Bournemouth

[Mr Popodopolous]

4 minutes ago, formerly known as ivan said:

I guess the “bigger” club will always be up for debate.

I would say their few years in the premier league outweigh anything we have ever achieved.

Would also question how well they were run. Lots of talk about how they got to the premier league. Fact is, they did.

Exactly, Bournemouth as well run..

They cheated when it was far easier to do so, reaped the benefits ever since. Of course that will entail some aspects of being well run but the initial cheating  underpinned their next decade financially speaking, combined with a wealthy owner of course...all gives a huge FFP advantage.

Edited April 29 by Mr Popodopolous

[fisherrich]

5 hours ago, robinforlife2 said:

I have a strong feeling that next season will finally be our year. The way we have finished the season, shows that pressing the trigger on Manning early, would have been wrong. We are bouncing and hopefully we will carry this into next season, especially as we have 2 exciting players to come in and I've no doubt we will sign 2/3 more in the summer. I've got a really good feeling about next season. Finally things are slotting in to place. 

We will sign 2/3 and then sell 2/3 and around we go again. No progressive plan/structure in place and no ambition. Fact.

[Numero Uno]

2 hours ago, Mallorcan Red said:

yeah I am agreeing. Lansdown and co - and all the rest - have a true poisoned chalice in owning an EFL club in these crazy times. There is another thread about gambling in football being a negative force but the biggest gamblers are the club owners themselves. €350,000,000 and counting in our case.

That’s a bit simplistic. Steve, as I understand it anyway, has invested circa £200-£250m in Bristol Sport over the best part of 25 years, a big chunk on the stadium and training grounds. It’s a lot of money but if we had say three owners in that time would we be saying they had chucked money at it? It’s £10m per year and not all invested in players. A parachute club gets £90m just for failing. Certainly for a good five or six years now we’ve kept the spending on first team players to minimum levels (relatively speaking).

[Mr Popodopolous]

4 minutes ago, Numero Uno said:

That’s a bit simplistic. Steve, as I understand it anyway, has invested circa £200-£250m in Bristol Sport over the best part of 25 years, a big chunk on the stadium and training grounds. It’s a lot of money but if we had say three owners in that time would we be saying they had chucked money at it? It’s £10m per year and not all invested in players. A parachute club gets £90m just for failing. Certainly for a good five or six years now we’ve kept the spending on first team players to minimum levels (relatively speaking).

I'd say since 2020, or 2021..we had the big go for it phase under Johnson and Ashton, spent £25m in Additions to Intangible Assets in 2019-20.

The Championship is frankly a bit of a financial basketcase, Parachute clubs bot only have a £40-45m advantage in TV money minimum on relegation but a further £22m per PL season in FFP headroom.

Not sure what b is total is with debt plus loans but good though it is, it has also been surpassed by others..Shahid Khan is one albeit PL and Parachute cash enables bigger spending potential, Bloom another. Think Bloom was £406m in 15 years. Albeit the Amex and their Training Facilities and other facilities will have cost.

Edited April 29 by Mr Popodopolous

[SecretSam]

16 hours ago, bristol red said:

Best points tally in their history and in the Premiership .. with arguably 3 of our best past players in their squad in Kelly, Semenyo and Scott… We are never gonna get there are we? Not in my lifetime anyway.

Maybe we'll get there by proxy, with the entire Bournemouth team being ex-City players.

I think in all seriousness, the fact that the 'Bristol City old boys' used to be Exeter* shows how we've progressed.

 

*(no disrespect to the Grecians)

[SecretSam]

4 hours ago, BrizzleRed said:

Don’t forget that he isn’t the problem though.  We’re Bristol City and to bring in a couple of new faces in the summer, we could easily lose several of our top players to fund it, to avoid cracking open the nest egg.

The "nest egg" that results in a significant annual loss?

[fisherrich]

Having worked at a senior management level with large companies in my career, I believe I have a pretty good idea how businesses should and should not operate at most levels - both accountability, corporate, commercial and Board level.
Looking in from the outside, it is plainly obvious to me how the current structure is hopelessly inadequate for what is needed. We have no chance under the Lansdowns unless a fluke like Luton happens.
We need change at the very top. Anyone who thinks different are in cloud cuckoo land.

[BrizzleRed]

2 hours ago, Clutton Caveman said:

Hard to understand how he is increasing his nest egg when we are making a loss each year.

I don’t look at it as Lansdown’s nest egg, it’s the clubs, along with the debts we owe him.  We either invest some of the money that transfers like AS and AS bring in, or we go backwards, simple as that

As for losing millions, nobody with sny sense would expect to buy a club like ours and do anything else but lose money surely?

[BrizzleRed]

53 minutes ago, SecretSam said:

The "nest egg" that results in a significant annual loss?

….. or the nest egg that it was inferred that some would be given back to help fill the gaps left after the departures of Semenyo and Scott!  

[Street red]

20 minutes ago, fisherrich said:

Having worked at a senior management level with large companies in my career, I believe I have a pretty good idea how businesses should and should not operate at most levels - both accountability, corporate, commercial and Board level.
Looking in from the outside, it is plainly obvious to me how the current structure is hopelessly inadequate for what is needed. We have no chance under the Lansdowns unless a fluke like Luton happens.
We need change at the very top. Anyone who thinks different are in cloud cuckoo land.

And I've kept on saving steve Lansdown is a good account and that's it,The entire set up has no structure and no experience in key areas Just look at Jon Lansdown enterprise now that says everything.

[Bristol Oil Services]

2 hours ago, Mr Popodopolous said:

Exactly, Bournemouth as well run..

They cheated when it was far easier to do so, reaped the benefits ever since. Of course that will entail some aspects of being well run but the initial cheating  underpinned their next decade financially speaking, combined with a wealthy owner of course...all gives a huge FFP advantage.

Bournemouth "found a way" to get there, as did Luton. As might Wrexham. Fair means or foul football is all about getting away with what you can get away with, it always has been.

[Mr Popodopolous]

35 minutes ago, Bristol Oil Services said:

Bournemouth "found a way" to get there, as did Luton. As might Wrexham. Fair means or foul football is all about getting away with what you can get away with, it always has been.

Factually you are incorrect up to a point.

*Luton were miles within compliance at all times.

*Bournemouth cheated when easier to do so.

You possibly haven't looked in depth but clubs need to submit their next 2 years forecast to the EFL at the end of March of the existing season if they have incurred losses between £x and £y and there is an ongoing monitoring process looking at past, present and future. This couldn't be further removed from Bournemouth whereby it was one year, purely retrospective and there wasn't such a thing as points deductions for FFP.

By way of example, clubs by March 31st 2024 need to submit their Forecasts if they lose £15m in 3 years for 2024-25 and 2025-26.

The EFL can step in with more restrictive future looking measures again this is new stuff that clubs voted in back in 2021 and 2022.

The idea being to prevent breaches before they occur. It genuinely isn't as it was. Nothing like.

Wrexham may or may not but a combination of Parachute Payments, their likely income streams and the EFL future looking stuff..they'll need the stars to align and a perfect storm.

I see your point on one level but it is far more joined up in our division now.

Edited April 29 by Mr Popodopolous

[grifty]

4 hours ago, spudski said:

What's worth considering is how many players are leaving, and how long it took on the grass to get his methods ingrained. 

During that period we dropped many points. We have also had an easier run of games recently.

Any new players will have to go through the same process, and there is always a chance they won't be a good fit. 

In that period, we are likely to repeat dropping points.

To get any chance of top 6 we have to hit the ground running. 

To be fair Manning came in and had to ingrain his methodologies and play style onto players signed for Pearsons style.

Its understandable that can take a number of matches/training to click.

The players we sign in the summer should be fits for Mannings style so while still may take a little bedding in to get used to team mates etc I would expect them to be ready quicker.

[cidered abroad]

1 hour ago, Bristol Oil Services said:

Bournemouth "found a way" to get there, as did Luton. As might Wrexham. Fair means or foul football is all about getting away with what you can get away with, it always has been.

I'm thinking of a bet on Wrexham going from National league to Premier with four successive promotions and yet another minnow overtaking us.

[BrizzleRed]

3 hours ago, Mr Popodopolous said:

 

Is it a case of increasing his nest egg or is it more that it reduces the amount he needs to put in in respect of cash/equity each year?

I'd lean towards the latter. Seems more like that IMO..should we push a bit more bow we have done financial heavy lifting, yeah tbh we should've last year once Scott went but that us quite a different scenario.

The other consideration is that the much touted new FFP Regs that are due to come in should include Profit on Disposal of Players towards the relevant cost to Turnover ratio so there is that too.

Yes, you’re most likely right and the big player sales are reducing the amount SL is putting in, rather than adding to the pot.

My point is, after all our cutbacks over the last couple of years, we should be well placed to now use that to our advantage.  If SL want’s to impose his own new financial squeeze on us, we’ll be losing all that advantage.

At the risk of sounding ungrateful and to put it crudely, if he’s not going to sh*t, he should get off the pot.  If he isn’t interested in the club any more, then it’s best he finds someone who is.  If he’s just looking at his bank balance, that will only get worse, the longer he owns the club.  Selling is completely in his own hands and it all depends on what price he puts on the club.

We’ve finished the season really well, but we know that will mean zilch if the wrong decisions are made over the summer.  With the right retentions and additions, we could make some genuine progress next season, but only if he’s fully on board with that.  If not, we are stagnant at best, and could easily start going backwards.

[TV Tom]

3 hours ago, formerly known as ivan said:

I guess the “bigger” club will always be up for debate.

I would say their few years in the premier league outweigh anything we have ever achieved.

Would also question how well they were run. Lots of talk about how they got to the premier league. Fact is, they did.

All depends how you define big club, Oldham and Swindon spent time in the premiership, are they bigger ?

[1960maaan]

10 minutes ago, TV Tom said:

All depends how you define big club, Oldham and Swindon spent time in the premiership, are they bigger ?

I think the only way to look at it is, anyone in the Prem is a bigger Club for the time being.

The only way to judge is ....  Current level 

Anything else , and I'm not talking top half in the Prem , can be debated , pretty much.  There are teams that are obvious exceptions , Leeds bigger in every way. But then you take the likes of Palace , Brentford and Burnley , if they are in the same Division as us it looks a lot closer. 

As always , just my opinion.

[Mr Popodopolous]

44 minutes ago, BrizzleRed said:

Yes, you’re most likely right and the big player sales are reducing the amount SL is putting in, rather than adding to the pot.

My point is, after all our cutbacks over the last couple of years, we should be well placed to now use that to our advantage.  If SL want’s to impose his own new financial squeeze on us, we’ll be losing all that advantage.

At the risk of sounding ungrateful and to put it crudely, if he’s not going to sh*t, he should get off the pot.  If he isn’t interested in the club any more, then it’s best he finds someone who is.  If he’s just looking at his bank balance, that will only get worse, the longer he owns the club.  Selling is completely in his own hands and it all depends on what price he puts on the club.

We’ve finished the season really well, but we know that will mean zilch if the wrong decisions are made over the summer.  With the right retentions and additions, we could make some genuine progress next season, but only if he’s fully on board with that.  If not, we are stagnant at best, and could easily start going backwards.

Do tend to agree, we have done heavy lifting hopefully SL will now do his bit to improve our chances (so long as not reckless of course).

It is a long innings for him, has been bit the Championship moves quickly- medium term it could change again with new proposed/speculated financial Regs but it feels like we are somewhere in the cycle where we should try to retain as many key players as we can and strengthen judiciously, with generous topups in cash flow to help with this.

Exactly, if you stand still you can very easily go backwards.

[BrizzleRed]

6 hours ago, Negan said:

I mean you say were going to sell players that we will look back on wondering what we would of achieved if we kept them... not being funny but we aren't losing any of our best players this summer as nobody has really stood out for a better team to come in for. If I had to name our 4 key players then it would be Dickie, Pring, Knight and Twine. We may not sign Twine but I'd imagine he's going to be top priority, other than that we're not losing a semenyo or a Scott this window who would be extremely hard to replace. Conway may leave but it's not exactly hard to replace a 10 goal a season striker. I think for the first time in a long time we just have a good solid team, rather than one being carried by 1/2 star players. It needs tweaking slightly, just looking at the table shows you we are 4 wins off from being a play off challenging team. We need to get better by 10-15 points which is more than doable. IMO we need a decent striker, Semenyo type winger, a keeper that can genuinely challenge Max and not just be a number 2, back up centre back and maybe another CM should we lose both Williams and James. Then providing we keep the squad fit the expectation should be top 6. Going to be an interesting summer. 

I understand what you’re saying and agree we haven’t got stand-outs like Semenyo and Scott atm.  

What do have is a rock solid defence and I’d argue that as a unit, they’re the best we’ve had in decades.  Take a couple of the likes of Vyner, Dickie, Atkinson, Pring. Roberts, or even Tanner out of that defence, it could make a huge difference.

I see Dickie as the biggest danger.  He was awesome at QPR, then had that dip and moved here and has recaptured his form again and is like a rock in the centre.  I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see a lot of interest in him for starters

So yes, I completely agree that prolific striker is needed and a Twine type, if not Twine himself.  Trouble is they won’t come cheap and we needed both those type of players this time last season too, but they weren’t delivered!

If we have a couple of other vital current players going out of the door as well, we’ll be back to playing catch up.  Knowing how

it works here, we’ll probably end up with another couple of ‘ones for the furure’ as replacements, so we’ll never get to that finished team who can actually kick on and we’ll continue being promised jam tomorrow.

[Dr Balls]

To take the well worn adage, with 45 games gone, the league table looks like 1 team promoted, 7 more going for promotion, 1 relegated, 1 all but relegated and 4 that could be, plus quite a few who have underperformed - plus Preston North End and Bristol City in 10th and 11th!

Do I see us going better next season? The defence is now one of our assets rather than a liability, largely thanks to O’Leary, Dickie and Vyner. However unless we actually learn how to score more goals, we won’t be going anywhere. We are currently very dependent on opposition mistakes and getting awarded more penalties than we have seen in years. We certainly don’t play to the strengths of any striker I have ever seen, nor does Conway play like a central striker who is going to score many goals. Half the time he is out on the wing when he should be in the box!

And my concern is that Manning wants to play the Guardiola way prior to Haaland arriving at Manchester City, which really negates having a striker, with all the focus on the midfielders to score goals. Sorry but at Championship level, without significantly more funds for the best midfielders in the division, I just don’t see that way of playing working. Even Russell Martin and his possession-obsessed style at Southampton still has Adam Armstrong as a striker scoring 20+ goals this season.

Edited April 29 by Dr Balls

[BrizzleRed]

1 hour ago, Mr Popodopolous said:

Do tend to agree, we have done heavy lifting hopefully SL will now do his bit to improve our chances (so long as not reckless of course).

It is a long innings for him, has been bit the Championship moves quickly- medium term it could change again with new proposed/speculated financial Regs but it feels like we are somewhere in the cycle where we should try to retain as many key players as we can and strengthen judiciously, with generous topups in cash flow to help with this.

Exactly, if you stand still you can very easily go backwards.

Agreed 

It just feels like we're reaching the point where excuses are running out for SL.   He's run a fairly steady, though generally pretty dull ship for over 20 years and it's feeling pretty stale now.  

All credit to Liam Manning on how he's now getting performances from the almost full squad and better consistency and results are following, so that's a definite positive.   What better time to build on the very solid foundations we have now.

Not wanting to reopen the old wounds of the pro and anti Nige battle, but Lansdown is the one holding the purse strings, and he chose to not back Nige when we needed strengthening in the same areas last summer.  That's his prerogative, but he also has to own those decisions.  We're now at the point that he has his own man in, so if he fails to back Liam Manning too, that confirms to me that SL has no intention of moving this club forward.

For me, he either chooses to back the club properly again, as there probably won't be a better chance, or admits he no longer has the will, or enthusiasm.   If it's the latter and he genuinely cares about this club, his best legacy would be to do everything he can to pass it over to someone with the ambition, vision and energy to breath some fresh impetus into us.  It would feel like a right kick in the nuts if he holds back again and blows another opportunity!

[BrizzleRed]

7 hours ago, fisherrich said:

We will sign 2/3 and then sell 2/3 and around we go again. No progressive plan/structure in place and no ambition. Fact.

That's certainly my fear.  Depending on what happens during the summer, it'll become clear whether SL plans on progressing this club, or is just happy with us as a bang average, mid-table Championship club.  We'll soon be finding out.

[Aaron-Bcfc]

On 29/04/2024 at 10:29, TammyAB said:

We aren't a bigger club than Bournemouth whose games have been broadcast around the world every week for 7 of the last 9 seasons, and who have had multiple internationals (including England internationals) in their squad during that time.

I must’ve missed that a football club is entirely dictated on its last 9 seasons.

Bournemouth have spent 14 years in their entire history in the top 2 divisions. 7 in the top flight and 7 in the second tier. Ours is 65 seasons split 9 in the top flight and 56 in the second tier.

Two seasons ago in the Championship they failed to sell out their 10k capacity ground, with their average attendance being 9.5k.

We dwarf them, but they are an extremely well ran club also benefitting from parachute payments.