We'll go with what we've got''

[Canaryboy]

That will always be the question. Was there no money? Or was there no backing?

Well the accounts showed that we made a £6m profit that season.

So we can ascertain that this is the maximum additional amount that we could have spent (fees + wages) without making a financial loss. 

So there weren't much money, but there was enough to have signed a decent striker on loan. 

Whether Hughton should have been afforded the luxury of being permitted to keep his job + sign yet another striker is another debate, because all 4 of our strikers were already his signings. 

That £6m would have been carried over into our promotion season though. Could easily argue that we may not have gained promotion if we didn't carry that surplus?

 

[derehamyella]

while I agree we are an almost all round better squad this time.   but this old rallying call we have heard so many times, I always have a little concern in the back of my mind when I see articles like this one, true he maybe giving a vote of confidence, he may be playing down the desperation or he may be priming the supporters in readiness for Going with what we have got. 

I think back to Dean Ashton, there is a darn good chance his goals may have kept us had he been bought in earlier,  I would have hoped that lesson has not gone heeded.

January as we all know is not known for buying but for selling

 

[The Great Mass Debater]

Well the accounts showed that we made a £6m profit that season.

So we can ascertain that this is the maximum additional amount that we could have spent (fees + wages) without making a financial loss.

So there weren't much money, but there was enough to have signed a decent striker on loan.

Whether Hughton should have been afforded the luxury of being permitted to keep his job + sign yet another striker is another debate, because all 4 of our strikers were already his signings.

That £6m would have been carried over into our promotion season though. Could easily argue that we may not have gained promotion if we didn't carry that surplus?

There's something wrong surely if you're making a profit yet going down? I wonder how many teams made a loss and stayed up?

If there was money available and it wasnt put into the team when it was struggling that is very worrying for me. You take a decision on the manager - sack him, or back him. The board decided not to sack Hughton, meaning they trusted him - I dont see how they could say 'you're our guy, but you're not our guy'. Its either bad decision-making by the board, or perhaps there is a more bizarre suggestion (though I dont buy it) that perhaps Hughton didnt think we did need strengthening and was confident Yobo and Gutierrez was all he needed?

 

[Canaryboy]

That £6m profit does show that we didn't have the type of money required to sign somebody like Aldeirewald or Quagrigilla (probably spelt both of those names completely wrong)

Or perhaps there was money available in January but we simply failed to land any of our targets?

 

[The Great Mass Debater]

I think back to Dean Ashton, there is a darn good chance his goals may have kept us had he been bought in earlier

Seeing as we didnt win a single away game that season, yet went into the final game of the season outside the relegation zone, I wouldnt question that we'd have stayed up if we'd had a whole season with Ashton.

Huckerby was almost a singular threat in the first half of the season. he was double marked every game and was the most fouled player in the division I believe. When Ashton came in it somewhat released Huckerby. Similar to the situation when we were relegated under Hughton, if we had beaten West Brom in his last game we'd have stayed up. One game can be the difference, and with such tight margins, a single signing could make the difference in that one game. I remember the game Kei Kamara came on against Everton and changed the game. If 6m could have bought that we could have stayed up

 

[The Great Mass Debater]

Or perhaps there was money available in January but we simply failed to land any of our targets?

Not a mistake we were able to afford. Which I think is returning us to the original point of this thread. Can we afford not to strengthen? Thats two examples where we didnt invest properly and paid the ultimate price for it

 

[Canaryboy]

is returning us to the original point of this thread. Can we afford not to strengthen? Thats two examples where we didnt invest properly and paid the ultimate price for it

Not sure I understand your point here. 

One example is spending all of your budget in the summer and not having anything left for the January window. 

Which is just as much a case study for not blowing all of our war chest in one window. 

Hughton was backed massively in the summer, our largest ever transfer spend. What more could the club have done for him? 

 

[The Great Mass Debater]

What more could the club have done for him?

Let him spend the 6m? If that had acquired us a single player able to change a game, West Brom for example we'd have stayed up. They had the money it would seem, so either Hughton didnt want it (which would be unusual for a manager), or he wasnt allowed it, or we cocked up big style recruitment-wise and were left with noone.

Im not advocating spending for the sake of it, but if you had excess transfer funds at the end of the season and went down is that not a bit silly?

 

[Canaryboy]

Let him spend the 6m? If that had acquired us a single player able to change a game, West Brom for example we'd have stayed up. They had the money it would seem, so either Hughton didnt want it (which would be unusual for a manager), or he wasnt allowed it, or we cocked up big style recruitment-wise and were left with noone.

Im not advocating spending for the sake of it, but if you had excess transfer funds at the end of the season and went down is that not a bit silly?

And if we'd spent that £6m and still been relegated?  

That would have been £6m further we'd have to have found last season, and that would have meant either a player sale or less money spent. 

Admittedly we didn't spend any surplus very well last season anyway, wasted a lot of it on players like Miquel, but it could quite easily have meant having to have sold Nathan Redmond or Martin Olsson. 

£1.2m of it would have gone to HMRC as corporation tax. 

Besides, as catastrophic as relegation could have been, it may well have done us some good, we've come up strong with a reunified group, and perhaps staying up with Hughton and giving him another big wedge to spend last season (he'd have kept his job) would have left us playing in the Championship this season.

There were problems that a win at West Brom wouldn't have solved, it wouldn't have made Hughton any more tactically adept. We wouldn't have Alex Neil, we'd have endured another torturous season of watching RVW missing sitters, and Hoolahan wouldn't be here. 

So I'm not the slightest bit angry that the club didn't give that £6m to Hughton, I'm actually very pleased that we didn't, with the benefit of hindsight. Did anybody want to watch another season of his dross? 

£6m isn't a huge profit, its about 5%/6% of turnover, not too far off 'profit neutral'. I'm personally happy that we have a board who manage the club responsibility, with a small surplus, this is how West Brom and Stoke are run and that's precisely why the media tout them as role models.

Now if Delia and Co had elected to take that money out of the club as dividends to line their own pockets, then that would raise some serious questions.

 

[Canaryboy]

Let him spend the 6m?

What if the club hadn't actually budgeted to make a £6m profit, but had incorrectly estimated variable costs?

E.g. were paying Newcastle a fee for Guiterrez by the appearance, but he didn't really make any, and we had big goal bonuses written into the contracts of our strikers, who subsequently didn't really score any, and we were paying Yobo by the game, then he got injured. Or we were projected alcohol sales of £1m, but Norwich fans got so depressed a the dross on display they spent £2m?

Or to put it another way, in December the club may not have been expecting to declare a £6m profit for the financial year, which runs for the entire season, for one reason or another. Cash flow forecasts are just estimated. Expenditure for the season could have proven less than predicted, or Income for the season could have proven more than predicted. 

It is even possible that the entire £6m could have been budgeted for player, manager/coach and executive bonuses and transfer clauses in the event that we stayed up, perhaps the entire surplus only existed because we were relegated. 

 

[KeiranShikari]

If we can't improve the team then we won't buy players, thought this was the stance that we've had all summer.

 

[The Great Mass Debater]

We had big goal bonuses written into the contracts of our strikers, who subsequently didn't really score any

Oh well, at least one positive out of that situation!

For what its worth I still think Hughton would have been sacked if we'd have stayed up. He'd lost the popular fan-base by then and well before his sacking I think there was a sense of inevitibility about him leaving at the end of the season.

I just feel that January was such a crucial time for the fortunes of the club. Personally I think Hughton should have been sacked at the end of November (I forget now, but wasnt there a heavy tonking where that really should have been where he got the nudge). That would have given (probably Phelan) a new guy a month to assess the squad and then the January window to maybe sell and recruit. I always felt like the board didnt want to back Hughton in the January window, as you say, 'do we really want to give this guy more money?', but if you dont trust your manager, he really shouldnt be your manager.

We got lucky bouncing back first time. Without an inspired managerial change its very unlikely we'd have come back up and that could have set in a number of years of squad deterioration and decline. We got away with it, so many relegated clubs dont.

What worries me is that there should have been some serious alarm bells ringing in January. Yobo and Gutierrez wasnt the answer, so either they just didnt believe we were in trouble, or didnt want to trust the guy charged with saving us - which for me just means he shouldnt have remained the manager.

I wonder how many teams strengthened more poorly than we did in that window?

I just hope we've learned our lessons

 

[Din]

To be honest what we've seen in the first 3 games has been very promising. I would be disappointed if we don't bring in a new striker and a centre back, but I'd rather go with the squad we have than panic buy and upset the balance of the squad. I think we will sign a new striker, not sure about a centre back though, really hope we do.

 

[Wiz]

Staying up this season is vital with the massive increase in Sky's cash available soon.......try to do it on the cheap and we'll fail imo.

 

[The Great Mass Debater]

To be honest what we've seen in the first 3 games has been very promising. I would be disappointed if we don't bring in a new striker and a centre back, but I'd rather go with the squad we have than panic buy and upset the balance of the squad. I think we will sign a new striker, not sure about a centre back though, really hope we do.

The only thing that worries me a little is the points. I htink you said yourself if we maintain this we'll hit 40 points. We're unlikely to play a poorer side than Sunderland all season. The Palace game I think we hsould at least have had a point from and with a different ref we would have done, but nevertheless despite playing well we got no points. We wiped the floor with Stoke in the second half, but again an individual performance thwarted us. We're playing well but havent got the points from the games which means we're still only averaging 40 points. As long as this is balanced by us getting points we dont deserve when we're playing poorly we could be in for a tough old season. Getting relegated is all about not taking the points your performances deserve. But I agree not much to criticize so far, other than our luck