Making the most of a windfall

[gjw100]

Unless they are suckered into accepting a couple of makeweights in part payment, it seems certain that West Ham will be pocketing £90M+ for Declan Rice this summer. I think most Hammers fans have been resigned to him leaving for quite a while, but the fear is that the club will end up blowing the money on one or more replacements who won't make the grade. My memory tends to suggest that clubs in receipt of a huge transfer fee rarely use it wisely (Spurs squandering the Gareth Bale millions is a prime example) but there must be cases where it worked out and possibly for the better. Any other examples of good or bad post-windfall transfer dealings?

[torres]

Torres……..Andy Carroll. Don’t remind me.

[Kevin S]

I think the answer for teams who do it well is Dortmund isn't it?

[ursus arctos]

Historically?

Certainly not recently

English clubs find this particularly difficult, as everyone in Europe knows they have the money and is generally willing to soak them.

[Patrick Thistle]

Brighton seem to have it sussed. Brentford seem to have acquired shrewdly to replace players who move on.

[George C.]

As PT says it's all about the succession planning...

[ursus arctos]

Though they are dealing with much smaller amounts that I wouldn't call "windfalls".

McAllister may challenge that paradigm.

[Etienne]

Liverpool spent the Coutinho money reasonably well - Alisson, Fabinho, Keita and Shaqiri, even if Keita maybe underperformed expectations.

[elguapo4]

Bohemians spent the £1.4 million we got from the Matt Doherty transfer to get our new training facilities up and running a couple of years earlier than planned. Any money we're likely to get from a future Evan Ferguson transfer would dwarf that, and I hope it would be used wisely.

[torres]

Elguapo. Any idea of what team Ferguson followed when he was in Ireland?

[elguapo4]

Massive Manchester United fan apparently.

[torres]

Ta

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

Bohemians spent the £1.4 million we got from the Matt Doherty transfer to get our new training facilities up and running a couple of years earlier than planned. Any money we're likely to get from a future Evan Ferguson transfer would dwarf that, and I hope it would be used wisely.

See this is the smart thing to do. And I don't mean the training ground specifically, I mean have a coherent development plan, and split windfalls between accelerating those plans and paying off previous phases of development. At the end of it all the actual club is permanently stronger.

The alternative, which too many clubs go for is to piss it all away on short term signings, which permanently ram up the wage bill and leave you hopelessly over extended when the money runs out. A lot of it can also go missing to insiders through pay rises and mysterious agents fees and consultancy payments

On an entirely unrelated topic, the way that west ham dealt with the rio ferdinand money is a textbook case of what not to do. They took all that money and spent it on 6 mid priced gambles, none of whom worked out, and were all paid more than rio ferdinand. It drove the club into serious financial trouble.

if you already have the training ground, etc is do what liverpool did with the coutinho money, which is not to rush out and piss away the money on a direct replacement, lest fans start to worry that the clubs Penis had become smaller, but Instead carry on with their preexisting transfer plans, but accelerate a few of those signings.

[jwdd27]

Arsenal spent the £20m odd they got for Nicolas Anelka on a spectacular new training ground, and Thierry Henry. Which isn't bad at all.

[JoeysToe]

When Oxford United sold Dean Windass to Bradford City for the best part of a million in 1999 they immediately blew half the money on... Dean Windass, as they hadn't had any cash to pay Aberdeen for him in the first place.

[MarkF]

Though they are dealing with much smaller amounts that I wouldn't call "windfalls".

McAllister may challenge that paradigm.

£60 million for Cucurella, £50 million for Ben White? Not exactly chump change. And if you add the others (Trossard, Burn etc.) it’s a very tidy sum.

[Mr Delicieux]

I was impressed with Manchester United between 2004-2007 where they were playing second fiddle for a spell to Chelsea there, but in that time between selling Beckham and Veron up to van Nistelrooy they then brought Rooney, Ronaldo and Tevez into the squad and went from there.
It could have easily gone the other way, but fair fucks to Ferguson, it was quite the last hurrah.

[Mr Delicieux]

I was focusing more on the attacking players there, which does a disservice to Vidić and van der Sar, then you had Nani who looked as exciting as the other attackers they'd assembled. He peaked very early, but it was some peak.

[Walt Flanagans Dog]

Bohemians spent the £1.4 million we got from the Matt Doherty transfer to get our new training facilities up and running a couple of years earlier than planned. Any money we're likely to get from a future Evan Ferguson transfer would dwarf that, and I hope it would be used wisely.

This could be Carlisle's dilemma this summer, as there are potential windfalls coming if Dean Henderson and/or Jarrad Branthwaite are sold by their current clubs.

We have a training pitch which isn't big enough and not usable for large parts of the year, and seem to have our eye on taking over a former school facility nearby with an estimate of it costing half a million to turn it into the acceptable standard. And that's before we even do anything on the ground itself. But the pressure will come from the fans to pour the money into the playing squad, either to stay in the third division if all goes well at the weekend, or to have another go at getting there if it doesn't.