Depends on the FD, to an extent

FDs are like Legal Directors, they come in two flavours:

- don't even think of crossing that road. Someone could be speeding, playing Pokémon on their phone, distracted by impure thoughts of Jennifer Lawrence, and we haven't even got on to the risk posed by lightning strikes and meteorites!

- OK, so we want to get over that road. Here is the safest place to cross and here are the quantified risks (amount of damage, likelihood of it occurring). Your call.

As you can tell, I much prefer working with Kind Number Two.

A good FD will understand the financial needs of the operation and structure things to provide cash when needed. S/he will also warn of consequences of spending more than X amount: if we don't go up we will need to liquidise Y amount of assets off the balance sheet to cover the P+L liabilities we're taking on, which in practice means we'd have to sell Z players. In other words, here is the decision you're considering, here are the consequences of taking it or not based on one of three outcomes (we go up, we stay where we are, we go down). That kind of thing. If s/he is constantly saying "don't spend money" then s/he is in the wrong job - s/he should be laying out the consequences (and, of course, warning if any decisions risk the club trading insolvently, which is illegal).

Posted By: Old Man, Mar 18, 11:02:11