data-ad-format=”horizontal”>

I think we need some perspective on the club’s situation

Originally a forum thread by Goat

I’ll probably get flamed to death for this, but here we go.

I think some folk are getting a little too paranoid about the club at the moment, which obviously will not be helped by the bad results.

If we take a step back, there’s nothing to indicate that Carver is keeping the job other than some Twitter rumours, which as we all know, can’t be trusted. His win percentage is abysmal, he’s nearly getting us relegated, and he’s a definite downgrade on Pardew, so it’s unlikely really.

As I’ve said before, Hughton was sacked for Pardew because the board wanted a better manager with a better track record to take us forward, so there’s an indication there that they do care about the quality of our manager.

It also makes business sense to hire someone who will take us further up the table and grab the extra £750,000 per position increase. The club would make far more money doing that than saving a few quid on a manager’s wages, and it would considerably help to avoid the catastrophic impact of relegation.

For the financial situation, yes, we made a big profit, but the profit announced in March of this year is for the 2013-14 financial year. The only period after that financial year ended when the transfer window was open was last summer, when we spent £38million. We then sold players for around £18million, leaving a net spend of £20million. That seems remarkably close to the amount of profit we made in the financial year which was recently announced, doesn’t it?

Since the club has already said that it much prefers to spend in the summer instead of the January window, there’s nothing to take from the lack of expenditure in the January just gone. The real indicator here is what we’re going to spend in summer, and how much profit the club has made in this current financial year which is about to end shortly. However, we won’t get the figures on how much money we’ve made this year until next year around March 2016.

My point here is that, apart from Kinnear’s reign, we have a track record of spending. We’ve spent almost £90million in the last 3 seasons. All that profit we made from the 13-14 financial year? It was actually spent on Pérez (£1.6million), de Jong (£6million), Cabella (£12million), Rivière (£6.3million), Janmaat (£5million), Darlow (£3.5million), and Lascelles (£3.5million). That’s almost £38million immediately spent after that financial year ended, and remember that we pay up front and in cash.

I’m not saying that we won’t appoint Carver, or that we’re guaranteed to spend money, but I honestly see no clear indicator of why we’d suddenly hire one of the worst managers we’ve ever had and fail to spend anything. It may happen, but it may not. There’s certainly not enough to go on to just presume that everything will go wrong.

If the club keeps up the consistent pattern of spending, and including the new TV deal money, we could be in for a nice surprise. Everything people talk about up until we see what actually happens is just pure speculation heightened by our dismal performances.

I’m saying all of this purely for the benefit of some of you, because some folk seem to be really stressing themselves out right now when it may not be warranted.

Do you agree that things might not be that bad after this season? Have your say in our discussion thread.

The following two tabs change content below.

Cal

Admin at ToonForum
I'm the editor of this blog and the admin of the forum it's attached to. When I'm not busy with these, I work in games.