£4,000 a week? | Page 4 | Vital Football

£4,000 a week?

I'd have a lot more respect for Gary Neville if he'd just admit that Salford are trying to buy their way into the Football League. After all, there's nothing illegal with what they're doing. Instead he's just talking himself into knots trying to deny it.
 
The Accrington Chairman and Neville are at each others throats about all this stuff. Accrington are saying they have a playing budget of just £1.1 million in Div 1 !
 
I'm opposed to the way clubs are run in general, let alone the so-called "investment" model, but this is an interesting experiment.

Here we can see just how much fan base loyalty you can buy, in an area stuffed to the gills with football clubs, through league position only, seeing as this has been started via a club with absolutely no meaningful support.

Oh, wait a minute, Fleetwood already ran the experiment. Fylde are doing so, as are Billericay.

And Max Griggs ran it to its eventual, inevitable conclusion
 
Snats said:
I'd have a lot more respect for Gary Neville if he'd just admit that Salford are trying to buy their way into the Football League. After all, there's nothing illegal with what they're doing. Instead he's just talking himself into knots trying to deny it.
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Judge a man by what he does over what he says.
 
nlondonimp said:
although if it is only an interest free loan, that is hardly putting money back in.
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Most "sugar daddy's" put their money in via "Interest free loans" Then they turn it into equity at the end of the loan negating any tax on the "gift."

So I would expect that it IS an interest free loan. Just that it isn't meant to be paid back at all.
 
Salford IS a large city with no football club of any note (until this money was piled into this team).
IF Rooney scores the goals that win them the title his fee & wages will more than pay for themselves (if people recall our relegation resulted in a loss in income of over £1million so Football Lge membership is worth a lot).
All clubs are where they are principally cos of the finances at their disposal. It IS a professional sport after all.
If we had no wealthy directors & just 200 fans we'd be playing with Lincoln Utd etc at best. If we had a billion to spend we'd roll straight through into the upper echelons of the Premier Lge. That's how it works.
 
Money's position in football - there is a many tongued viper. Rangers is an interesting case in point (from the other end of the spectrum) in the Status Quo being protected. The other side of the same coin? Do we just not like it when it isn't benefiting the team we support?

The only constant is change.

And there endeth the lesson.
 
buckielugger said:
Salford IS a large city with no football club of any note (until this money was piled into this team).
IF Rooney scores the goals that win them the title his fee & wages will more than pay for themselves (if people recall our relegation resulted in a loss in income of over £1million so Football Lge membership is worth a lot).
All clubs are where they are principally cos of the finances at their disposal. It IS a professional sport after all.
If we had no wealthy directors & just 200 fans we'd be playing with Lincoln Utd etc at best. If we had a billion to spend we'd roll straight through into the upper echelons of the Premier Lge. That's how it works.
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I mean one of the biggest clubs in the world is in short walking distance from Salford!

I think you can accept that this is the way the world works (to an extent) and that spending loads of dosh is going to fire you up the leagues, but you can still lament it a bit! It doesn't make for good sport if it's just pay to win, and the gap between a Man City and the other big clubs in the Premier League seems actually smaller than the gap between Salford and the upper echelons of that division when they're paying 4,5,6 times the wages of the other clubs. That league is going to be a bit of a joke if they get going.

When we got out in 16/17 it felt so satisfying. We spent money but generally in the right way, on good conference players and on a par with a lot of other teams (and not the biggest budget in the division). Just think if the Cowleys had pitched up two years later we'd probably be finishing 10 points off a team with 5 or 6 league one standard players on 4 times the amount of our highest earner. Can't be good and I feel sorry for the other ex-league teams in there.
 
Throw money in to buy a team, but will it bring in supporters?
Plenty of other league teams to watch in the area. Will kids whos parents have watched the bigger clubs drift off towards the likes of Salford!?.
I believe Vince at PER said they would flood in to catch a glimpse of his wonderboys.
 
Rasenimp said:
I mean one of the biggest clubs in the world is in short walking distance from Salford!

I think you can accept that this is the way the world works (to an extent) and that spending loads of dosh is going to fire you up the leagues, but you can still lament it a bit! It doesn't make for good sport if it's just pay to win, and the gap between a Man City and the other big clubs in the Premier League seems actually smaller than the gap between Salford and the upper echelons of that division when they're paying 4,5,6 times the wages of the other clubs. That league is going to be a bit of a joke if they get going.

When we got out in 16/17 it felt so satisfying. We spent money but generally in the right way, on good conference players and on a par with a lot of other teams (and not the biggest budget in the division). Just think if the Cowleys had pitched up two years later we'd probably be finishing 10 points off a team with 5 or 6 league one standard players on 4 times the amount of our highest earner. Can't be good and I feel sorry for the other ex-league teams in there.
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I think you will find the club you are referring to in your first para is actually in Salford.
 
Thaddeus Griffin said:
I'm willing to bow to superior knowledge given your name but always considered it to be in Stretford myself.
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Apologies...i'd forgotten about MUFC ...think Stretford is in Trafford borough...not sure whether that's included in the city boundaries of Salford.
Oh and not saying i like for one minute what Salford City are doing. Highly disproportionate spending for sure. BUT they have the means to do it and that sadly is the way of the world.
Fylde have done it for a decade now & climbed through many levels. Mr Vince will keep spending and it may prove worthwhile in the end for him. (And btw he has done a fantastic job with his own company, building it from nothing...just a pity he employs such an unpleasant manager).
For all the clubs of that type, it is only sustainable for as long as Mr Rich Man keeps funding it and then they all do a Rushden or a Colne.

At least WE have come back through a combined effort of superb management, fantastic support and quality directors who have put in just the right amount of sustainable investment and long may it continue.
 
I can understand the point of trying to fast track developing a side in a new town with a large catchment area and no football to speak of such as Milton Keynes - without stealing another club I hasten to add!. I just find the model employed in Salford and other saturated areas pretty pointless and complete vanity or exercises in ego.
 
Unfortunately due to only having 1 promotion slot that is the way most clubs go about getting promoted.

We did it. We spent very wisely so we spent less than these other clubs buying their way up but Mr Nates and others put a lot of money in and if they didn't put that money in we would still be lower mid table conference with piss poor managers with crippled finances in front of 1500 fans by now.

We spent well. But we spent big. Probably less than others are doing. And investments paid off for us (Raggett, Woodyard, Cowley's) and will pay off (Chapman, Training ground etc)

Don't trick yourself otherwise.

Clubs are paying big because the track record shows it's much more likely to get you promoted than not spending.

Is it unethical when it's done so unsustainably? Of course, and they'll feel it in the future - look what happens when the plug is pulled (Torquay, York). (I would suggest without the cup runs our crowds may only have swelled to the 5,000 mark rather than 8,000 and perhaps would not have been unsustainable. We'll never know because we spent well in the right places)
 
SalfordImp said:
It's actually right on the boundary line.
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Since the borough of Stretford was abolished by the Local Government Act 1972 Trafford Park has been in the Metropolitan Borough of Trafford. It is divided from Salford by the Manchester Ship Canal.
 
hulloutpost said:
I can understand the point of trying to fast track developing a side in a new town with a large catchment area and no football to speak of such as Milton Keynes - without stealing another club I hasten to add!. I just find the model employed in Salford and other saturated areas pretty pointless and complete vanity or exercises in ego.
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I'm not sure I agree with the saturation point for Salford. There are only 2 major clubs within the M60 in Manchester - City and United. The rest are outlying towns - Oldham, Bury, Rochdale, Bolton. Then there are a number of smaller clubs - Stockport, Altrincham, Hyde, FC United of Manchester, Curzon Ashton. Salford are now higher placed than any non-league club in Greater Manchester.

Birmingham is a comparable size to Manchester and has 5 league teams to Manchester's 2 (including 4 major ones) - Villa, West Brom, Birmingham, Wolves and Walsall; with Coventry as an outlier. Then there is Solihull Moors in the National League.

I think there is the potential for Salford to fill a gap, build a fan base and create a sustainable club. That doesn't mean that I like the way that they are doing it, or that I particularly want them to succeed, just that the business model isn't as weak as some others we have seen in the past e.g. Rushden & Diamonds and FGR
 
cherryexile said:
I'm not sure I agree with the saturation point for Salford. There are only 2 major clubs within the M60 in Manchester - City and United. The rest are outlying towns - Oldham, Bury, Rochdale, Bolton. Then there are a number of smaller clubs - Stockport, Altrincham, Hyde, FC United of Manchester, Curzon Ashton. Salford are now higher placed than any non-league club in Greater Manchester.

Birmingham is a comparable size to Manchester and has 5 league teams to Manchester's 2 (including 4 major ones) - Villa, West Brom, Birmingham, Wolves and Walsall; with Coventry as an outlier. Then there is Solihull Moors in the National League.
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I think you may have just defeated your own argument. Wolverhampton is not in Birmingham - it is 17 miles away. Walsall is 10 miles away. Coventry is 21 miles away.

Furthermore, you cannot compare the drawing power of Birmingham City and Aston Villa with the two Manchester clubs. The combined average home attendance for City and United last season was 128,788; the same figure for Villa and Birmingham (who are actually the only two clubs in Birmingham) was way less than half of that - 53,039.

Every club within a short train ride of Manchester laments the proximity. Accrington chairman Andy Holt said exactly that last season, and Accrington is 22 miles from Manchester. If you want to use Coventry as your marker, there are 8 Football League clubs within a similar distance of the centre of Manchester - Manchester City, Manchester United, Oldham, Accrington, Bury, Rochdale, Bolton, and Wigan. Just outside that ring you also have Preston, Blackburn, Burnley and a number of others. That is before we begin to consider the senior non-league clubs in the area - Altrincham, Stockport, FC United, Warrington, Stalybridge, Curzon Ashton, Ashton United etc. Very saturated, I would say.
 
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