Transfer buisiness since the Swales era.

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BlueMoonRisin’

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Genuine question: Are we the biggest transfer business mugs in top flight football?

Our transfer business has to be one of the worst in the history of the football league I think.

Since ADUG bought us out there's been many millions squandered on players, and selling clubs have held us to ransom to extract every last penny they can from us. But, ever since Peter Swales(RIP) wasted(a then transfer record) 1.7 on flop Steve Daley, we've been piss poor in buying and especially selling players.

Hart, Yaya, Nasri, Bony and Mangala are soon likely to leave costing millions. We will be lucky to get a third of what we paid for them.
 
Hart cost us hardly anything. Toure is old what do u expect? Mangala is shit and Bony is rumoured to be going China for what we paid for him. Nasri cost nearly 25m if we get 15 for him it's only a 10m loss.

We struggle because we pay crazy wages that the players don't wanna lose and other clubs don't wanna pay.
 
No, we are bang average like most clubs.
The norm seems to be 1 good / 1 average / 1 poor in every three transfers.

In the late 70s we tried to spend big and made such a mess of it, it (arguably) set up back 20 years - and there were rumours that we were still paying off debts from those days almost 20 years later.

Second time around under Sheik Mansour, we've spent an astronomical amount and knowingly paid over the odds because we wanted accelerated growth / success.

I think it's fair to say we're hardly fantastic with our buys - but who is?
Arsenal probably get praise, but they have some poor buys too - only they tend not to have spent a fortune in the process, so get some credit, but they are exception, not the norm.
 
We have always been the same. If you look through the late 80s to 00s I can only really think of Paul Stewart and Kinkladze we made a profit on after buying.

Its different now we pay top whack and wages because we can afford to. Not like in the old days when we were skint and still wasting cash in the market
 
There were more than a few rumors that weatabix head arranged a cash bung off every transfer to get money out of the club on the snide, the rodent faced c*nt was corrupt enough to have fitted in at old tragic (Allegedly)
 
I wonder at what point in our recent history (and with what signing) our post takeover spend exceeded our entire pre take over spend since mcfc was formed?
 
I still remember the MEN two page spread of our squad around the beginning of the Bernstein /Royle era. Fifty odd 'pros' on the books iirc, and a lot of wasted money.
In those days we were constantly buying shit in the hope of finding the odd hidden gem (like gio).
On a happier note we have never sold one of our own academy products for less than £1m and bought them back a couple of years later for £100m on huge wages. This probably means at the very worst we are only the second biggest mugs in football ;-)
 
Helmet Cole said:
I still remember the MEN two page spread of our squad around the beginning of the Bernstein /Royle era. Fifty odd 'pros' on the books iirc, and a lot of wasted money.
In those days we were constantly buying shit in the hope of finding the odd hidden gem (like gio).
On a happier note we have never sold one of our own academy products for less than £1m and bought them back a couple of years later for £100m on huge wages. This probably means at the very worst we are only the second biggest mugs in football ;-)
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We squandered money in those days. Before Bernstein, Swales was obsessed in trying to keep up with united. He spent plenty of money at the time, but he had no patience, sacking various managers. Each newly appointed manager would come in and clear out the "deadwood", asking Swales for a substantial transfer kitty to rebuild. Most managers of that era had no time to instil their own influence before the process was repeated again and again. We were always in constant transition and this led to us yo-yo ing relegation/promotions.
 
bluemoon risin' said:
We squandered money in those days. Before Bernstein, Swales was obsessed in trying to keep up with united. He spent plenty of money at the time, but he had no patience, sacking various managers. Each newly appointed manager would come in and clear out the "deadwood", asking Swales for a substantial transfer kitty to rebuild. Most managers of that era had no time to instil their own influence before the process was repeated again and again. We were always in constant transition and this led to us yo-yo ing relegation/promotions.
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someone and not Swales must have lost a lot of money. all that cash pumped in but yet nothing in return of success to re pay the debt,,we did have the promotion money and gate receipts but the books could never have balanced
 
marco said:
someone and not Swales must have lost a lot of money. all that cash pumped in but yet nothing in return of success to re pay the debt,,we did have the promotion money and gate receipts but the books could never have balanced
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It was mostly pay the gate in those days, and the pay on the gate fixtures always seemed to have the official attendance announced at least 3-5000 lower, that's what it seemed like to me.
Wouldn't be surprised if someone within the club was embezzling the cash. No wonder(if true) we were skint!
 
bluemoon risin' said:
It was mostly pay the gate in those days, and the pay on the gate fixtures always seemed to have the official attendance announced at least 3-5000 lower, that's what it seemed like to me.
Wouldn't be surprised if someone within the club was embezzling the cash. No wonder(if true) we were skint!
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The story is that we were consistently profitable until the mid 1970's then Swales starting spending money we hadn't got. That nearly did for us.

When we moved to the Etihad, we borrowed about £45m which should have been used to convert the stadium but I reckon a substantial part of that was spent on players rather than infrastructure. But we spent too much on wages for over the hill players and we're always skint, having to sell SWP to keep afloat.

Then Thaksin came along, splurged what was then (for us) a huge £45m on players. We paid the first instalment but didn't have the cash to pay the second £15m 12 months later. So we nearly ended up in administration.

If Sheikh Mansour wastes money, it's embarrassing maybe but our future as a club isn't at stake.
 
I remember working out that, between the summer of 1979, when Mal's revolution started, and the autumn of 1981, when Bond bought his son and Asa Hartford after the season had started, our net spending on players was around GBP 4 million.

Now, look at our prices in 1980 in the table below. Also, bear in mind that there were no real other sources of income but for gate money.

CbFx3afWcAEMdTW.jpg


I think the seat price given there is the lowest, for the Platt Lane, and you could pay more for seats elsewhere in the ground, but equally about half the average crowd in those days would have season tickets and those could cost a lot less. Below is one for the Kippax in 1981/2 that was less than a quid per home league game.

84dff593-baaa-435e-8f92-046eb4f9ffcb-620x281.jpeg


Now with home gates a little under 35K on average in this period, I can't see that we were turning over much more than a million a season in a normal year. Of course, in 1980/1 we had runs to the League Cup semi and FA Cup final (which went to a replay) so that will have made a big difference to the bottom line.

However, despite those Cup runs, given that Swales put no money into the club and simply borrowed to pay the transfer fees, the outlay was reckless in the extreme. He basically took a big gamble with the future - and he lost, because despite spending sums that were unprecedented in British football, we ended up with a worse side than the one we sold off in 1979.

Incidentally, until 1981, it was against either the rules for a director of a league club to take a salary from the club. When that restriction was removed, Swales immediately appointed himself MD on an annual salary of over fifty grand. Until he left the club, he remained one of the highest paid employees (and most of the time, the highest paid).
 
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