,000 £1,000,000 Kasey Mcateer 30th June 2026 £0 £4,000,000 £4,000,000 Will Alves 30th June 2026 £0 £1,000,000 £1,000,000 Wanya Marçal 30th June 2026 £0 £1,000,000 £1,000,000 Wout Faes 30th June 2027 £6,000,000 £12,000,000 £6,000,000 Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall 30th June 2027 £0 £25,000,000 £25,000,000 Hamza Choudhury 30th June 2027 £0 £7,000,000 £7,000,000 Harry Souttar 30th June 2028 £9,000,000 £10,000,000 £1,000,000 Mads Hermansen 30th June 2028 £4,000,000 £10,000,000 £6,000,000 Victor Kristiansen 30th June 2028 £7,200,000 £12,500,000 £5,300,000 Tom Cannon 30th June 2028 £4,800,000 £6,000,000 £1,200,000 If we need to sell pre July, it’ll most likely be on the cheap and one, or some of KDH, Justin, Choudhury, Mavididi, Hermansen, Faes and Ricardo. They are the only real players we will get an instant return on. We won’t get the value for the likes of Soumare, Daka or Souttar to justify selling them for the returns we will get. If we don’t get promoted I can see all three being loaned out next season. In terms of incomings, we surely need to re-sign some of our expiring players if we can. Then we will operate on other free transfer. Clubs can’t afford to saddle themselves with huge debts in terms of large transfer fees for players that haven’t worked and being unable to sell them, due to the FFP impact. My model is fairly simplistic and doesn’t account for wages, or annual loyalty bonuses, however it gives a quick indication on where we might be. I guess, does anyone see it being any different?

In a weird post on Instagram, Mavididi has asked Soumare to come back Soumare is even smiling in the photo!

What’s occurring with this then? Have we given up on it?

A lot of truth in this. You could liken what Enzo is doing to the job Pearson and Puel did. Putting the pieces back together. The reality is: We’ve overpaid on wages significantly compared to our level of income. We’ve got a bloated squad, that is unbalanced. How many goalkeepers and strikers do we need? Did we really need Souttar when we had Soyuncu, Vestergaard, Amartey, Evans and Nelson? We’ve made bad investments, then not sold, or been unable to sell players to balance the books. Allowing Soyuncu, Tielemans, Perez, Evans etc leave in a free was poor business. Allowing players to leave on a free and not selling them with 2+ years left if criminal in hindsight. Commercially we’ve never capitalised as reportedly our advertising via King Power etc was amongst the lowest in the Premier league. We haven’t utilised our stadium for other events, so it’s sits empty half the time. That’s largely due to the fact it’s made of cheese and was built without additional features to accommodate other events I’d imagine. I’m not sure if the plan was to ever address this with the expansion. We’ve expanded merchandise sales, however we don’t have the pull of the big six, so trying to compete was always a challenge. We tried to break into strange markets, like our ill fated tour to Thailand this season. What a farce that was. It’ll annoy people, however when the stadium is full, in reality a business should raise its prices to capitalise on it. Reality is, someone will pay to attend. Hospitality is similar, packages were always sold out really quickly, even this season. I tried to get a box pre season and they’d all gone! Obviously sold them too cheap! We’ve made plans to improve on some of these areas with the expansion etc, however what’s happening? The communication from within is about as painful as watching our capitulation last season. We’ve all known this was on the cards for some time. The question is how far and what approach the legal action takes, as fundamentally we’ve likely broken the rules (even if they are anti competitive). Are we challenging that we haven’t, or are we challenging that we can sustain these losses and still remain a profitable business with outside investment and future business ventures?

I wrote my initial post through frustration toward the current football system and rules, which are counterintuitive to any club which is looking to grow and challenge the greedy six teams. Lots more with transparent rulings could be done. I think a league with other European clubs like Rangers, Celtic, Sporting, Porto, Monaco, Roma, Parma, Dortmund, Genk etc would be exciting to watch. People would pay to watch it. You’d then get the others go off and make their money league. UEFA would collapse and FIFA would also throw the toys out the pram. I guess it depends on where your moral compass sits on current structure of the English football pyramid. For me, it’s not sustainable, like it isn’t sustainable to have hundreds of shops on the high street. The world is changing and it’s evolving into something that some won’t like. As brutal as it is, if it’s about business, unfortunately some will go bust. However at the heart of it, football is the people’s sport and it shouldn’t be dominated by money, we should aim for a game that fundamentally allows everyone to compete and that isn’t allowing 6 clubs to run rough-shot over the overs as historically they were allowed to throw money at things.

They’ll go after Chelsea at some point ….. that will be fun.

We could sign who we want. We just can’t register them. Thats the difference.

We all knew that it would cripple us at some point, so many of us have been saying it was unsustainable for years. We rolled the dice and even with European money, it would have still been tight. More clubs are going to fall on this sword and it’ll create a massive divide between the top six and everyone else if they don’t re-evaluate the rules.

Playing devils advocate on this one though. He was the Manager of the first team, was it his job to know? He wasn’t paying Soumare £100k per week.

The pressure doesn’t change really. We’re now in a dog fight and it’s survival mentality, grinding out each game as they come. We have the ability. It’s whether we have the cajones and mentality to get us over the line!

I can tell you’re still not over him having a pop at the fans, or as he’d prefer to address us “his customers”.

I was more on about Rodger’s, rather than our current predicament.

He won’t walk. Will he get poached if we don’t get promoted, most likely.

Root cause if you keep asking why? Why are we in this division? Rodger’s inept management. Why was Rodger’s coach? He wasn’t sacked? Why wasn’t he sacked? Rudkin / Whelan didn’t want to shell out £10m to get rid. What didn’t they want to shell out £10m quid? We are in a mess financially. Why are we in a mess financially? We overspent on dross. Who authorised the overspending on dross? Whelan, Rudkin and Capper. Why are they still with the club? Capper has gone, however Whelan and Rudkin haven’t been sacked. Why haven’t they been shown the door? Top / King Power have lost control and aren’t in the same place as Vichai was. We also has internal politics with family etc that don’t want to be throwing money into a well. They also contribute to over King Power business streams that are profitable. Why has Top / Power allowed this to happen? Covid had massive impacts to King Power and understandably, they’re looking after the business streams that keep them afloat. The lesser projects and vanity projects are suffering. Why haven’t they sold? …….. good question!

Massive game a week today, as Ipswich / Southampton play each other.

It’s stating the obvious I know, however we need to right ourselves and wake up on Tuesday morning with 6 points from the games at Bristol and Norwich. Anything less than 4 points and it’ll not just be carnage on here but within the club as well I’d dare to say.

Simon Capper went a while ago! He joined Newcastle United. https://www.nufc.co.uk/news/latest-news/newcastle-united-appoints-simon-capper-as-chief-financial-officer/?displayMode=GoogleAmp

If Rodger’s had gone after Forest away (when he should have), he’d be looked at far for fondly on here.

When we were in the Premier League, we had 19 other clubs looking trying to be succesful and operate as a business as well. Ultimately three fail every year. However, from where we were, it was the dramatic fall away that shocked many, rather than the fact it happened. I mean Everton finally dropping would be like the demise of Wilkos, it was full of guff for years and finally collapsed. If you lined up the top 20 high street shops in UK shopping, it would be like watching someone like Aldi topple, starting to punch with the big boys of Tesco, Asda, Morrisons, Sainsbury’s, then collapsed!

The Premier League is a higher quality that 90% of International Games though?

As @Chocolate Teapot stated, they are a nightmare. I purchased one at auction to flip and it was a nightmare. Also, I’d never seen to many creepy crawlers in my life. I ended up taking a £10k hit to get rid of the bloody thing in the end.

You’re genuinely better pitching it higher I think, to stop this. Just advise the agent that this is where you’re at and not to even entertain offers below “X” amount.

He isn’t just tied to Leicester though, so could be getting paid via King Power etc.