Reasons to be cheerful

Not sure I see that many. The football is bad. Performances are unconvincing and recent positive results seem to be papering over the cracks. The manager seems a little out of ideas. The squad looks limited and low on quality. (You decide how much weight you put on those last two.)

Plus, it seems we’re at the point where the club (Delia and Michael at least) think we are ignorant buffoons, who have no idea. None. And we should just shut the f**k up. Thanks for that both. Even if it’s true, and I like to think that I may not be utterly ignorant or utterly stupid, I’m not sure what you hope to gain by saying that so publicly.

Oh. And we’re about to lose to the scum for the first time in an age. And we’re not just going to lose, I think we’re going to get humiliated. They’re going to sellotape plastic flowers in our hair, make us ride on the postman pat thing outside the shopping centre, and send pictures to all our friends.

So yeah. I’m expecting this winter to be truly bleak.

But. Here’s one positive for the future for you.

Listening to Attanasio carefully at the AGM, our model is going to evolve under him. We’re still going to be self funded, largely. But going forward, we will be able to invest cash we don’t have, IF he can be persuaded that’s a good investment. So if we see a great young player with massive potential, he will lend us the money interest free to make the deal happen. We then get an asset now. He makes his return on the loan when the young player improves and moves the club forward, or (most likely) when we sell for a profit.

This is different to the current model as at the moment if we don’t have the cash, we don’t do anything. We have to sell to buy. So everything we generate is pumped back in, but we can’t speculate to accumulate. Going forward, sounds like we will do more of that. Our cash flow/capital constraints will be relaxed a bit, even if he isn’t going to was away 100m per window.

Now the risk of course is that our track record of finding real talent has been patchy at best, and shockingly poor for a number of years recently. I guess that’s why MA is so big on improving the data side of the business. Get an analytics function that can actually spot assets that will appreciate, and he will invest.

It won’t be a quick revolution with immediate results. But longer term, it should help us build and be more competitive. If if if we can get the data bit right. Viewed this way, Knapper makes perfect sense.

So there we are. At least one reason to be cheerful. Something to cling on to!

Posted By: Under soil heating on December 10th 2023 at 11:43:54

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