Chester Perry wrote: ↑Mon May 10, 2021 11:09 pmThe difference was that there was the gap between costs and and revenues in the early years - That gap was removed as wages his increased and just as significantly the board sought to meet all the other demands of the manager in terms of the backroom set-up and facilities - we have probably matched the spend at Gawthorpe with the one at the the Turf on facilities for players, then there are the additional staff (60 on the football side in the season before last. Recently Dyche has been saying that there is still not enough to support the players he wants an awful lot more, that is before any new signings - you need to look at the big picture of what they were managing and i am still of the belief that the only reason the sale happened is because they wanted to keep Dyche at the club and that meant they had to relinquish fiscal control.
Chester Perry wrote: ↑Tue May 11, 2021 12:56 am..... I just have never understood the mentality that he must be given whatever he asks for, and that includes a defined budget - I do not know of a manager/coach in the Premier League that has one of those.
If it is acceptable for Dyche to turn down alternatives to the players he has targeted but we have been unable to acquire it is just as acceptable (if not more so) for the club to set a fiscal limit on his targets (whether they tell him what it is or not) - I am unaware of the club refusing to try for his targets, just refusing to breach their fiscal boundaries to get them. For all the people in football that admire Dyche, there are many boardrooms and analysts that admire the fiscal discipline that the previous board exercised
Chester Perry wrote: ↑Tue May 11, 2021 1:04 am..... some of Dyche's public pronouncements on the financial situation last summer were farcical, the club had to plan for the worst case, and now we should be grateful they did because no club in the league was better prepared for the financial hit that the season has given than us.
Chester Perry wrote: ↑Tue May 11, 2021 1:41 am..... for Dyche, he always wants more, I accept that, the previous board accepted that, what he appeared to refuse to accept was that they were not able to move at the pace he wanted - this may be down to a communication issue, but the club needed to invest in revenue generation just as much as it needed to invest in players and the football support infrastructure - it had reached a ceiling of cost base for the football side of things and the only way that could rise was by increasing revenues, which requires the appropriate infrastructure development.
You get the impression at times that Dyche believed that it was all down to his activities that drove revenues, and given that over 80% of our income comes from the Premier League that is partly understandable - but that is not what makes a sustainable club. We need to find a way for Premier League income to be less than 70% of revenues. There is also the issue that the combination of wages and fixed costs are too high a percentage of income to facilitate squad development. Over 12 months last season that was around 82% of income - how do you fund transfers and infrastructure out of that, when you have outstanding transfer payments, taxes etc to pay from that. To do what Dyche wants that combination has to be down around 65% at the most and ideally under 60%, that is what sustainable clubs who spend regularly do
I am still waiting for someone to give a reasoned explanation of how the club (with it's budget policy and adversity to debt, both much admired) could have been more effective in the more recent transfer windows.Chester Perry wrote: ↑Tue May 11, 2021 2:47 amI have gone through that point [The cash Holding and why it is difficult to use it for transfers] a fair number of times now over the last year and touched on it again up the thread, at no point has anyone ever given me a reasoned argument that successfully contradicts what I have posted. In fact I do not recall anyone ever arguing against what I posted on that subject, it appears people prefer to act like it has never existed.
On the subject of the cash holding
- what do you think it was at the end of last season, before this seasons first Premier League cash payment, that was also in the last accounts due to the change of year end?
- what do you think is a reasonable cash holding and why?
This time last year I was posting that the financial performance of the 2019/20 season was on target to put the club back into a window of having a more space in the operating budget for new signings - then Covid happened and we went from looking to increasing budgets to having to cut them where possible, along with reducing liabilities - which we did to a level that stretched the football side probably much less than it stretched the rest of the club, yet will still likely see the wage bill come in at over £80m. It has to be remembered that while we did not sign anyone of note this season, that was in part down to the manager not being to make the necessary trades to allow that to happen - there were clubs who spent less than us, yet were more active with West Ham and Brighton making trading profits last summer (West Ham have since spent more converting loans to transfers inwards).