Paul Conway on Football Heaven

Southampton, incidentally a club with a renowned academy, bought for £14m in 2009, sold in 2017 to Chinese investors for £210m.

If football clubs went on the market more often you'd probably also see significant returns for teams like Stoke, Bournemouth, Leicester, but nobody sells a profitable team.

 

While overall I agree with most of your post, I would point out that if Burnley can qualify for Europe and Wigan can win the FA Cup, it isn't that much of a stretch to suggest that we could do it as well if properly run. Becoming a side which consistently challenges for major honours is very unlikely I agree, but I think an exceptional season from time to time could happen if everything aligns.

 

We ll end up like Watford.

 

Information I saw suggests he has personally invested over 100 million since taking over.

 

I hope not. I want to see a team mostly made up of young British players. I genuinely have no interest in seeing a team of Italians running round in Barnsley shirts even if it was in the Premier League..

 

Since getting to the premiership he's spent what they have made so it's not come out of his personal wealth. He bulked at cost for both Defoe and the Brentford top scorer so got a division three cheap option. In the years before top flight football he hardly spent a thing.

 

From the Huddersfield Examiner in early 2015 or 2016:

"Owner-chairman Hoyle is shown to have pumped in £37,236,954 in the past six years. Without his contributions, instead of having a playing budget of around £10m per year, it would be around half that."

Agree that Wagner had a massive impact too.

 

I’m talking about before they got there.

 

I am until proven differently
sounds kind of perfect no ?
whats your take on it
Are you Gullible or cynical ,untrusting or a believer ?

 

I'm a bit cynical. All the things about the running of the club sounded brilliant until they said George Miller was the number 1 transfer target hmmm?

 

I think there are probably 2 reasons for that.

1. They have been in charge there longer.
2. Recent bad press re their CEO.

Truth is Nice are doing fairly well.

 

Nice aren't doing as well as they were the season before the takeover. They finished 4th and are currently 9th. If you mean financially, they have a transfer surplus of £30 million plus this season and didn't buy a single player in the January transfer window.

 

I don't give a flying **** about Nice. Comparing a third tier English club to a side in the top French league is pointless.

It seems they've learned from the mistakes of January-June '18 and hopefully with promotion will be able to use the experience of last season to ensure we progress.

As always, the proof of the pudding will be in the eating, but things seem pretty positive since the appointment of Stendel in the summer.

 

You buy a championship club that is breaking even for one reason and one reason only - the hope that you can get them to the premier league more cheaply than the riches that the premier league grants.

If you’re hoping to make money you don’t buy a club if your ambition for that club is that it will be able to comfortably survive in the championship. The market tells you that. Only two clubs broke even and the rest were losing close to £10 million.

If you’re hoping to make money on a championship club there’s only one way you’ll do that - promotion to the premier league and the 100s of millions that come with it.

I trust that they’re putting every pound back into the club, as at this stage the very best you can hope for is not to lose money. And stagnating in league 1 / championship is not going to make you a good (if any) return on your investment. Every pound needs to be reinvested back into the club at this stage to build the foundations for a potential shot at the premier league in 7/8/9/10+ years time.

Once we’re in the premier league (if that ever happens) then every pound will not be reinvested back into the club. That’s how they’ll make their money. But that’s a very long way down the line.

It’s a high risk strategy, because you’re investing in something that may never give you a decent return on your investment, and if it does it will be a long way down the line. But the financials must make sense.

Separate from the financials alone is the reputation that comes from running a successful football club. You can run a multi-billion turnover Chinese company, but that’s not going to give you the reputation, and potentially open the doors, that running one (or two) top flight European teams might. It’s also a great platform for advertising your other businesses.

Of course there’s the enjoyment too. Running a football club is something completely different to running any other business. It’s a challenge they may relish.

 

Ken Bates did it at Chelsea and then once or twice at Leeds.

 

Mandaric did it 3 times.

 

I sense a little bit of cynical suspicion from you Jay, that's not meant to be offensive and you're probably quite right to be of that mindset. However, if folk try to see bad signals in every interview or report it gives the owners very little chance of being understood or convincing.
Personally I thought he put his ideas across fairly well but lacked clarity in certain areas. What I took away was the short mid-term plan was to build a strong, steady mid-table championship club with aspirations to, after a revised business plan and strategy, higher things. They also look as though there is a strong desire to remove our "little old Barnsley" tag that is probably keeping a lot of the potential local support away. I'm significantly more hopeful about the future than I was under Patrick and very much less afraid about what would have happened under a certain P. Doyle
Each to his own I guess.