ToffeeWeb

Ian thats why £65m last summer on those 2 players was a major mistake.
Jonathan its all about opinions mate we cant agree on everything but I am confident you will be turned around on this one.

I make that around six players. The problem we have is none of them can be regarded as fillers, they have to be good enough to start which means we are going to need some very smart recruitment or to blow a lot more than £120m.

Si 15

In a way, it comes to the same thing. To buy better players, we need higher revenue. Non football use and the revenues arising was one of the rationales for the build (and I imagine a factor in putting together the admittedly shocking financing for it) The outcome will, as you imply, be what it will be, but I’m still interested in seeing where we are heading before we get there and what expectation were. For example I recall a claim for (I think Deloitte) forecasting £55m in incremental revenue. Can’t see that myself, at least not directly and certainly not after you service all the debt, even at reduced rates.

I don’t think it is too controversial to say that the financial firepower of any football club goes a long way to influencing your outcome and that hitherto we have been paupers relative to others. I’m interested in how far this is changing to better understand our prospects. I’ve said before, talking about the squad, who to replace, targets etc, is almost pointless until you go through the first stage of 1) our owners ambitions and 2) what financial muscle we have.

Andrew 14

Before I turn to expectations, let us look at what those events are likely to yield. I may need your help here because I don’t know the inside detail, hence my making the point.

I understand from AI that it is typically in the region of £200,000 or a bit more to hire a major stadium, then staffing etc added on top(but likely at cost, no serious margin). So these 4 days would be less than £1m on that basis. Looked at another way, if we allow an average of £40 per ticket sold x 200,000, that is £8m. A 10% stadium fee would thus work out to £800,000. So my guess is around that ballpark.

It is possible the club may have rights to make profit on food, merch etc. But then it is probably unlikely to get the £250k usage fee. Even so, some revenue share might push net revenue over a million. So maybe £1m, or 1.5m at most. These are the only major events of the year I can see.

Now onto expectations. Even at a discounted build cost of £600m and a very optimistic 5% of financing cost, you need an extra £30m to wash your face. £10m can be said to come from naming rights (though the net will be a fair amount less than that). Matchday revenue might be expected to add another £10m at best. That leaves £10m minimum to find and in my opinion, more than that. It’s a big gap if I’m anywhere near right on these numbers.

I post this not as my attempt to be definitive- I can’t be- but for discussion. Maybe I’m miles out. Of course the importance of this is we can talk about transfer targets as much as we like but if we don’t get the numbers to work, we can’t do them.

Bob,

Before De Zerbi took over, the papers reckoned on £20M? Maybe now they’re staying up, probably £25M tops. That’s also if Spurs will sell now?

But if you don’t ask, you’ll never know… I still can’t see us being linked with anything better and with a proven Premier League goalscoring record!