It isn’t a surprise that the Evening Standard’s produced another laughably poor Fulham report this afternoon.
Today’s offender is Lucy Tobin, who really needs to do some research before she sends her copy to the sub editor. We didn’t splash out on Danny Murphy, who arrived on a free transfer. If you think that the lack of a transfer fee impacted on our wage bill, you might be surprised to learn that, according to a couple of well placed sources, our club captain isn’t on a massive weekly pay packet.
Plus, our £7.5m loss doesn’t look so bad when you consider just how many Sanchez cast offs we got rid off over the course of the last financial year. The profit on Jimmy Bullard (roughly I make it around £3m) should help swell the coffers next year too. I’d say we’re on a much safer footing right now than during our more unsustainable earlier years of big spending.
The contributions of the quoted ‘expert’ are what really seals it, though. Vinay Bedi, a director at Brewin Dolphin Investment Banking, says:
The club has had a huge increase in revenue, almost entirely from television, but a big chunk of that money has been handed back to the players.
We were hoping that football clubs like Fulham would use commercial common sense and retain some of those extra earnings to improve their financial position but that hasn’t happened.
It’s not a question of whether Fulham is for sale, it’s a question of what price it’s on sale for. But there are a number of clubs on the market right now, and not many buyers around, and Fulham really needs a new ground.
Bedi certainly seems to have a lot of opinions, but not a lot of football knowledge. He sounds like the kind of very expensive consultant who recommended the crazy scheme to sell off Craven Cottage and move Fulham to a concrete bowl in the middle of nowhere.
Since Fulham are one of a number of the top clubs to lean heavily on the personal wealth of their owners, shouldn’t the likes of Bedi be more concerned about the kind of debts being racked up by the likes of Manchester United?
Well if he’s (Bedi) an investment banker, we should all pay attention to his opinion, after all when have bankers ever got the economy into trouble?
As for “Fulham really needs a new ground” how much would it cost to find the appropriate site, in the Fulham area, the cost of the site, planning permission and the cost of building the new stadium? How long would this process take? Perhaps we should go back to ground sharing?
Don’t understand this idea that we need a new ground. We rarely actually sell out CC – it’s fairly well known that the club give away 1-2,000 tickets as comps for the ‘less attractive’ games.
On the transfers, it isn’t just Bullard you can factor in. Remember that we sold Healy to Sunderland for around £1m and Cook to QPR for approximately the same amount. The figures don’t actually look too bad when you factor those in.
There’s a serious case for boycotting the Standard, that is, if you haven’t done it already.
I notice that the thread in which the journalist tries to fight her corner on the offal has been pulled. Must have got interesting.