The Brentford love-in

They play good football on a stretched budget. They have assets in terms of players to meet any shortfalls due to excellent recruitment. They have taken a risk but it’s a balanced one. Investment in new stadium creates opportunity and ability to receive diversified income streams. We shouldn’t gamble to their level but do need to push the recruitment up a notch or two. It’s all about balance and very difficult to get it right

 

He’s not said that at all.

What he’s saying is clubs shouldn’t be massively overspending.

The proper way to get up is to be well run like Burnley & to not gamble the long term future of the club for a premier league push.

 

As I mentioned elsewhere Dane has recently referred to redeveloping the West Stand, incorporating a bar, as a priority for the owners. Caveat is that first they need to own the land.

 

Wrong - he dosen’t want clubs like Brentford or Bournemouth and presumably Burnley to be in the Premier.
On that line of thinking I suppose he dosen’t want Barnsley in that league either.
Total bonkers!!!

 

When did I say that?!

 

No if you read what he’s put he’s talking about clubs that have overspent.

He’s talked about clubs like Brentford & Bournemouth with huge wage bills not ones like Burnley, Huddersfield & Blackpool that got there without risking the long term future of the club.

 

It is what it is, if some people would be happy for us to pay the wages Brentford are & racking the debts up like they are then fair enough but I’d be shitting myself if it was Barnsley when we only get 13,000 or so through the gates.

They paid £5.5m for a 28 year old Pontus Jansson on allegedly £30,000 a week. That’s a huge contract for a club that gets 11,000ish through the gates.

 

Wonder what their P & L looks like. I understand that the owner is a fan who made money on the stock market. They have a spreadsheet and they hold out for top money when they sell and buy bargains like Pinnock. They are an exciting team and I’m sorry they didn’t make it. In truth though I only really care about us staying up and thriving next year.

 

I think the difference is everyone knows Fulham recklessly overspend & no one defends it but with Brentford we constantly hear them been made out to be some plucky underdog as if they’ve got a wage structure like ours & Luton’s

 

The other thing is it’s reckless to put your squad on huge wages when you’ve only got small attendances as you can’t be reliant on getting huge transfer fees.

A players only ever a bad tackle or something coming up on a medical from going from your biggest asset to your biggest liability. You’ve only got to look at Wigan with Robinson in January.

Say Jansson starts ageing & declining in ability, Watkins suffers a bad injury that keeps him out a few months & Benrahma doesn’t get the transfer he wants & his performances go downhill you suddenly have 3 huge contracts on the books with no big fees been offered for them & you’re in a financial mess.

Now that’s probably pushing it for all 3 to happen at once but that’s the massive gamble you take when you pay such huge wages.

We’ve seen ourselves how quickly players can go downhill after injuries or just a loss of form. Remember us turning down about a million from Palace for Matt Done & then letting him leave on a free, supposedly turning down big fees for Thiam only for him to leave on a free. Colace didn’t get the move he wanted & ended up sulking & been a shadow of the player he was in his first two seasons with us.

I just believe the club should be in a position whereby if it can’t get transfer fees for it’s players it can still afford to pay the wages without substantial losses.

 

On that basis, we're also a poorly run club.

Its a very difficult balance isn't it? If we see a wide impact on the ability of clubs to sign players for considerable fees, we're absolute buggered and our business model is flawed.

I don't think we've any players (maybe Woodrow aside) who would get a premier move at this moment. So as a result, we're highly reliant on fellow championship clubs buying a player or two while trying to preserve the rest of the squad (after natural wastage) to develop more til they are.

But you're right, a quick run of "bad luck" can hugely shape your playing fortunes and future revenues. The season we effectively lost Butterfield, Drinkwater and Vaz Te in January for only a token fee (for Vaz Te) had us drop like a stone.

Maybe even highlights more to try and build a prudent squad for today with a little development for tomorrow rather than have a full squad of kids, many of which you cant actually play.

 

Thats the sad thing though isn't it, nobody criticises Fulham either. Just like Brighton weren't. Just like nobody is really paying attention at Readings plight. And I think its largely the fault of the media and TV. They don't care how indebted the competition teams are, they just want the best "product" and to hell with tomorrow.

Maybe this is the start of a long long overdue correction... or media may have even more money to throw at the next TV deal and it continues to spiral out of control?

Its like the worst housing market on steroids there ever was.

 

But I don’t think we need to sell to survive or if we do we certainly don’t need to sell many or generate huge fees.

We’ve probably got a very similar amount of TV money & match day revenue as Brentford but less than half or maybe even a third of the wages

 

It’s why striking the balance is very difficult. Also in terms of fairness the Brentford recruitment model is much better than Wigan’s or ours. Selling 2 players this year will get the 50 million quid.

 

We'll not know this season figures for a good while, but we've got a massive squad. And our commercial revenue streams are very poor. I wouldn't be surprised if we're losing £1m-£2m before transfer fees per year (though its not easy to judge with the yoyoing of recent years)

 

That’s exactly the sort of thing we should go nowhere near.

 

The thing they appear to be very good at is getting value for their sold players, allowing them to invest increasingly more in the replacements.

Apparently, Ollie Watkins release clause has now hit £18m, from a previous figure of £10m, as a result of yesterday's game. That's a fair old chunk of money to reinvest in a system where they generally increase the value of their assets.

It's this aspect of what they do well that I'd like to see us replicate with our own transfer policy. Get value from assets on the field, increase their value significantly, cash in on their inevitable sale, rinse and repeat.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/53662774