According to the Pinkun it was: Rashica £4.5m Aarons £12m Mumba £1m Omobamidele £20m --------------------------------- £37.5m -Fassnacht £1.7m --------------------------------- Final Total: £35.8m My guess is that there is a savings on wages as well with Pukki, Byram, Rashica, Dowell, Hayden, Aarons and Omobamidele all gone. Barnes, Stacey and Duffy are the only obvious higher wage earners coming in. The usual rule of thumb is that about half goes for infrastructure and half into future transfers, though that's just a guess.
Pic via: @danieliemery on twitter... Reasonable balance and decent cover across the pitch now. We're not looking so lop-sided and some quality in backup. Good likelihood we've not thrown the budget out the window in doing so as well. First time since losing Emi that I feel we look better after a transfer window.
I think those are max fees assuming all targets are met. The initial fee for Aarons is reported as more like £7m and Omobamidele as £10m. Only if they play loads, keep their respective clubs in the Premier League, etc will we get the higher amount.
Yes, that's the case Rob, but the Pinkun fees are the only reliable figures published. I've seen other sources saying Aaron's fee is £9m with add ons of £3m and Omobamidele as £15m rising to £20m, which would be more normal add-on ratios. Given that fees are usually paid in installments, it's more like the add-ons, if achieved, are like a final installment. There's also potential future income from sell-on percentages negotiated now and in the past. That means a steady ongoing income for the club over around two years and beyond. That combined with the final parachute payment and further potential Attanasio investment would provide a steady financial base of operations. We won't see the huge amounts lashed out on Rashica, Tzolis and Sargent any time soon, but this summer's recruitment shows that isn't necessary. We've strengthened the squad without huge payments and brought in many young players who could push for a first team place sooner rather than later (Manning, Lima, Forsyth, Adegboyega, Montóia, Ogwuru). Fisher has done that already while also netting the club £1m on Mumba. The net wage bill would seem to be lower as well, so the club may well have found a way to make the self financing model work.
Further on the financial stability front, a shareholders meeting has been announced for 2 October 2023: https://www.canaries.co.uk/club-issue-notice-of-general-meeting-to-shareholders-2023
Youth conveyor of pre-first team ready players rather than buy youngsters who are to improve the first team and then buy in some experienced hands in to help them along
What counts as "working"? The documents for the shareholder meeting on 2nd October reveal that Attanasio's Norfolk Group has "provided a total of £33,637,200 of debt finance to the Company". As I understand it, this is a re-financing (at lower cost) of the borrowing against future earnings declared at last year's AGM, borrowing necessitated by our failure to survive in the EPL. I thought that "working" meant running a successful club without incurring debt other than an overdraft facility to manage normal vagaries of cash flow. I didn't imagine it covered incurring £33.6m in external debt!
I meant working in this window from the signing of Barnes to the departure of Omobamidele. The residual debt from the previous two seasons is a different issue relating to the questionable spending on Rashica, Tzolis and Sargent. Only Sargent has justified his fee and Webber now looks to have doubled down on the Naismith signing as well as money was wasted on loan fees for the likes of Normann, Kabak and Gilmour. All of that went against the prudence he preached when he first arrived.
That's certainly true, but did the club fail to have enough contingency planning? As for the window just ended, I wonder how much the new approach has been influenced by Mark Attanasio, as it does suggest a moneyball type approach. I also wonder whether the change in direction might have influenced Webber's decision to leave the club. Only speculation, of course, but it does seem to be a coincidence. The youth recruitment, though, does look very much like Webber's approach and it has nicely balanced the recruitment of older players.
Indeed, but that's beside the point. Self-funding doesn't mean "self-funding just as long as unexpected major costs don't arise". It's one of the benefits of having wealthy owners prepared to commit funds, that they offer insurance against precisely this sort of risk. In reality, Covid didn't create an insurmountable problem for the self-funding model; the pandemic's £35m cost was more than covered by our second promotion and e.g. the sale of Buendia. The board in effect knowingly abandoned the model when "top 17" replaced "top 26" as the objective (as Zoe Webber explicitly acknowledged at a subsequent AGM) and led to the club approaching Attanasio. The idea that we are still "a self-funding club" is nonsense, as Attanasio's injection of funds, current and proposed, demonstrates.
The injection of funds happens with each new owner - Robert Chase injected funds, Delia injected funds and now it's Attanasio. The difference for me is that between a major shareholder and an owner. The transition from Smith and Jones to the Attanasio family will be interesting.
The crux is whether or not funds not generated by the club in the normal course of its business are used to finance the operations of the club. Foulger buying shares and Foulger loaning the club the money to sign Grant Holt are two completely different things.
I have limited interest in the minutiae of the the shareholder shifts in the club. My original point was that we managed a major rebuild of the squad while making a large profit on player transactions. That approach could provide a model for future transfer windows with the recruitment of older experienced players balanced by a new group of young players coming in. One of Webber's successes is having established academy one status and a reputation for developing young players and providing a pathway for future development. The young players recruited this window have given that as the reason for signing on. In the past, big clubs have picked off our best young players but now we are attracting theirs. An example of this is the signing of Ogwuru, a promising young striker from ManCity: "It feels great to sign for the club. When the project was presented to me, I felt like it was a great opportunity. The facilities here at the Lotus Training Centre are amazing, it really looks like a place where I can develop myself." Frustrated by the lack of opportunities to break into the ManCity first team, he turned to us because of our reputation for bringing on young players. He's not alone, as the others, Manning, Lima, Forsyth, Adegboyega and Montóia have commented on this as well. This gives the club a strategy for the future while meeting it's present needs through experienced players on free transfers. That's probably the closest we will get to becoming a self financing club, at least in terms of transfers.
Speaking of whom. His career seems to be flourishing in Minnesota. Scored again at the weekend and had a second incorrectly ruled out.
In an idle moment today, I wondered whether we could field a team from the new transfers. It turns out we could (U21s in brackets): GK Long, (Reye) RB Stacey, Fisher LB (Montóia) CB Duffy, Batth (Adegboyega) DM Forshaw CM (Manning), (Lima) WR Fassnacht WL Sainz AM Barnes, (Forsyth) ST Hwang That's a full lineup with 5 subs and only 2 positions lack a senior player. That looks pretty impressive to me.
This is a good and important point - due to our self-funded nature, COVID was practically speaking more harmful to us than most clubs and the consequences were longer lasting. It also ruined our best chance of staying in the Premier League in the last 10 years, which had a huge impact financially.
No, they aren’t. One is simply debt capital and the other share capital - they are both advances of funds and are normal and interchangeable ways of funding companies. The end result is the company (ie the club) has more money to spend. Usually choice of debt or equity as the means of advancing funds is driven by tax structuring, regulatory, risk profile or external financing reasons (or a combination). Though there can be other reasons. The differences are really just the nature and timing of redemption and positive vs negative control over company decisions - and even on those you can struggle to run a *** paper between them depending on the terms. All other matters can be structured so debt and equity are very similar, if not identical (subject to local law and in particular one being deemed the other if you get it wrong).
Danny Batth's comment about his move to Norwich: “New Challenge. Time to work.” The international break gives him a chance to settle in, adjust to Wagner's tactics and begin to fight for a place in the starting lineup. With Hanley injured, it's good to know we have three experienced CBs fighting for a place and Warner, Hills, Tomkinson and the newly arrived Adegboyega pushing for a first team place. Brad Hills was 'Player of the Month' on the first month of his loan to Accrington Stanley.
