by Stranded »
30 Oct 2023 10:33
WestYorksRoyal I guess the question is how he makes a profit. Let's say bare minimum is to have us mid table Championship - our club is simply too big to be a sustainable L1 club and will always have a big operating expense base with its facilities unless we see brutal cuts.
So let's say we get to the Championship and stabilise. We produce good academy players for the first team who we sell on for good money. Do you reinvest the bare minimum to protect your Championship position, and put most of the transfer revenue in your bank account? Or do you reinvest it substantially knowing that it can bring the riches of the PL, but can be lost? His record at Newcastle suggests the former, and the extent of parachute payments these days is so great he may conclude that it's not worth trying to compete with them.
You make a profit by building the club up to a point where someone else will be willing to pay you more than you paid/invested or increase revenues so that dividends can be paid on shares held.
Naturally in the meantime you would make a call on what you do in the interim i.e. if we make a profit in a year, he may decide to take some back but the plan has to be (as Bowen seems to be planning on doing) bring in young players free/cheap, who we can sell on a year or two later for a decent fee. X% if that gets reinvested in the playing squad - do it right and the quality of younger player you can bring in improves, the team improves, wages improve, fees improve. Profits eventually ensue.
As said elsewhere, is Ashley going to suddenly bankroll a side capable of running through L1 and the Champ, no but we don't need that now - we just need to be run as a normal football club and see what happens. If L1 is our level for a while, so be it but with the right model, there is no reason why we can't return to the Champ in a relatively small period of time.
