The Incoming Transfers Everywhere Thread: Summer 2023

[Deutsch Wolf]

Where do we feel the club's ambitions lie these days?

Is it to be fourth worst team in the Prem, i.e. just avoid relegation? Are the dreams of qualifying for Europe a distant memory, or do we think the club still have a "5 year plan" to get back there?

When you see the likes of Chelsea spending unlimited sums on transfers (yeah, I know), you realise just how uneven the playing field is. Aren't they subject to FFP too?

Thing is you don't have to be that flash to challenge for 7th (which normally gets you in), Villa are decent but no more than that, Brentford and Fulham were in with a shout until fairly close to the end. No reason why that needs years of building from where we are.

Relegation does the same to us as every club, it instantly wipes hundreds of millions off the value of the asset, as an investment group they do not want that. The easiest way to avoid that is not to appoint some complete goon to manage the team, hopefully they've learned that rather large lesson.

 

[Del Woppio]

Still doesn't make sense though.

How do you make millions out of a football club? Start with billions.

Buy football club for £30m, use agency to filter players through, get promoted and see your club value explode. Continue to push player cash through that agency for high annual ROI while retaining club at high book value.

They're not taking (or making) money directly from Wolves at the moment, but they've made a shit load from our transfer business that's involved Mendes. The fucker ends up getting cuts of about a third of our transfers, whether he's the agent or not, and the high level stuff is pretty much exclusive to his stable.

Since Fosun bought us, we've been involved in about £750m worth of transfers. That's not including contract renewals, loan fees, his cut of salaries, compensation etc etc. His cut of all that income will have a massive profit margin, so their dividends will be really healthy.

The football club isn't there for an annual operating profit (the c£250m increase in value is all they need), then the club is just a vehicle to make more money from elsewhere, whether its agency fees, or all of the other esports/branding bollocks which isn't actually linked to the club, but they still use its following as an advertising base.

It'll look like small beans compared to the £1bn profit Fosun made in 2021, but compared to their profit of £50m (!) in 2022, then every penny of profit is going to be squeezed. They're selling business left, right and centre, in a mountain of debt and in real financial trouble - they aren't going to stop milking an established cash cow

 

[Deutsch Wolf]

The cash cow becomes a huge liability if we get relegated though, so using it primarily to funnel money through a sister company doesn't work if it impacts on on-field results.

 

[AndyWolves]

Option B makes no sense, they only hold a tiny minority stake in Gestifute and in any case a football club is on a completely different scale in terms of profile and finance.

If you start with with Fosun having the strategic aim of pushing as much money Jorge's way as you can (plus a little bit of soft power i suppose) then everything else (kinda) falls into place

1) Buy a debt free club
2) Get them promoted with an initial investment (courtesy of Jorge's players)
3) Run in a self-sustaining way in the PL for ever and ever (no further investment from Fosun)
4) Any players bought / sold whilst achieving 3) are money in Jorge's back-pocketed

Fosun / Shi's approach (which played out with almost disastrous consequences) was that staying in the PL was a) easy and b) we could sustain spunking loads of Jorge's players doing so

I don't think Shi is incompetent, i think he's been doing exactly what Fosun have been asking him to do. It's just that Fosuns strategy is flawed.

 

[Del Woppio]

The cash cow becomes a huge liability if we get relegated though, so using it primarily to funnel money through a sister company doesn't work if it impacts on on-field results.

Oh yeah, agree totally - priority number one for them will be retaining PL status; that's why in November they've bullshitted a top manager into taking the job and lobbed a load of money at it (our money though, not theirs).

The % of the actual players that we sign from Mendes may start to go down, but I doubt very much if we'll see a change to the % of value of deals. And even if we're shopping in Aldi right now, it'll soon swing round again to spending a shit load on guff in a couple of years time

 

[ROVERT47]

Don't know for sure completely off the top of my head but Brighton never seem to spend a great deal snd it ain't done them any harm.

 

[sycophantia]

Don't know for sure completely off the top of my head but Brighton never seem to spend a great deal snd it ain't done them any harm.

Everyone loves Brighton and they've done great but I'm not convinced it's sustainable selling your best players and trying to find unknown bargains that fit the bill. It's going well for them currently, be interesting to see if they can keep going.

 

[Wolvensam]

Joao Pedro from Watford has been their most expensive signing since 2018, signed this year for £34.2m. Before then it was Enock Mwepu for £23m, but they've only spent above £20m on five players since 2018.

They're very good at 'flipping' players though which we're not so good at - identifying cheap-ish options and selling for a decent profit: Bissouma, Cucurella, Trossard, Mac Allister to name 4.

 

[Wolvensam]

Everyone loves Brighton and they've done great but I'm not convinced it's sustainable selling your best players and trying to find unknown bargains that fit the bill. It's going well for them currently, be interesting to see if they can keep going.

Brentford follow a similar model and are successful with it. Bizarrely Manchester City have spent big the past two years but the outgoings have largely paid for the incomings.

 

[Wilf Wolf]

Don't know for sure completely off the top of my head but Brighton never seem to spend a great deal snd it ain't done them any harm.

Works really well until you buy a few too many duds. Can go back to Wimbledon and there are plenty more recent examples. Look at the Championship and even League 1 and there are plenty of clubs who have had a few decent seasons in the PL but the wheels came off and even parachute payments couldn’t get them back on.

 

[Alan]

A lot of things have changed; instead of spending £10-15m on exciting young talent like Jota and Neves, we're spending £30-40m on guff like Guedes, Cunha, Silva and Semedo. Now because of that we'll be back to the £10-15m range, but it's always money that's going to have that cunt's oily finger prints on it

Labelling these 3 as 'guff' is extremely harsh on two of them and one (Fab) still has the opportunity to break that perception. He may not take it, but he's not a lost cause.

 

[Wolvensam]

It's also interesting as, when you break it down, we've only had two 'spendy' years: the first year we were promoted and the one just gone. The two in-between the outgoings balanced the books.

 

[C.L.D]

He’s alright. £40m is bizarre though. I said it at the time that I wasn’t sure how a player who was surplus to requirements and didn’t pull up any tree was increasing his value by over 50% in 18 months

JL may have publicly stated he wanted him but everything about the transfer feels more Mendes than Lop.

 

[Deano]

It's also interesting as, when you break it down, we've only had two 'spendy' years: the first year we were promoted and the one just gone. The two in-between the outgoings balanced the books.

This is the taps on/off thing people have referred to though. As FFP is calculated over 3 years you don't really want splurges some years and minimal net spends others. Better to gradually invest and improve. We had no choice last summer as we'd gone 4/5 years without signing a proper CB or CM option.

 

[Wolvensam]

This is the taps on/off thing people have referred to though. As FFP is calculated over 3 years you don't really want splurges some years and minimal net spends others. Better to gradually invest and improve. We had no choice last summer as we'd gone 4/5 years without signing a proper CB or CM option.

It's true, especially when last summer we largely spent it on crap or players who didn't want to come here/took a lot of convincing to sign in the first place.

 

[Del Woppio]

Labelling these 3 as 'guff' is extremely harsh on two of them and one (Fab) still has the opportunity to break that perception. He may not take it, but he's not a lost cause.

It's not unfair on value - the best part of £150m in transfer fees that's at least double what they would've been if it wasn't for wolves pushing money to Mendes

 

[Deutsch Wolf]

It's not unfair on value - the best part of £150m in transfer fees that's at least double what they would've been if it wasn't for wolves pushing money to Mendes

I'd say you could make a case for that being roughly Semedo's value at the time, he was Barcelona's first choice RB and mid 20s. Of course he wasn't a particularly good fit for how we played and his complete lack of attacking output is plain odd. A badly thought out signing rather than a rip off.

Guedes always looked shit, he's had a proper con job of a career.

 

[Alan]

It's not unfair on value - the best part of £150m in transfer fees that's at least double what they would've been if it wasn't for wolves pushing money to Mendes

I feel it's a little unfair... But equally we've seen enough of most of those guys that I know nothing I can say will sway you.

 

[Kenny]

I'd say you could make a case for that being roughly Semedo's value at the time, he was Barcelona's first choice RB and mid 20s. Of course he wasn't a particularly good fit for how we played

Wasn't the point of Semedo signing and Doc going down to Nuno wanting to move to a 4 at the back....just turned out we couldn't play that way under Nuno as we were just so easy to run through in the centre of the pitch so had to go back to the 5

 

[Deutsch Wolf]

Wasn't the point of Semedo signing and Doc going down to Nuno wanting to move to a 4 at the back....just turned out we couldn't play that way under Nuno as we were just so easy to run through in the centre of the pitch so had to go back to the 5

I don't think so, we stuck with the same formation until Coady got Covid before the Southampton game.

He wanted someone better on the ball than Doherty and better defensively, he is definitely one and probably both of those things, but not £27m worth of better. And he contributes basically 0 goals/assists per season.