Charlie Sweet
Player Valuation: £35m
Anyone here think Usmanov and Moshiri are here purely to make a quick buck?
No me neither.
They are here to live out their dream of building one of the most successful football clubs in world football.
This is a hobby for them not an investment.
Spot on. Football at any level is a hobby/ego trip.
The only two ways to make money are 1) Potentially if you had another business that could benefit through the exposure or 2) if somehow in the future the premier league evolves to the american system of greater wage control and removing relegation threat. But even 1) at some point has to be paid for at a commercial rate and 2) seems impossible to predict
Same for the bew stadium. It's a great ego trip and important and great to the club but it's hard to see it paying off for us in anything like the short to medium term. Do we have 50k+ regular match going fans? Is there the corporate demand for all the lounges and boxes? The RS plus the mancs have the region cornered.
Likewise I know a trend is to have more intermediate level hospitality - so more peoples club than the Dixie lounge - but we have one of the poorest supporter bases in the country. Unlike the London clubs we cant bank on walk-up tourists.
There's no wider cash to be made at Bramley from non-stadium stuff. We've leased a bit of land for a stadium and its bits and pieces. Any wider ideas for flats or whatever have to be done on land that would need to be paid for separately with Peel. And even then there's no pot of gold.