In all the hyper ventilating by certain sections of or supporters I keep reading about RD being not willing to spend money/only to sign SL rejects etc
PLEASE KEEP TO THE FACTS!!!
In the summer we bought JBG, Igor and Hendo. 3 quality additions to the starting 11. Our two new CBs have been outstanding all season 2 very successful freebies.
I'm hoping the decision to change Peeters for Luzon at this time is that further enhancements to the squad are in the pipeline. If they are as good as the 5(half a team) s above I will be happy.
Still..., don't let that stop all the RD bashing
4
Comments
JBG - 5 year contract had expired in 2014
Igor - £2.5M (reported)
Bikey - free transfer (and I cannot agree he's been outstanding - overweight, slow and always out of position)
TBH - Free. Yes. Outstanding, really?
Hendo is injured. Igor is injured.
It's not RD bashing, but if you had said to any Charlton fan a few years ago - do you want to be part of a 'network', that includes a few shit clubs, yourselves and Standard and you all just swap players and managers and loan people out to one another....would you have been pleased with that? I wouldn't and i'm not.
We may see one or 2 more faces come to the Valley in January, but they will be more rejects from Standard and Ujpest and we are all supposed to get excited about it? Do me a favour. I want to see some money being splashed. I want to see a few faces we are familiar with instead of guys running onto the pitch like they're having a trial with the club. I want to see grit, determination, fight, stamina and goals. I want to hear the crowd getting behind the team Delia Smith style, I want a manager who will rip into his players if they are shit and big them up if they're not. I want an owner who has ambition to get the club into the premier league just like all the other clubs in the championship....instead I feel like we're a 1990's Ford Escort. Reliable but struggles to start, bit knackered, been patched up a few times, needs a few touches here and there to get through the Winter with an owner who has realised he can sell off the alloys, CD player etc and make a few quid, but really, can't wait to get through to the summer when he can concentrate on his other hobbies.
Am sorry but its not our money to demand that millions get spent and I'm sure you'd tell someone to piss off if they randomly walked up to you saying that coat your wearing, its shite you need to buy a better one
The network and fans like you are well suited. Enjoy
Five years ago we're in League 1 and going broke!
So if you say do you fancy mid table championship with the players above plus Buyens, Bulot and Watt, but no definitive statement about the medium term... And the losses underwritten by someone worth €500m
Then I think most fans would say yes, and that's before we saw the money nearly run out at the end of 2013.
There's a lot of rubbish has been written about this network. Some players coming in weren't good enough but they've disappeared in the next window.
Right now the only two things that matter is how Luzon uses a small but quite nifty squad and does he get a budget now and in the summer to step up. When he was at Liege they brought in Ligue 2 players and Tony Watt for around €1-1.5m each. Sound familiar?
I'm sure fans would like us to match the €3m spent on Vetokele but no one knows what the budget or final prices paid will be.
I've been criticised for optimism before but my reading of the situation is that M.Duchatelet has spent £20-25m to date and that wasn't to spend his (and our) time in the bottom third of the Championship.
Let's see what happens on the pitch and in the window over the next 17 days.
Perhaps I'm wrong and we will see new players come in....
£16m purchase price*
£5m annual loss
£2.5m Vetokele
J B G
Signing fees
£0.75m pitch (Albeit some was funded by YK &DS)
£25m since taking over is not an unreasonable estimate, but to make it worthwhile he will have to invest more. The purchase price is an extraordinairy expenditure.
*Or was it £14m
Are there any decent Israelie strikers that could be targets
£10m up front
£3m If we stayed up
£1m to the agent who brokered the deal.
Plus taking on the debt payable to the previous directors when we get back to the premiership.
Plus the on going losses.
Plus £1m on the pitch and stadium
Minua the fees for players sold.
Plus fees paid for players albeit not clear what has been paid for farm players from Standard.
£10m purchase + £4m deferred for staying up
£5.5m losses every year
£1m repayment of North stand mortgage every year (probably only a couple of years left)
£3-4m on Vetokele and signing on fees for loans and free agents.
The smaller transfer fees cost buttons as they are written off over the contract and stadium refurbishment (and underlying drains) might go over ten years. Then again it's all cash to find. And fees for players sold keep the annual losses below £6m.
The debts to ex directors are c.£10m but in a valuation one would offset against the enormous cash inflows in the FAPL. They are quite handy in the meantime because the creditors do have the power of veto over certain transactions like debt restructuring and perhaps selling the club.
I would estimate that the value of Cafc finishing 3rd - 6th (with a 25% chance of winning promotion) might be worth c.£40-50M and if we get to the FAPL? Perhaps £75-100m. So the prize for Staprix is indeed large and should keep them focused.
The opportunity cost of not going for it would be to wipe out the club value! Falling crowds through disinterest and West ham marketing...falling catering and sponsorship...increasing costs of stadium maintenance as it ages etc.
So the point is how much will RD spend right now and over the summer to push on "making the club competitive" as per KM in the standard tonight?
How much is he prepared to increase the annual losses by to fund a bigger player payroll and the amortisation of player transfer fees? This to increase our chances of promotion from 5% to 15% and then 25%?
Will he push so far and then sell up or is the bigger FAPL stage so attractive to the Staprix group that he continues despite the highly irritating doubling of FFP limits.
Personally I think we have 14 decent players, some weaker ones out of contract in the summer and are perfectly positioned to give it a crack next season. They've shown they can acquire 5 high quality players in one go. Will they do it? No idea!