Nacer Chadli

[Tree13]

I am starting to worry about funds this summer tbh. Start of summer I had convinced myself we would have...from left over funds and TV money maybe 20M or just under for RM to invest in the team before player sales....

The important bit in that paragraph is the point where you say "I had convinced myself". If the reality is that we did not have the full £8.6m to buy Fer in January, as suggested by the widely-held belief that we had proposed to pay his fee by installments, then why would we suddenly have more in July when our most recent accounts demonstrated that we make a loss every year? The tv money hasn't just been delivered in a Brinks-Mat truck to the back door at Goodison, we don't receive it until next May.

Now either we have No cash available or RM has specific targets he's waiting for, to explain some very good players moving for reasonable fee's.

I would suggest it's a mixture of both.

There is something seriously amiss if we have only a few mill before sales, when all the small clubs have what seems like decent kitties!

Southampton have been left a billionaire's trust fund; Norwich's debt is tiny compared to ours and several of their squad are still on Championship-level wages; Swansea also have a tiny debt compared to us and some players on championship wages, and they cashed in on Joe Allen to the tune of £15m this time last year.

Obviously that doesn't FULLY account for the spending sprees these three clubs in particular have gone on, but it is safe to say that they are gambling by increasing their outgoings in the hope of finishing higher in the prem this coming season and thereby securing a jump in income.

By comparison, I think we have a £15m loan falling due this summer, currently on a rate of about 8%; I would imagine the board would be concentrating on either settling or re-financing that debt before spending on players. WHo knows if they are perhaps having difficulty refinancing? In these hypothetical circumstances, maybe the board is thinking "We already have a better squad than every team below us, and we rate Martinez as a better manager than the likes of Hughton, Pochettino and Laudrup so we think that those other clubs still won't catch us even with their new signings. And this summer is proving to be a mad feeding frenzy in the transfer market so let's wait until next year when 1) we actually have the extra money and 2) less teams are buying.

Having said all that, I am annoyed to see Chadli go to Spurs without so much as an 11th hour bid from us. Where the feck do Spurs get all this money from?!

 

[Christiffa25]

Obviously some very good points there tree13 but the instalments on buying Fer is nothing new in player trading mate. Most deals baring the very rich clubs are done on yearly payments, usually over the lenght of there contract. Do you think Swansea have handed over 12.5M for bony in one go? Course they havnt.

Although money hasn't been delivered on a truck to GP back door it's funds due, and funds we can get loans on etc, as we do every season with TV money. Just because this is a larger payment doesn't mean we can't/won't do the same.

 

[Tree13]

Obviously some very good points there tree13 but the instalments on buying Fer is nothing new in player trading mate. Most deals baring the very rich clubs are done on yearly payments, usually over the lenght of there contract. Do you think Swansea have handed over 12.5M for bony in one go? Course they havnt.

No, I quite agree that instalments are a commonplace means of paying. But I'm wondering if we simply don't have enough actual cash to make the initial downpayment on a transfer at this point. Looking at the Bony transfer for example, it's possible that Swansea MIGHT have payed the lump sum simply by taking out a loan which they intend to cover with the TV money next May; the reason for doing it that way would be to convince the selling club to sell! They might not have been interested in £3m up front (for instance) followed by £500k a month for 18 months, but wave the metaphorical suitcase full of cash under their nose and who knows.

Although money hasn't been delivered on a truck to GP back door it's funds due, and funds we can get loans on etc, as we do every season with TV money. Just because this is a larger payment doesn't mean we can't/won't do the same.

Again I don't disagree in principle. Nevertheless it's possible that the club is experiencing difficulty in refinancing the existing debt. Considering we are already fairly heavily leveraged AND the fact that we are in an economic downturn both nationally and (mostly) globally, perhaps no-one is lending at a rate our board judge to be viable?