speedy wrote:
Anzac wrote:
The original financial structure for the stadium loans was that 30% of club revenues would be put aside each year to cover the loan payments, and that any revenue from player sales was meant to be re-invested into the football team. Instead we used the revenues to pay for infrastructure rather than players.
AW likes to encourage the myth about a need to sustain the club via player transactions, when we have reports of DD telling the scouting operation that we could sign a 20m player every season after the move as a result of the increased match day gate.
Further to this any club that can post pre-tax operational profits each year is not that broke, let alone that our Cash Reserves have grown to the biggest in the game, and we pay our manager amongst the highest salary in the game despite not winning a major title for more than a decade. The club cries poor but the reality is that things were not as they have been made to seem.
2 things hit us hard the property crash when we were selling of the apartments and investers buying city and chelsea.
It's like in france Lyon were the biggest but once monaco and psg had the mega money they just shoot above them. I don't think we can hold Wenger responsible for these factors.
Clubs started to hit the wall we saw porthmouth, rangers, valencia, malaga all start to crash and Wenger thought maybe save a bit and see if we can pick up some gret deals like cazorla. BT went int competition with sky and the tv money exploded so that plan didn't work. We can say Wenger got it wrong on that one. Excatly when those money issues stoped is opten to debabte but none us are certain.
We dont have those money issues now, but we dont have ManU money, City money or Chelsea money, self suffiency isn't a model it's our only option.
DD did say we would have 20M but that was before the property crash knocked the stuffing out of our plans. Reports later say We agreed a 7m deal for Di Maria but we couldnt get the funds together and the deal fell through. I think we HAD very real money issues.
Intrestingly Clicky had this to say today suggesting the structure is the problem. (wengers tatics are chunk of the problem no doubt but like pep the better the players the better the system works). It was the "hierarchy/structure" that should have gotten sanchez and Ozil to sign last season. Higgy deal done, suarez deal done ect. Sanchez- higgy-suarez with ozil in behind would shash this league to bits even with wenger tatics.
Clichy said of Wenger: “I’m not going to get into any detail but I do believe he is the right man. He has been the right man for so many years and I am listening to what people are saying. If the club is spending more money and they have the players they need, then perhaps Wenger is the perfect man. If you take him off and you bring someone else with the same structure, would he be better? Would he do better? I’m not sure.
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2017/apr/03/arsenal-supporters-should-be-careful-what-they-wish-for-gael-clichy-arsene-wenger
The thing about the property crash was that we were told that the stadium and transfer revenues were ring fenced away from the property development so that the transfer budget would not drop below the Highbury figures. This was the defining moment that changed AW's mind as up to then he had sided with DD against the build. They were paranoid about what happened to Ajax.
AFC was never going to go down the path of any of those clubs because we don't spend more than we earn. Even the repayment schedule on the stadium is generated by match gates by 5-8 Home games. With every Home game sold out we cover that from pre-season and the domestic Cups, without touching the PL or UEFA gates. Even now the club still works off an ultra conservative financial model, so that at any time we deduct our entire known overheads for the season from the revenue on hand. We cover everything we owe and do not count anything that we are owed or likely to receive, and then the residual is what we are willing to invest. Because much of our revenue comes towards the end of the season (such as payment based upon league positions etc), this is why we see the Cash Reserves looking so large and it's also how we are able to generate profits and grow our Cash Reserves.
The money issue was never about revenue but more so about our cash flow, and that was an issue because of both the long term deals we took on our primary commercial deals with payments made up front for the stadium. This is what DD was concerned about that we had no room to move financially if the market changed, and it did. Even then the issue wasn't about the long term deals, but more so that the club chose to bury their heads in the sand and do nothing to diversify or increase or revenues. They didn't react to the property market crash other than to sell a bulk deal to a developer re the apartments, and they didn't employ a commercial team until Citeh were bought by oil money in 2010 = 3-4 seasons after the move. At one point before SAF's departure ManU were signing as many new secondary deals a season as we had deals in total. Further to this our commercial deals have been based around the team and match days, as the football team was more or less responsible for raising commercial revenues based around it's self. Until the new TV deals 60% of our revenue was based around match day gates and prize money.
Revenue wasn't the issue as much as the club was too comfortable doing nothing and things never got that bad that they had to do something themselves, let alone put their hand into their own pocket. Even during the 'hardships' the football team still carried the brunt of needing to cover the shortfalls via player sales to generate transfer revenues, yet we still turned a profit, still grew our cash reserves and still upgraded infrastructure as well as raising our wage bill to less than 10m difference of CFC or Citeh.
I agree with the first part from Clichy about the structure of the club, but AW is also part & parcel of that and he's only too happy to take the extra on and get paid handsomely for doing so, and the club enjoys that because he spend the money as if it is his own.
That said I disagree with his opinion that AW is the right man based on 2 reasons:
- firstly because the infrastructure will not change whilst AW remains in total control. Remove AW from the equation and the club has to step up and change the system, because AW is the system both good and bad. The issues are as much because of AW as he is also the solution and the easy way out for the club.
- secondly because Clichy as a player knows that AW gives them an easy ride and as such is a players ideal as a manager in terms of how players are treated.
