Poll: Who do you want most as our next manager?

[TheSpurEst]

Very good post, I'm thankful to ENIC and Levy for his progress since they took over, I have been a supporter of his since day 1. Lately though I have become disillusioned with the clubs direction, the thing Levy is trying to do is build a self sustaining super club with no "capital injection" like City and Chelsea have had. While I was on board with his project, sadly I am of the thought its an impossible task. No matter how much cash a club makes you still need more now, and you need people who know football to be successful, sadly I still don't think Levy gets the sport and to be successful you need to take a risk.

Its so fucking sadly ironic our motto is "To Dare is to Do"
.

Yea, I can sense that you got my point!

And I am mostly in the same boat with you. I have become disillusioned with Levy being too stubborn at times for not paying extra money where it was justified. Meaning he went for cheaper option and got cheaper asset while maybe paying 10% more would have got you signigicantly better player.

I absolutely believe that there still is chance to operate under self-sustaining club model. Look at Leicester, Dortmund, Atletico. None of them are supported by owner, but still do well.
Our biggest problem has been the efficiency of using funds. Levy has been too involved and too conservative, and yea, as you said - not getting finer details of the game well enough. Only trying to find bargains where at times we'd need to pay for more quality and get better return this way.

 

[swinbag]

It will be Martinez, you can see it a mile off. At least it will make me a few quid if it is. Is he really that bad though? I honestly can’t remember his Everton team. All I can remember is us playing his Wigan team and spanking them 9 1. We then lost the following two home games to them 1 nil. So at least he did something right from his perspective at the time.

It's so obvious that Levy has a hard-on for Martinez, that's the only logical explanation for wanting to pursue him - I swear Daniel is stuck in a time warp and still thinks it's ~2010.

Completely uninspiring manager but I'm sure he'll make a great yes-man.

If we didn't appoint him until after the Euro's, that's another 4+ weeks without a manager!

 

[FOK]

What progress?
Under Sugar we won the FA Cup and the League Cup.
Under ENIC we won one league cup in twice the time.
Other than a little forray into the CL as at today we're no better off than before they came. Just adjust it all for football inflation. We're richer but everyone else is even more so.

this is highly unfair for two reasons.

1. Sugar didn't have to deal with Chelsea and City and their financial might, they've hoovered up most trophies over the last 20 years
2. we've also got regular CL and even made the final, people always forget to mention that in their "1 trophy in 20 years" dig. it's not nothing.

*not defending how poor Levy's stint has been just adding some perspective.

 

[Matt1882]

We are a much bigger club now than then, we have much better facilities.

We have a bigger stadium.

ENIC oversaw the only decade in our clubs history where we won nothing.
In every other decade since we became a football club, we've won something.
ENIC came along and built a stadium, with loans against the club that can only be paid off as long as our income is guaranteed.
What happens when we finish 14th and lose money.
What happens when expensively acquired players contracts run out because he won't sell them for a penny less than top dollar.

Eventually we'll be in trouble. We lose enough income we can't pay the stadium.
Do we become homeless nomads?

The running of the club has become dangerous IMO.

 

[Matt1882]

this is highly unfair for two reasons.

1. Sugar didn't have to deal with Chelsea and City and their financial might, they've hoovered up most trophies over the last 20 years
2. we've also got regular CL and even made the final, people always forget to mention that in their "1 trophy in 20 years" dig. it's not nothing.

*not defending how poor Levy's stint has been just adding some perspective.

Man United were further ahead of the whole league than anyone in the 90s
Woolwich moved ahead as soon as Wenger came in.
Forget the theory Chelsea have no history, they were better than us in the 90s
We used to get owned by Villa regularly.
And yet we still managed to win more then than we have ever looked like winning now.

And we have had 5 seasons in the CL out of 20.
1/4 of the time ENIC have been here.
And in the Sugar Era there were 1 or 2 spots, not up to 5.

 

[TottsAmazeballs]

Such a good read. Every point is spot on.

Levy seems to have paid for a DDoS attack on their servers...

 

[harry7]

People keep quoting our transfer spend in a positive light lately.

A good example of our real world spending.

Sissoko
Kante
Wjinaldum

All cost roughly the same. We got the shittest one because he was likely the lowest paid.

NDombele
Fernando's
Mahrez

All cost roughly the same but no doubt TND is the least well paid.

Won't even get into City buying £60m Ruben Dias, who we needed, and us spending £18m on Rodon and not playing him.
Or £40m on Sanchez when better English players were available that would have helped our selection problems.

People are obsessed with spending.

Eriksen was 15m. Best midfielder in the EPL for 5 years.
Alli was 5m. He was a fantastic for 3 seasons.
Kane club trained.
Son 25m.
Toby and Jan 15m.

It seems that you lot would be happier had ENIC spend 400m on those players so our net spend would be higher.

It's about buying quality players, not how much they cost. The problem is, for years we have been buying absolute gash!

 

[Nabil Bentaleb]

Every social media post it’s getting error. “Connection failure”

 

[Donki]

Yea, I can sense that you got my point!

And I am mostly in the same boat with you. I have become disillusioned with Levy being too stubborn at times for not paying extra money where it was justified. Meaning he went for cheaper option and got cheaper asset while maybe paying 10% more would have got you signigicantly better player.

I absolutely believe that there still is chance to operate under self-sustaining club model. Look at Leicester, Dortmund, Atletico. None of them are supported by owner, but still do well.
Our biggest problem has been the efficiency of using funds. Levy has been too involved and too conservative, and yea, as you said - not getting finer details of the game well enough. Only trying to find bargains where at times we'd need to pay for more quality and get better return this way.

I don't think we can compare teams in Spain or Germany to PL teams, there is far more competition here, but yeah Leicester is a great example of spending money well but again they took chances that paid off, Ndidi, Maddison, Tielemans all paid off, while we had Bruno in the bag and Levy still managed to fuck it. Its incredibly frustrating.

 

[FOK]

Nuno

 

[CerealMaterial]

Every social media post it’s getting error. “Connection failure”

Yea I had the same issue until I rebooted my phone. Fek knows what it was

 

[MasonBall]

Yea I had the same issue until I rebooted my phone. Fek knows what it was

Looks like theres a massive crash on the internet. Just reading there its affecting Twitter, Amazon, US Government Websites, BBC, The Guardian and loads more.

 

[TheSpurEst]

First of all. I can cope with disagrees to what I write. I just found it peculiar that you disagreed with a fact. Joe Lewis is a billionaire. He can easily out some cash in and speculate to accumulate. It's a simple concept right? Better players usually means better performances in cups and competitions which is more prize money and more people wanting to sponsor you for higher prices. I'm no financial whizzkid but that's the basics.

And my point was - you did not post "Joe Lewis is a billionaire" . this is a fact.
What followed, however, was not a fact and your subjective opinion which to me did not reflect the reality of his rational of buying the club. I disagreed with your opinion part not the fact part.

To make it simple where are gaps in your simple logic for me -
- purchasing players is only part of the cost - I would argue that of late we have lost players more due to our salary structure and ability to pay salaries; that is cost we have to cover year after year, so this could not be covered by single cash outlay
- he already has made a significant investment to buy the club. This is his investment, and he has set it up to grow value for him without additional capital added to this investments. I understand that for fans situation is one. But if you look at it from business perspective - you almost never see a multi-million-dollar company owners to pay money INTO company. Rather they sell stocks and take dividends to take money OUT from company
- once more - we have had the money. We have put ~270 mEUR into players over past 2 seasons. And we have ended up with utter dross (up to now, some can turn things around). What we need is better scouting and sporting side management. Or to put it differently - if he was to inject further 130 mEUR to club and we sign two more clones of Ndombele. It will mean we have laid out massive amount of money for transfer + we have to pay 24 million euros more each year (assumptions - 230 th weekly wage *2). Tell me now, would that put us into better position for next 5 years or not? And if you proposed that he would put the money into club and then take it back after results improve... in this instance it does not and club ends up with 24 million of salaries + repaying owner loans 13 mil per year (assuming 10y schedule). That would be negative cash flow of 37 mEUR each year. Our rough total income could be ~500 mEUR (too lazy to double check). It would mean 7,5% of every pound that comes to club would have to be spent on those two salaries+payback. It does not seem very positive outcome to me.

 

[Donki]

We have a bigger stadium.

ENIC oversaw the only decade in our clubs history where we won nothing.
In every other decade since we became a football club, we've won something.
ENIC came along and built a stadium, with loans against the club that can only be paid off as long as our income is guaranteed.
What happens when we finish 14th and lose money.
What happens when expensively acquired players contracts run out because he won't sell them for a penny less than top dollar.

Eventually we'll be in trouble. We lose enough income we can't pay the stadium.
Do we become homeless nomads?

The running of the club has become dangerous IMO.

I think you are going a bit over the top, I could say to you imagine the possibilities if a Randy Learner or Mike Ashley had bought us? You are blaming ENIC for not winning yet we have gotten to finals and the team either bottled it or the manager got it wrong. I agree Levy's bargaining when buying and selling payers is questionable and like I said I am becoing more and more disillusioned with them but you have to give credit where its due as well.

 

[Sean]

Every social media post it’s getting error. “Connection failure”

Yep seen Reddit and a few other places are down at the moment so might be something to do with that?

 

[Bazali]

Or you could open your eyes and see that it is clear as day that our lazy players wouldn't have been interested in Conte.

We all know who you’re referring to which is why they should be shipped out ASAP

 

[Matt1882]

People are obsessed with spending.

Eriksen was 15m. Best midfielder in the EPL for 5 years. 2013
Alli was 5m. He was a fantastic for 3 seasons. 2015
Kane club trained.
Son 25m. 2015
Toby and Jan 15m. 2015

It seems that you lot would be happier had ENIC spend 400m on those players so our net spend would be higher.

It's about buying quality players, not how much they cost. The problem is, for years we have been buying absolute gash!

What's happened since?

 

[TheSpurEst]

Recruitment is an element but that is only part of it. Many other clubs even clubs like Liverpool that are well run buy players that don’t work out but they then sell them. What we do is buy someone, they don’t work out then they stay for years because we can’t get the price Levy wants. See Sissoko, Winks, Dier and all the rest, as such we then don’t get futher money or free wages to change things up then the squad goes stale. You won’t ever get perfect recruitment but if you are unable to even move players on is it a shock when we always end up stacked full of deadwood.

Spending was a huge issue for us. During Poch’s reign our net spend was close to zero, but the last two years we have spent net combined around just under £200m so that is improving but there is little point getting the likes of Conte or Jose spending around £100m a season when our rivals might hit 200-300m.

We need a plan and it’s clear we don’t have one, we go from project managers like Poch to quick fixes like Jose and back again. Uncle Joe however could help, he doesn’t have to give us free money but while Covid is on a bit of cash banked against future income flows from the stadium would be nice, he could even earn some interest. If we are getting Conte he will want elite players coming in and I don’t see that happening unless we get some support.

if we don’t want to spend heavy then just accept we need a project manager, get Ten Hag or someone. Your right we are spending more now but there is more to it than transfers, there is wages and above all for us there is taking a hit on a failed players and selling them below what we would like to make room for new players.

It’s a complex picture but if we do decide to go back down the Conte route, we would be wise to sell players to make space even if they are below what we would want and if needed borrow a bit from Joe Lewis till the stadium comes back on line fully. You don’t go for Conte without a big plan and a half decent wallet unless you want a huge meltdown.

below is our spending over the last 5-10 according to TransferMarket.

Premier League - Transfer balance and five-year comparison

In dieser Statistik werden die Transferbilanzen der letzten fünf bzw. zehn Jahre der Vereine der Premier League miteinander verglichen.

www.transfermarkt.com

Absolutely. It is both - buying and selling that is an issue.
See my recent post about Ndombele purchase + wages -> effect to club cost base in the future.

 

[Oracle]

My seat has a glass pane in front. I'm inclined to hang something on it.

What about Levy?

 

[C.P. Harris]

Man United were further ahead of the whole league than anyone in the 90s
Woolwich moved ahead as soon as Wenger came in.
Forget the theory Chelsea have no history, they were better than us in the 90s
We used to get owned by Villa regularly.
And yet we still managed to win more then than we have ever looked like winning now.

And we have had 5 seasons in the CL out of 20.
1/4 of the time ENIC have been here.

There was one season that we nearly got relegated in the Sugar era... also he had to bring back Klinsmann to save our asses another time.

Managers . Shreeves, Livermore, Clemence, Francis, Graham. Francis was considered a good appointment at the time, but the rest? Odd.

Oh and the Tube ticket dude.

Oh and and Ardiles