Watkins going down well at Bristol

While I agree with this in general, the call made sense from Patrick's point of view. He needed to sell the club in a limited period of time, and if the gamble didn't work, we wouldn't have been an attractive proposition for any buyer. Gutted squad, no premier league money, and no cash in the bank either.

I genuinely believe Patrick took the call with the long term future of the club in mind. As painful as Jan 2017 was, we could be in a far worse position right now.

 

I don't disagree with anything you've just put forward. But my posts in this thread were specifically regarding selling players in January 2017.

 

Fair enough. Just posted my theory on that one above this post. I might be well off the mark, but given that Patrick always had the best interest of the club at heart, that's my hypothesis.

 

That is the most laughable post I have ever seen on here.

 

The players we sold in January 2017 and the money we received from that was a pittance compared to the rest of the money that has come in the last couple of years or so. We're up to about £30 million now, January 2017 constituted about 10% of that.

 

According to the link below, we sold players worth £6.5 million in Jan which is significant. We've earned less than £20 million in the last 4 seasons combined, not counting sell ons (which we don't really know accurately). Even if the sell ons added another £10 million, we still earned more than 20% of that £30 million in Jan 2017 alone. If Patrick wanted to show cash in the bank, then Jan 2017 would have been a significant contributor to that.

This doesn't even include purchases, where we've spent close to £8 million in the last 4 seasons, which chips away at cash in bank. Without Jan 2017, I don't think the club would look as attractive. Not even going into the entire issue of keeping disgruntled players who don't want to stay, etc because that would be impossible to quantify.

While it's always going to be a question of "what if", I still believe Patrick made the right decision for the club long term. You might disagree, but I don't think we'll ever have consensus because we don't know how things would've played out if we'd have kept the players.

http://www.transferleague.co.uk/swansea/english-football-teams/barnsley-transfers

 

You can't discount the sell ons as you have done. The John Stones sell on was the single most significant bit of business in the entire history of our club.

If what we did was in the best interest of the club, where's the ******* money? I will keep on repeating this until people start asking questions. It's bizarre that no one is.

 

I'm not discounting the sell ons, I'm assuming a little over £10 million for them (£12.5 million to be exact). Without them, we've only sold worth £17.5 million in the last 4 seasons. Of which £6.5 million was in a single transfer window in Jan 2017.

While I don't know how much cash the club needs to function over 4 years, I'd assume a significant amount of that has gone into running the club. Apart from the £8 million that has gone into buying players over the last 4 years. Football clubs aren't cheap to run.

 

Of course they're not. But at what point do we start quoting how much we received from TV money and sponsorship and season tickets and gate receipts? I don't for a second believe that's enough to cover our expenditure. I know it isn't. But when are people going to start questioning that the little bit we had to dip into to keep the club running and what we've spent on transfer fees is nowhere near what we've recouped from player sales?

You seem like an intelligent bloke (maybe a woman, I don't know). Why are you spending time arguing with me, when it's all speculation, when even your own figures show a monstrous discrepancy between what we've spent and what we've brought in. Ask questions of the club, ffs, please do that.

 

Well the money is either in the club's account or has been taken out by previous or new owners.

 

I agree. Don't you think it's a problem if it's one of the the two latter options and wouldn't you like to find why and for what reason if it is?

 

I asked it a few times but was told I was ungrateful and disrespectful.

 

I’m not trying to argue with you, especially since I agree with your core point that we should be asking questions. My disagreement was around tertiary points - primarily that I think the simplest explanation is probably the right one here (the money is going towards running the club) and the fact that Patrick was both a fan and owner, and so he took the decision that he though was best for the club long term. We can agree to disagree on those, I agree with your larger point.

 

Very much so but I doubt we ever will.

 

None of us know exactly where money has gone. We don't fully understand the costs involved in running the club.
Let's assume that Patrick Cryne, having put a considerable amount of his money into the club for years with absolutely no guarantee of ever seeing it back decided to take a profit on selling it. So what?
Would you have risked a significant amount of your wealth to keep the club afloat? I don't think I would.
Secondly. Why do you think the new owners bought us? Philanthropy?

 

If we made 6.5M in selling players Jan 2017 and this led to relegation losing 6M then its false economy. However we stayed up. The transfer window Summer 2017 cost us. However we also have to factor that players wanted to leave in the Winter. To be fair to Watkins, he saw his contract out. If he was offered an extension prior to the fire sale he may have stayed, who knows. One ting for use while he has probably earned more money since leaving, he certainly hasn't endured himself to the Norwich or Brizzle fans. Maybe a player that needs the perfect fit for his style to shine.

 

One factor that will affect the "cash balance" is staged payments of transfer fees. Can only speculate what proportion of the total fees we have received to date, quite common now for payments to be equally spread through the duration of the contract. Didn't Mawson sign a four year contract with Swansea? So potentially, based on a £5.0 million fee, we could have received £2.5 or £3.75 so far.

 

Watkins was never the best of footballers but was an intelligent player, versatile & incredibly hard working.

By joining Norwich & then Bristol he’s lost that team spirit he was part of, he’s become a fringe player & has had big contracts which probably means he never has to work again you take a lot of that desire & hunger away.

On January 17, we should’ve stood firm & kept the players. We’d already made a fortune that season through promotion, & the Mawson & Stones fees.

The players should’ve been offered a bonus for making the play offs & huge bonuses for promotion. If we’d got up we’d have had huge guaranteed income for at least 4 seasons & could’ve matched whatever the other teams were offering our players.

We also ended up spending two lots of agents fees. Not only did we end up replacing several players with loanees in January but then we had to replace them all again in the summer. God knows what Matty James for example would’ve been taking from us each week.