Zero Debt

[YidDriver]

I disagree strongly with letting the "economics" of transactions be the only question.

How the club chooses to handle its players and transfers is hugely important for other reasons:

- I think it is important for motivation and the whole atmosphere of the club to show the playing staff that every player in the squad gets multiple chances and that they are not simply cattle (for the same reason I am strongly opposed to freezing players out, critisising individual players and demoting players to train with the youth team)
- And just maybe the team can get better as a team by traing together for thousands of hours rather than hundreds of hours

Besides on the "economics" model:

- Some formcurves can be long. A worst case scenario is buying players for good money and then systematically keep selling them at exactly the moment they are playing the worst and their values are lowest.
- The club decides to swap manager or the current manager decides to change the system - and voila, the out of favour player is up for the job (Fellaini..)

:adelol:

Let's face it, that is not how the world works. It is like staying in an abusive relationship for years and years hoping it will get better.

Like it or not, football is a cut-throat business. All this loyalty to players and patience to players by clubs is bullshit! The moment almost 90% of our players get a chance to jump ship to a better club with a higher salary, they will not think twice.

We can't stick with Paulinho hoping he will come good till the end of his contract. We have had enough time to assess his abilities. Poch and his team surely have seen that for the brand of football that they are trying, Paulinho is not a good fit. So we need to get rid and take a chance on someone else that will be a good fit.

I see plenty of players in that bracket, players who are not good enough for Spurs mainly due to their playing style and lack of concentration. Guys like Capoue, Paulinho, Chiriches, Ade, Soldado can all be sold and it completely doesn't affect our first team.

Every transfer made should be to improve the first team. You don't buy players to improve the bench. You buy players that can push the first teamers to the bench so that they step up to reclaim that spot!

 

[Yorkshire_Spurs]

Yet this summer when someone suggests that we spend 25m on a player I guarantee there will be a response saying, "Do you really want us to do a Leeds?!"

I think we can spend £50mil this summer.

We have enough shit to make near that sum in sales if we can shift them.

 

[Yorkshire_Spurs]

As Yorkshire_Spurs said we should be making £50 million from about 7-8 sales this summer.

The main issue as far as I can see is updating our purchasing model to reflect a team chasing top 4 and not just surviving relegation, we have to move away from knock down haggle deals like stambouli and Fazio and look at only top quality.

Two £30 million players are more likely to get us top four than 5 £5 million average players. Most Top 4 teams have about 4-5 top class players they can rely on, we have perhaps 2-3 of that level.

Yeah agree. As we have seen the academy can do just as well, if not better than these cheaper buys. Something like the below in my opinion could allow us to compete better.

Wimmer £5mil
Alderwield £10mil
Ings £5mil

+ 2 £20-25mil players. CM / AM

£50-60mil spent.

Ali / Fredericks / Yedlin / Pritchard etc to come in also.

 

[Yorkshire_Spurs]

Yorkshire_Spurs Thankyou for your order sir . Do you want to go large on any of that.

Fuck yeah!

 

[John Thomas]

I voted no in the poll. The fact we are the only club alongside Burnley to have no debt makes Levy`s strategy of refusing to strengthen the squad in consistent transfer windows even more difficult to accept. Cunt

Edit: Actually Burnley do have a debt of 8million quid. Cunt.

 

[Fidel Castro]

"debt free trophy " awarded by the school of Faginomics .
Is that the only one the messiah Bill Nick didn't win ?

 

[Melspurnian]

Lol at Chelsea's description. 600million more in debt than anyone else yet for them its "players such as fabregas and Costa have turned the club into a powerhouse on the pitch" no fucking mention of their billion debt whilst clubs with 1/9 of that are getting slammed

 

[Tomo]

In reference to the poll are you happy with the transfer strategy I voted no. While I must commend Levy and the board on the stunning success of our youth policy, the appointment of Poch, the development of out training facilities and pressing ahead the new stadium I cannot say that our recent transfers have been upto standard.

We bought 7 players worth around £100 million and only Eriksen was a genuine success while Chadli and Lamela were ok, the others Capoue, Chirches, Paulinho, Soldado have totally failed, for me whoever is too blame (Baldini or Levy etc) that is not the sign of a good transfer policy. Then of course we have Stambouli and Fazio who were good enough to be squad players but it seem little else.

I am all for buying young English talents and am perfectly fine with the like of Dele Alli for £5 million and would not be against more young talents but as we have what seems like a bundle of young English talents ready to step up I see little point in continuing to buy average 25 year olds bench warmers from elsewhere.

I know this is a point I have made previously but it seems like the missing piece of the jigsaw for us as a club. If we buy 3-4 Fazio/Chadli level players during the summer which is our recent transfer model we will end up in the same situation next year all wondering why we didn't break top 4. There is a great danger as well in being an unambitious side with one amazing outfield player in Kane just like we were with Bale and then the whole thing repeats, a wonder player at an 'average side' and over time pressure for a move increases and back to square one.

We now have Mitchell so hopefully we will buy better than with Baldini, we have or should have about £50 million in the summer from sales, we need to now abandon the cheap deals on second rate players and be prepared if Poch wants to pay top buck to bring in the goodies, only then will we bring all the pieces together IMO. If Bale does get sold and wants a return for £75 million and we have already made £50 million surely it cannot be beyond us to bring him back and have Kane and Bale ripping Premier League defences to pieces. I know Bale will probably stay or if he goes probably United will get him, but honestly just one signing in Bale will be better than 4 average signings for us as a club in terms of on the pitch success and making a statement to the World of who we are.

I don't know who is our best target, but whoever Poch and the team feel is best it's time as a club to not short change the manager anymore. If Levy is able to resolve what I feel is our flawed transfer policy then as a club I will say we are now being well run on all counts. Right now Levy and the club get a D from me for transfers, our weakest area.

 

[Cripps14]

Or maybe, show just a little more ambition in the transfer market to give us a fighting chance of reaching the top 4 rather than sacking the manager every time we don't. .

We've showed ambition in the transfer market. We've splashed some cash. Soldado, Lamela, Paulinho all weren't exactly cut price deals. Then there were the likes of Darren Bent, Alan Hutton and David Bentley.
We could go right back to Sergei Rebrov. At times we've shown ambition.

Bale between 5-10mil, Modric roughly 16m, Berbatov around 10m, Lloris was 5-10m Euro, Carrick around 4m. King, free, Kane, free.

Spending large sums on players doesn't guarantee success. Buying the right players is much more important.

 

[John Thomas]

my eyes have seen the glory of the balance sheet at white hart lane ochsulk:it's not as catchy

"Audere est Facere" ....... TO DARE IS TO DO....... Never in the history of English football has the motto of a football club been so abused and misrepresented by its owners.

 

[Furball man]

Is West Ham's debt being cleared due to the Stadium sale...

So they will have minimal assets but will be debt free?

Correct me if I am wrong.

They'll clear the debt 10 fold , have you seen the price of Lego!?!

I'm sure someone on here can confirm this

 

[ILSpur]

Where did I say don't accept market value? I'm complaining because I believe Levy sometimes won't sell because market value is a lot lower than what we paid for a player. If a player should be sold, fucking sell him for what you can get. (AKA market value.) Not what he "should" be worth based on what you paid. We can't let our ego get in the way of doing what makes sense.

My comment was only partially directed at you, but more to the general attitude of people who want us to sell players for peanuts because they are doing shit for us. The point is that the market value for some of these players IS higher than we sometimes think. We often have a short-sighted outlook on the player, the perfect example is the one mentioned before, Soldado. He has the talent and ability to still be a prolific goalscorer, just not for us. Is his value the full-value we paid for him, most likely no, but his market value surely isn't as low as some other people think because of the reason that he could go onto somewhere else and light things up again. It's the same thing with Ade.

And while I am generally more supportive of Levy and ENIC than a lot of people, I think we sometimes are afraid to sell players that turned out to be shit for a loss because there is a perception it reflects poorly on the club or something. The truth is not selling for what we can get (market value) and getting out of a bad situation is the right thing to do frequently.

What Levy does, sometimes to an irritating level for us, is stick by what he interprets as a fair market price for a player. The frustrating thing for many people who often slate him for this is that we often get a very good price for many of the players we have offloaded in years past. The difference between what we think a player is worth and what he has been able to sell them for is incredible at times. Just look at some of the sales we completed in the past few years.

Livermore 8 million
Falque 5 million??
Sandro 6 million
Naughton 5 million?????
Dempsey 5.8 million
Pienaar 4.5 million
Bassong 4 million
Palacios 8 million
Pavlyuchenko 8 million
Zokora 7.75 million
Bent 16.5 million


Granted, aside from Bent, none of these are huge transfers, but we thought that we might have to pay people to take some of these players. Hell, we bought Pienaar for 3MM and sold him back for 4.5.

I get what you and others are saying, but it's really hard for me to be too critical of Levy for not just dumping players for whatever we can get. If you were to even reduce the selling price of each of those players listed above by 1MM, that's 11MM just given up on.

 

[n17troops]

Yorkshire_Spurs Thankyou for your order sir . Do you want to go large on any of that.

 

[John Thomas]

Oh Well, I suppose when we finish the season empty handed, outside the top 4, and Levy sells Lloris for another tidy profit, and opposing fans ridicule us as a selling club who constantly fail to deliver, we can hit back with the killer punch that at least we won the Debt Free Trophy

 

[57 varieties]

It's been in the news at a couple of places. We had debt somewhere around 30-ish million and with the profit, we have decided to completely close the debt. And I don't believe anyone can fake profits and make claims that debts have been zeroed out without substantial proof.

And while I don't agree with the transfer policy of ENIC so far, I think they do deserve kudos for what they have done with minimal net investment.

We can still get rid of useless deadwood and get in decent players who will improve the team! Hopefully this zero debt makes the board a little bit more risk taking and they get some good players in.

zero debt also rings bells for potential investors/ buyers!.

 

[Blanchflower]

I said around 60m

Yeah and that was in 2013 - read it again, it's not that difficult......"The Club had net funds of £3.2m"

 

[Greaves357_bestever]

The sale of their current shit hole generated something like £30-40 million ( I posted the correct figure on the Stadium thread )

They are obligated to be "Debt free" before they take their 25 match day a year lease.

I can only assume the revenue from their soon to be Champions League winning run might well clear the majority of the remaining debt.

It's a very Good job they don't operate on a "kids for a quid" policy to sell their existing stadium out otherwise it's going to be hard to flog those seats 60 meters away from the running track......no debt / no assest / no problem

I would expect the rest of the debt to be cleared by the owners. As the club is worth now a lot more than what they paid for it, they can easily recover any loans/shares they have invested in the club, ifthey sell.

Meanwhile they are currently running at a profit according to the Mail 'infographic' (£15.3m pre-tax last season) so they can presumably start using some of that up to pay off the debt as well. Incidentally the Mail's analysis is inaccurate. West Ham don't need a partial sale to clear their debt, because AFAIK, the owners can clear the debt as I've outlined, just as ENIC have cleared our debt.

Of course the club may sell to help clear the debt, but they don't have to.

The OS is a massive lottery win for the Hammers as a club in terms of money, at the taxpayers' expense of course. Whether it turns out to be good for the fans and the club in general is harder to call.

IF they can use the OS as part of the bait to land a City/Chelsea style owner, then that will be be a game changer, and indeed they will in all likelihood be challenging for CL places. While they stayed at the Boleyn they were no threat to us, the OS potentially changes that, IMHO.

Indeed effectively the OS has already been a 'game changer' for West ham, in that without the carrot of this taxpayer-funded windfall, it may well be that the current owners wouldn't have bought the club, or have pumped the money into the club they have to keep them (albeit with a relegation in between) in the Prem.

No OS and the Hammers may have gone into administration, and there's certainly a good chance they'd now be in the Championship. I've no interest in athletics or the Olympic games, but I curse the day London got the Olympics as it's helped out West Ham so much, and indirectly maybe also harmed us as well already, given our failed Stratford bid. But that's another debate for another thread I think.

 

[shawry1882]

6th on and off the field.

 

[Tomo]

We've showed ambition in the transfer market. We've splashed some cash. Soldado, Lamela, Paulinho all weren't exactly cut price deals. Then there were the likes of Darren Bent, Alan Hutton and David Bentley.
We could go right back to Sergei Rebrov. At times we've shown ambition.

Bale between 5-10mil, Modric roughly 16m, Berbatov around 10m, Lloris was 5-10m Euro, Carrick around 4m. King, free, Kane, free.

Spending large sums on players doesn't guarantee success. Buying the right players is much more important.

I agree with that to some extent especially regarding the Bale money, the problem is not that we spent the money it's that we spent the money on the wrong players. We have just about the worst history when it comes to splashing the cash which might be why Levy is relutant and wants to find cheap deals, he has been burned alot, not sure if that our scouts or Baldini did an awful job or the reason but it happened.

Most of the best players/gamer changers do cost at least 20-30 mil, Sanchez, David Silva, Matic etc. Not sure we have the name or reputation to attract those indivduals in the first instance but my point is just because we have done shit homework in the past doesn't mean looking for the best quality even if it mean 20-30 mil should be ruled out. Vietto, Depay, Lacazette would almost certainly improve us and would be at around those prices, it's unlikely we would get that level of quality below that price tag unless Mitchell and our scouts are really good at unearthing jems (hope so) or of course more of our youth players do the Harry Kane.

 

[Millbanks]

I voted no in the poll. The fact we are the only club alongside Burnley to have no debt makes Levy`s strategy of refusing to strengthen the squad in consistent transfer windows even more difficult to accept. Cunt

Edit: Actually Burnley do have a debt of 8million quid. Cunt.

We've spent a fortune in recent seasons. Forget net spend, just because you sell £100m worth of players, that doesn't justify spending £150m on incoming players. Refusing the strengthen the squad...fuck me, out squad chops and changes so often it's actually rather frustrating. It'd be nice to see some familiar names cropping up year after year in my opinion.

Re the poll, it's quite interesting just how big a backing ENIC are getting for their transfer strategy. There's an awful lot of Spurs fans it seems, if this poll is an indicator, with the fiasco of the 'Magnificent 7' summer of Bale, and the inactivity of last winter. Absolutely baffling to me, but each to their own, etc.

In reference to the poll are you happy with the transfer strategy I voted no. While I must commend Levy and the board on the stunning success of our youth policy, the appointment of Poch, the development of out training facilities and pressing ahead the new stadium I cannot say that our recent transfers have been upto standard.

We bought 7 players worth around £100 million and only Eriksen was a genuine success while Chadli and Lamela were ok, the others Capoue, Chirches, Paulinho, Soldado have totally failed, for me whoever is too blame (Baldini or Levy etc) that is not the sign of a good transfer policy. Then of course we have Stambouli and Fazio who were good enough to be squad players but it seem little else.

Most of our purchases were lauded as exceptional at the time. We didn't expect Soldado to dry up, Paulinho to be so lazy, Lamela to get injured...nor did Levy or Baldini. They were unforeseen circumstances that no one would've predicted. It's absolutely baffling to me that our owner (who chooses to sanction transfers in order to keep a handle on the finances of the club - NOT to assess talent) can be apportioned blame for players' bad form, when they were excellent for their previous clubs.

If Levy/Baldini is signing players that managers don't ask for, then that is another matter, but there is no evidence of this. The Moutinho failure could have been any number of reasons, including him and/or his agent being greedy (which a move to Monaco would suggest).

Clubs don't get their first choice players all the time. What we need to stop doing is (in agreement with you Tomo ) signing the likes of Capoue and Stambouli, who are just a waste of £5-10 million. I'd rather see Carroll given a go than these carefree time wasters that could care less for the club.

I voted yes, by the way. Being debt free, regular European football and a state of the art stadium on the way, we're in excellent shape for the future, whether that be under ENIC or otherwise.