Claudius wrote:
The simple logic is this.
We have an expensive squad that Josh has said has a Champions League budget. When we are in the Champions League, we can make anywhere from £50m to £110m depending on where we finish.
When we are in the Europa League, we make around £15 to £30m depending on where we finish. Let’s look at the marginal players on the team who we keep so we can participate in two competitions. Guys like Elneny make £2,5m. Someone like Cedric £4m. That’s already £7m. Even the academy grads cost £1M or £2M each.
We do not make enough money to break even in the Europa League with our current squad make-up, if you think about it as the difference between the marginal cost of being in the Europa League vs the marginal revenue the tournament brings in.
Over and above that, it takes away focus from the league and we end up with these incredibly inconsistent results. If you take the marginal cost of being in Champions League vs the marginal revenue, then that is a different story altogether. That is lucrative given the outsize rewards.
The big problem for us now is we have a squad that is bloated to manage 2 competitions but filled with lots of really bad players. There is value in not being in this competition as a forcing mechanism to address this bloat.
I don't think it's bloated to manage 2 competitions, I think it's bloated out of an abundance of caution. We used to have smaller squads playing in the CL and that's despite having to use first team players in both competition.
But all that being said, we should make the best of a bad situation and really trim down the squad, pad it up with youths and hopefully make 2-3 key additions.
Laca, Eddie, Nelson, Cedric, Willian, Luiz, AMN and Elneny should all be allowed to leave this summer without any need to replace them, while any new signings should replace existing players like Bellerin, Kolasinac and Xhaka. Pad the squad out with the likes of Balogun and Azeez.
