rickmcfc said:
itsnevereasy said:
Something isn't right about him going so suddenly and before the end of the season, they could of done this after the last game and jointly announced the new manager. Something is being covered up, something big.
I don't get the timings. Something isn't quite right.
David Meek hinted at it in his Gray & Keys interview. Said something about a difference of opinion with the Glazers over future transfer spending and he was more pushed than jumped.
I posted about this in the main Rags thread but I understand he's faced them down a few times in the past and forced them to spend more than they wanted. The background to the Rooney transfer request 3 years ago was money. Their wage ceiling at that time was £90k a week I was told and that stopped them recruiting the really world class players they were linked with in the press like Sneijder. Rooney wanted to double that and at first the Glazers refused, trying to call his bluff. However, after least one other club (not us) came in with a much higher wage offer, they caved in after what I'm told was a fractious telephone conference.
My source told me that the real problem was that there were a number of players (4 or 5) who had "parity" clauses in their contracts, which meant they got the same as the highest paid player. So that cost them an extra £20-25m a year straight off, plus the ceiling was broken so others got increases as well. Hence their wage bill is going up faster than their income. I'm told there was a lingering suspicion that Baconface (& Gill) were not entirely innocent in this.
They've now got their own man, Ed Woodward, as CEO and I'd say they're going to start controlling costs more aggressively. My guess is that they've seen that Liverpool and Arsenal have continued to pull in substantial income without actually winning things (and not even being in the top 4/CL in Liverpool's case) while keeping costs down or even reducing them in Liverpool's case. Their business model is based on getting no further than the group stages in the CL and they could even survive not making the CL at all for a year.
Their thinking must be "Why spend £50m or more to win the league, when it only brings in £4m more prize money than finishing 3rd?" There's no way Baconface would accept that viewpoint.
