Aye, investing in something and taking a short term hit in order to make it successful and profitable long term. Strange that even some City fans need this explaining to them after the shit our club has had for 14 years.
If you take investment out of the WSL then the professional league dies. To keep the league going you need the facilities to keep the players professional and you need to pay them enough that they can afford to be professional.
If they were on £30k a week I'd say yeah, put them down to £20k a week and you've got half a million per professional player per year that you can pour into infrastructure and coaching for young girls.
But most of them are on more like £30k a year. There's not much you can take off them before their career becomes unsustainable, and you don't make enough for your investment to make real changes.
And the league dies, because the players flock abroad - as they already do to a certain extent given the salary cap.
And those little girls who you've managed to scrape a bit of money for so they can play football in PE and maybe if they're lucky play in a team out of school too, they can't go and watch top-level women's football live, they can't meet their heroes, and they also can't get places in academies because guess what, with no competitive professional league the academy system shrinks too.
So they get a bit of facilities and coaching but they get no relevant role models and no path to a professional career.
And then when all your talented youth players start wanting to be professional - and there won't be as many as you want, because of the whole no role models, no career path, never being able to watch a professional women's game thing - you say okay, we'll get the league back up and running again.
And guess what? That needs investment. Those girls who are ready for professional contracts, do they get them, or only if they accept that it's taking money away from the coaching of younger girls?
Short term pain for long term gain is a real and valid approach. If you cut your hair it grows back stronger.
But you don't cut your head off in the hope of regrowth.