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Post by hotanalyst on May 22, 2012 2:47:35 GMT
Stadiums cost a huge amount of money to design and build. And have a long lead time to income generation. When Fernandes bought into the club he stated that his goal was to turn it into a self-sustaining business model over time. It is most likely that the club itself would borrow the money to build a new stadium rather than the owners reaching into their pockets. The owners may lend the money to the club interest free to ease its financial burden but ultimately, the loan needs to be repaid. Which means ticket prices would have to increase. Fernandes has an airline, hotel chain, energy drink product (EQ8) and F1 team to finance and grow as well as our club so we can only speculate as to how much of his resources (US$470m net worth) will be directed to Loftus Road going forward. All businessmen talk a good fight but this recession is set to continue for at least another 2-3 years and I wonder how well his businesses are performing collectively. Tony is supposed to be one of a three party consortium but I have not heard anything about the other parties. Nor any talk from the Mittal camp regarding significant investment sums. So it will be interesting to see what happens over the next three months.
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Post by luckycharms on May 22, 2012 5:57:37 GMT
Stadiums cost a huge amount of money to design and build. And have a long lead time to income generation. When Fernandes bought into the club he stated that his goal was to turn it into a self-sustaining business model over time. It is most likely that the club itself would borrow the money to build a new stadium rather than the owners reaching into their pockets. The owners may lend the money to the club interest free to ease its financial burden but ultimately, the loan needs to be repaid. Which means ticket prices would have to increase. Fernandes has an airline, hotel chain, energy drink product (EQ8) and F1 team to finance and grow as well as our club so we can only speculate as to how much of his resources (US$470m net worth) will be directed to Loftus Road going forward. All businessmen talk a good fight but this recession is set to continue for at least another 2-3 years and I wonder how well his businesses are performing collectively. Tony is supposed to be one of a three party consortium but I have not heard anything about the other parties. Nor any talk from the Mittal camp regarding significant investment sums. So it will be interesting to see what happens over the next three months. The two other members of the consortium are Ruben Emir Gnanalingam who is the CEO of Westports Inc. one of the largest shipping terminals in West Malaysia. His father is owner of course. Family wealth purported to be between 200 million to 360 million pounds. Kamaruddin bin Meranum is Fernandes's partner in Tune. Estimated wealth between 200-300 million pounds. Curious thing is, despite being a Malay billionaire ( 1pound = 5 rm) virtually nothing is known of him nor is he lauded by the local mMalay-centric media. then there are the various interlinked partners. In Malaysia, the relations between politics and business are murky at best. There have been reports that 1.5 trillion RM has been stripped from Malaysia and every year, it is estimated that 20 billion RM is leaked (euphemism for 'stolen') from public funds and projects. So that are a lot of people here with unearned money who want to invest their ill-gotten gains somewhere relatively secure and with someone they can trust with a proven track record. Make of that what you will. |
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Post by Lonegunmen on May 22, 2012 9:44:52 GMT
Despite the debate on this thread, isn't it nice for once to be discussing the merits of a group of owners whom are treating fans with some respect, are talking positive about the future and coughing up the dosh thus far when required. Unlike their predecessors. And if I read from some pillock that Paladini invested his own money into the club again, they're getting banned! It was money raised from mortgaging his mothers home, not his and it was sweet F*** all in comparrison to what others did cough up.
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Post by Macmoish on May 22, 2012 9:53:32 GMT
A little too harsh on Gianni, Lone. Gianni did after all single-handedly build the career of at least one person!  |
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Post by Lonegunmen on May 22, 2012 10:13:19 GMT
And he did discover Faurlin. You're right Mac, perhaps a bit harsh even if factual.
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Dave Sexton
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Post by ingham on May 22, 2012 19:54:46 GMT
One thing I always find touching - and that isn't intended to be sarcastic - is how realistic we all are. Few Rs think we should just knock up a big stadium and 'grow' into it. If a new one is mooted, the biggest mentioned by supporters is usually 35,000, and hardly anyone thinks that is a sensible size, while a good few think we might manage 30,000, and the rest settle for 25,000.
We are very realistic, aren't we?
I think sharky's point about raising our sights is a seductive one, if football resembled something very static and straightforward, like house building. Allowing for disasters now and then, firms have been building large numbers of houses for a century and more in huge developments, and more or less know how to do it successfully.
The plans are drawn, the houses are built, they more or less match the plans, people live in them, it's all pretty predictable.
But football isn't even remotely like that. You can't build like that in football, because developers and builders aren't subjected to all the interference football teams are. Whatever you try to do in football, someone kicks you up in the air. How anyone wins anything is a mystery to me.
Everything is moving incessantly, but nobody really knows how or why, and certainly not which way they are moving. You sign a striker to score more goals, and, as londonranger points out, you still come within seconds of relegation, as a last second goal at Stoke would have ensured.
So investors play it safe. We might build a 40,000 ground, but City haven't built a 100,000 stadium, theirs holds nearly 30,000 less than United.
But City have only won one title where Ferguson has won a dozen. Sensible. Fulham and Reading talked about 40,000, but didn't built anything like it. Reading's 'ambition' has delivered a stadium smaller than Elm Park (before neglect dramatically reduced capacity), despite the Chairman's high profile. And Cardiff haven't restored the 60,000 attendances Ninian Park used to see (before that ground fell apart), despite all the hype around a Club which hasn't changed very much since Ninian held 60,000.
All the TALK is big and ambitious. But the actions are cautious. Our 'rich guy' can match Abramovich, they say, in terms of his own resources, but he hasn't in spending, because Abramovich is spending Chelsea's money, and as Mac says, Chelsea are bigger than we are. Their existing stadium holds more than our projected one would, and that 30,000 less than United to boot.
RA could write off the debt, as the City bloke could, and then it would be their money, and their loss. But they haven't.
And that makes sense, because investors intend to take more money out of the Clubs than they put in, so it is only to be expected. Otherwise they're losing money, and most of these people don't like to.
The Clubs lose money instead. This means the Clubs must find not only the money to give some appearance of 'ambition' - getting in debt to do so - but they must generate enough money to line the investor's pocket when he leaves.
And that's big money that could be spent on the Club. But, of course, it isn't, because the investor intends to leave all along. So he isn't interested in how well the Club does after he's gone.
If he did spend his money - and incur the loss - they would all be investing in their SUCCESSOR'S achievements, since each successor would reap the benefit of each of his predecessors expenditure. If each spent £10 million, and left it in the Club, the last of 10 investors would have the benefit of £100 million, while the bloke who started it all would seem puny and a failure by comparison.
So they all have an incentive to send QPR back to square one. Great if we do unexpectedly well, since the share price will go up, but that won't be because theyare particularly interested - I don't think they are - but because they were lucky in leaving when we were having a rare good spell.
We should be an amazing Club by now, with all our millionaires and billionaires. But the Club isn't really any more competitive than it was when we went down to the third tier. We came out of the second tier then, and we've just come out of it - and almost gone back to it - this season.
And the ground doesn't look any bigger - in fact it is much smaller - than it was in 1959, or 1939 for that matter. Yet we've had easily the best chairman - Gregory - and far wealthier people, and the net result has been, well, nothing. In fact, the Club has subsidised them, since they all appear to have made something out of it.
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Post by maudesfishnchips on May 22, 2012 20:32:04 GMT
a question, probably a silly one, why can't a club with a average home attendance of 17,000 be successful?
do we need the revenue from gates to attract players to pay wages?
or could we subsidise the wages by marketing qpr abroad, merchandise and so forth?
as mac said on another thread somewhere. revenue from seat sales maybe 11 million, if bigger stadium, say 35.000, then that is 20 -30 mllion revenue.
a stadium pays for its running, not its success,
where does the money come from to pay players?
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Dave Sexton
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Post by ingham on May 22, 2012 22:21:00 GMT
Interesting question, why not?
If you asked someone 25 years ago whether a small Club owned by billionaires could be successful if those people were 'investing' in it, wouldn't almost anyone have said 'yes, it could win the title'?
If the billionaires were providing the money - assuming that the Club didn't have some secret way of unearthing and keeping cheap but uniquely brilliant players, which is unlikely - yes, of course, like the Blackburn bloke who bought them the Championship.
And if you asked 25 years ago whether Prem Clubs would have been profitable, generally speaking, when even the most feeble Premiership Club received £40 million a season, and the biggest Clubs had billions to spend, they would have said 'yes' again, I'd say. Of course they would be profitable.
Of course. How could they ALL be in debt with that much money sloshing around.
Easily, it seems. They virtually all are in debt, and the losses are rising as the money goes up.
There's another problem with a small ground Club being successful, in that success is so extremely rare. Apart from Blackburn, and the perennial Ferguson, only two Clubs had won the Premiership title until City this year, who spent £1 billion in a short time in the hope of securing it.
Since the Prem started, many of the so-called big clubs of the old days haven't won it at all.
Which means the big spending isn't increasing and spreading success around, it's narrowing it down, with one man winning more than all the other Clubs put together, and whereas small Clubs - and with not very much money - used to win the title now and then - or have a very near miss like QPR - now that never happens, and they never get even close.
That must be a factor. Because now, mere talent, like Revie, Shankly, Ramsey and Clough had, doesn't really work. Some bunch of clowns can just come along and BORROW the money to buy more expensive - and occasionally better - players.
Whereas in those days, spending was geared much more to size and success, and the gap between QPR's earnings and spending power and Liverpool's, although large, wasn't the gulf that exists now.
So how do you think a 17,000 attendance Club could do it, maudes?
Why didn't Fayed succeed, for example? Why didn't we buy the title when our 'investor' has more money than the Blackburn bloke, and as much, or maybe more, than Abramovich, and could spend as much as the City guy?
Hard to attract players, even if we spent big, I suppose, would be one answer. The best of the best would still go to the biggest Clubs, because they not only spend more, they earn more, and can borrow more too.
Can you think of a small Club scenario that would work?
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Post by sharky on May 22, 2012 23:21:20 GMT
Thought provoking stuff ingham. A great deal depends on what you consider by success.
Newcastle fans (and owner) would have considered success this year mid table. Then Europa League became the aim, and finally Champions League.
In other words the more success you have the more you want. It's the human condition.
Reading the current threads, success for QPR next year is doing better than Fulham and West Ham, and maybe around 45-50 points. If we achieve that our expectations for the following years will be higher. It never ends. It would be really interesting to ask this question again the same time next year.
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Post by maudesfishnchips on May 23, 2012 19:37:56 GMT
thanks ingham, sharkey. i think its pretty conceivable for a small club like ours to have success season after season, i also dont buy into that 'we need a bigger stadium' ,those figures do not add up. the players will come if the team are settled and are prosperous, oh, and if we pay them enough. can money can be made by global marketing such as the big clubs have done already and what TF is trying to achieve now? the revenue must come from somewhere because its certainly not gates. or suddenly the goverment banned all football clubs in the year 3143 would there be a massive debt left by each club because year after year it amasses from owner to owner? that is one that i cant get my head around. will it make a difference to a player if he is winning medals, getting international call ups and having a healthy bank balance playing in front of 50,000 or 17,000? make a bit of money hear and a bit there and lets worry about it in 3143  and in the mean time we win trophies in a faded blue corrugated stadium that i love so dearly  |
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Post by RoryTheRanger on May 23, 2012 19:41:28 GMT
thanks ingham, sharkey. i think its pretty conceivable for a small club like ours to have success season after season, i also dont buy into that 'we need a bigger stadium' ,those figures do not add up. the players will come if the team are settled and are prosperous, oh, and if we pay them enough. can money can be made by global marketing such as the big clubs have done already and what TF is trying to achieve now? the revenue must come from somewhere because its certainly not gates. or suddenly the goverment banned all football clubs in the year 3143 would there be a massive debt left by each club because year after year it amasses from owner to owner? that is one that i cant get my head around. will it make a difference to a player if he is winning medals, getting international call ups and having a healthy bank balance playing in front of 50,000 or 17,000? make a bit of money hear and a bit there and lets worry about it in 3143 and in the mean time we win trophies in a faded blue corrugated stadium that i love so dearly Especially when our fans make more noise than most bigger stadiums in the league anyway  |
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Post by maudesfishnchips on May 23, 2012 19:50:06 GMT
thanks ingham, sharkey. i think its pretty conceivable for a small club like ours to have success season after season, i also dont buy into that 'we need a bigger stadium' ,those figures do not add up. the players will come if the team are settled and are prosperous, oh, and if we pay them enough. can money can be made by global marketing such as the big clubs have done already and what TF is trying to achieve now? the revenue must come from somewhere because its certainly not gates. or suddenly the goverment banned all football clubs in the year 3143 would there be a massive debt left by each club because year after year it amasses from owner to owner? that is one that i cant get my head around. will it make a difference to a player if he is winning medals, getting international call ups and having a healthy bank balance playing in front of 50,000 or 17,000? make a bit of money hear and a bit there and lets worry about it in 3143 and in the mean time we win trophies in a faded blue corrugated stadium that i love so dearly Especially when our fans make more noise than most bigger stadiums in the league anyway yes , exactly rory!! who needs padded seats and legroom, its only blooming 90 mins every 2 weeks, not 28 hrs on a flight to underneath the world |
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Post by Bushman on May 23, 2012 20:01:22 GMT
Especially when our fans make more noise than most bigger stadiums in the league anyway yes , exactly rory!! who needs padded seats and legroom, its only blooming 90 mins every 2 weeks, not 28 hrs on a flight to underneath the world Depends on whether you have any farmers maude.  |
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Post by maudesfishnchips on May 23, 2012 20:04:20 GMT
yes , exactly rory!! who needs padded seats and legroom, its only blooming 90 mins every 2 weeks, not 28 hrs on a flight to underneath the world Depends on whether you have any farmers maude. take a jigsaw and cut a hole then |
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Post by Macmoish on May 21, 2013 7:24:04 GMT
Year bump
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Dave Sexton
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Post by ingham on May 21, 2013 10:15:20 GMT
Yes, worth bumping, a good thread, and the question about taking another look in a year's time (although that is a very short period in football), was more to the point than we might have thought at the time.
One thing that always strikes me forcibly - apart from what a shambles it usually is - is the tendency to make what I would call 'implied' predictions.
Usually rather generalised and also relentlessly upbeat claims which imply great improvements and sustained excellence.
Yet, when a Club IS successful, NOBODY predicted it. Huddersfield, I doubt it. Arsenal maybe, in the 1930s, after Huddersfield, but there was some evidence (the same manager). Did everyone spot Portsmouth in the early fifties, with General Montgomery as Chairman or President or whatever he was, winning two league titles? Chelsea in 1955.
I don't mean the 'well, yeah, well, they were pretty good for a couple of years before'. Ipswich in 1962, QPR in 1976.
It doesn't happen. To be credible, a whole SEQUENCE of successes and failures would have to be predicted to make a predictive model workable. Not just Arsenal's early 30s dominance, but their complete lack of it for 35 years between 1953 and 1989 (an enormous period of time for such a big Club).
But that is JUST what Boardroom predictions (or implied predictions) amount to. Stating in advance how well the Club will do for - well, I would think at LEAST a decade. A decade isn't long in football. For a manager, it is an almost unimaginable period, especially for those who are unfortunate enough to end up at QPR (except that they leave rich now, of course).
Look at QPR 73-79. Signed bowles early in the 72-73 season. Promoted, couple of years mid-table, one glorious near-miss for the title, then a BIG decline, and relegation with a shadow of the team we had only 3 years before!
Nobody predicted the vast debt the Premiership Clubs especially are staggering under. I think the Premiership One Club League was a distinct possibility, but it wasn't strictly predictable.
It was said that Bill Shankly was desperate to get Liverpool into the top flight because he foresaw the effect of the lifting of the minimum wage, and the removal of the retain-and-transfer system, which enabled lesser Clubs to hang on to their stars.
He turned out to be right, but he was the architect of the most successful English football club ever (I don't really put Ferguson's United in the same bracket, since they were already huge). Run like a small club. Thrifty, cautious. Desperately trying to squeeze the maximum out of what they had. Not borrowing vast sums to sign players they would never need because an inordinately well-organised team, with a high basic level of competence, can - or could - fairly easily neutralise the Hoddles and Gascoignes, the more flamboyant, but unstable and impermanent presences.
So I am inclined to see the endless claims that things will be better as not only meaningless, but profoundly WRONG. You can TRY. And that is what the Boot Room, and Busby, and Ramsey did.
But they didn't know. And their failures underline that. Assuming they didn't go into each season accurately predicting their own failure.
And there's a connection, isn't there, and a connection we've witnessed unfolding with appalling effect, this season and last.
If you THINK you know, or behave as if you do, while the winners put all their effort into simply TRYING (which implies failure as much as it implies success, since they are all supposed to be trying and there are far more losers than winners, and even in the mini league of Chelsea, City, United and Arsenal, the overwhelming majority most lose), then doesn't it follow that you are NOT TRYING?
And so we've seen this season. The more unrealistic the fantasies become, the more meaningless it is to try to make them real.
So the process of prediction - of talking up the big future with all its implied triumphs - goes into reverse. You can't possibly ever KNOW that you will be really successful, but if the dreams are inflated beyond credibility, the players, certainly, and the managers, very likely, will KNOW - we might be more cautious and say 'come to believe' - we will NOT be big and successful.
They go into Old Trafford, then they come here. They may visit one of the supposedly transformed smaller or medium-sized Clubs. Fulham, or Reading. Or, before them, Charlton, Middlesbrough, Bolton, you name it.
NOTHING LIKE Old Trafford, as the reality of Manchester City or Chelsea is nothing like United's.
Maybe they simply can't try any more, because they have no idea what they are supposed to be trying to do. Graham Taylor at Lincoln was trying to avoid relegation, and managed draw after draw in his early games. But he wasn't trying to build a team for the Champions League. Just one that could hang on by the skin of its teeth.
Watford did well, runners-up, under his system, but it didn't last. The Club's size didn't change at all, like QPR under Gregory. Talent, or a novel system, can make a temporary difference, even long term, but there isn't much evidence it changes a Club's size.
And that size is its earning power. A small club may overperform, but bigger Clubs overperform too. And bigger Clubs USUALLY performed better than QPR, even under Gregory, even when they weren't overperforming and we were.
Maybe that is the true guideline. That, even overperforming, we won't keep it up.
It is not IMPOSSIBLE that we should become a big Club. Not at all. A run like the Boot Room had, from promotion in 1961-62, to the title in another two years, the Cup, then the League again, very high league placings for years, then another title, and a few years later, a run of unparalleled dominance in the English game, and not as the biggest Club, either, or the biggest spending.
Yes, if we did that, all bets would be off. No-one could guess what the outcome would be.
But that was unique. And there is no evidence of it at all. Liverpool did not move. They did not build a bigger ground, they filled the one they had. It wasn't the biggest or anywhere near. they didn't sign overpriced, underperforming hacks.
They worked on the football. Developing a style of play that relatively ordinary players could adapt to. And the killer, which came 15 years after they left the Second Division, and under Paisley, not Shankly, was that they worked out the solution to the one remaining obstacle that held them back.
That if you don't change a winning team, it becomes stale. And if you do, like Manchester City signing Marsh and disrupting their rhythm with a handful of games to go, and them top of the League, you can't put humpty-dumpty back together again.
So they changed a player a season. In that way, it was the same team every year, (only one change, which made little difference to continuity year to year), while maintaining constant change, with what amounted to a new side every five years (allowing for a handful of long term 'club' players), and therefore preserving the system that worked so well.
They even adapted it to Europe, far more effectively than Ferguson did at United. Only Heysel, I suspect, stopped them winning even more in that arena. And their influence seemed to inspire other English Clubs, Forest, Villa, and Everton, who were poised to emulate them in Europe the season Heysel saw our Clubs thrown out.
Compared to that, it is strange to be looking to people who know nothing, whose intentions are transparently calculated to make them money, and guaranteed to ensure they lose nothing (which is really a dead giveaway, especially the loans and consequent debt), long before they've learned the first thing about football, or the Club.
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Post by Macmoish on May 21, 2014 7:13:25 GMT
Bump ... 2 Years...
(Talking re stability at the club and longevity rather than reaching their levels of Premiership stature/accomplishment
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Post by Macmoish on Oct 9, 2014 8:41:02 GMT
Bump...
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Post by Macmoish on May 21, 2023 10:41:18 GMT
Not sure we've reached the level of "Stability" (Or Premier League Football)
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