We can be just short of united within three years. FFP helps to level the playing field but that isn't where we are pinning our hopes.

Captain wrote:

We can be just short of united within three years. FFP helps to level the playing field but that isn't where we are pinning our hopes.

I'm sceptical of that. United have much more commercial cache.

You expect us to grow that much on the commersial side in such a short time without on field success?

Kamikaze you called it this time last season.

You were adamant that RVP would leave at the end of the 2011/12 season and that's what happened.

We probably won't be nearly as profitable commercially as United and some of the biggest clubs of Europe, but a lot will change around 2014-2015. We should at least be levelling the commercial playing field with clubs like Liverpool, Chelsea, Man City etc. Right now, most of our deals are dog-poo.

FFP is our only real hope imo, doubt commercial deals will make a significant difference especially with a board that is risk averse as ours..

Commercial difference is c.£60m; we'll make most of that up on primary partners alone.

£60m extra? per year? Doubt it. We'd be generating more than (or on par at least) Man U then.. that's not going to happen with our current stature

we'll make a large part of the £60m difference up when we renew our primaries. Why is that doubtful? It's going to be 30-40m increase.

seems too much.. Were are you getting these figures from, are you including tv deals?

our current shirt deal works out to what 5m? the new one will probably be 20m. our current kit deal with nike is 13m a year, new one should be 20m. so that's an increase of 22m. for it to get to 30m the shirt and kit deal would need to be 48m combined and 58m for it to get a 40 increase. that's a stretch for a club that has personified a lack of ambition and cheapness these past 7 years. is kroenke going to hook us with walmart or something?

Nike deal is £8m.

We're a massively viable brand, we'll get 40-50m combined when we next sign.

I'm getting these figures from deloitte.

worth noting ManU still have the DHL money to kick in, which is massive.

We don't get anything for our shirt sponsorship anymore. Its on the accounts, but the cash was spent long ago.

With Captain on this, as long as we are in the Champions League our next deals will be very big. I think SwissRamble has estimated around £40mill increase on our current main deals, so I'll go with that.

Wenger is a cream puff...

qs! wrote:

I don't remember Henry saying that was why he was leaving. Its also not why Fabregas left.

I agree theres a problem I just don't think those are good examples. I do however think if the root cause of problem was fixed we'd have kept them both, and I think that problem is relatively low wages.

henry definitely said that. we all knew fabregas wanted to go back to barca at some point. he also wanted to do right by us and win us a trophy, but when he saw that wasn't ever going to happen, then his decision to leave became very simple.

i don't think money was a significant reason for either departure. for nasri, yes. possibly clichy, since it's not like he was particularly loved here and man city is just absurd.

btw, i think the commercial revenue increase projections are optimistic. the two manchester teams will get even better teams, so relative to them, we wont gain that much ground. plus, we're known for being cheapskates and losers - it doesn't really help to be associated with us. if you're just looking for airtime, then ok, we're pretty consistently in a lot of televised competitions and we're in london, which is awesome for an advertiser. but there won't be the demand to pay us any sort of premium because we're not a top brand.

Cancer kills, but we show no signs, beyond the occasional "slippery slope" fear-mongering, of going down the tubes.

This thread should be called THE GAZIDIS/WENGER SLUMBER.

The thing that concerns me? At any given stage, I've no doubt we've got a long term plan, commercially, footballistically, for improvement - but disruptive changes have outpaced our long-termism for ten years now.

Take FFP, or Captain's assertion that our new sponsorship deals will bear fruit. They well may, but by that stage there may be one or two more mega-rich contenders in the Premier League.

Who buys these clubs? The world's wealthiest rent-seeking oligarchs. We live in an age of unprecedented looting of various economies - there's a hatful of these tycoons around, and there's nothing of significance that Gazidis or Wenger can do to prevent them from trumping our long term plans.

Other than finding ourselves an equally rich benefactor, the regulators are our only source of hope.