Training ground a priority?

'Chris Wood money', really? Chris Wood was sold to cover the costs of Jansson, Saiz, Alioski, Klich, Ekuban, Cibicki etc. that all came in that summer. Then we signed Forshaw and Roberts in January. We can criticise the quality of the signings, but the club have reinvested money from player sales.
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That's great except that is not correct.

Those players were all purchased before Chris Wood was sold, and we were told by AR that the Chris Wood money would be reinvested in the team. We got 15 mill for Wood, Forshaw and Roberts cost what, 8 mill? And what impact did they have that season, zero.

So now you have to try and come up with another set of players that you can say the Wood money was spent on.

I'm not disagreeing that AR hopes we get promoted, but to say he has a desire to invest in the squad when he sells to buy, money disappears and our admin costs increase massively shows that his actions are not matching your words.

We signed a representative in Far East to leverage that part of the world, that was what, 2./3 years ago, all we have to show for it is Ideguchi, its a symbol of how the scouting system is all cost and no reward.

You're just creating spin around this Jan.

We spent nothing in the scheme of things on transfers and if you ask Bielsa if trying to complete James deal was a success or failure, you know he would say it was a failure, and if he was in charge of that area of the club he would accept full responsibility.

The sooner we look at club's shortcomings in same manner the sooner we stop making excuses for it and demand better of our owner(s) in terms of investment on the pitch.

Bielsa is here for one more year at most, the priority is surely investment in players who can make a difference the moment they are signed. Not improving training ground we don't own, not signing players who are injured and might play in a year, not signing players and then loaning them out to Leonessa never to be seen again.

We'll agree to disagree then Jonty. I think it's fairly obvious where the Wood money went, I thought the timing was poor. I criticised it at the time. But this club makes a loss before players sales and that's nothing new with Radrizanni. I agree the 'admin' costs are killing us but they have done for a decade now. It's never fully clear what these 'admin' costs are and I think it's some legacy from the 3 train wreck owners we had before but that's just a guess.

We brought in Alioksi and Saiz for £3million a piece, plus all the other players. De Bock was what £1.5million? Loads of big contracts given out. The quality of players were not good enough and the club did terrible transfer business last season. I will not disagree with you on that. But I think there's nothing to suggest that Radrizanni won't back his managers as he has done so in all transfer windows. Agree that the James deal was a failure but the intention was there. Let's wait and see what happens this season and then in the summer before complaining about something that hasn't even happened yet.

AR was very clear, the Wood money would be for investment on top of players bought that summer, you simply can't therefore excuse its disappearance on saying it was used for prior transfers.

My thoughts are that AR has been extremely extremely naive to trust transfer business to Orta who has been like a kid in a sweetshop with someone else's money.

How can we keep blaming previous owners for admin costs, its ridiculous. admin costs have just gone up nearly 50% in one year alone, Scouting costs were mentioned as a significant factor of that. AR has never once mentioned previous owners as a factor in these admin costs.

With regards the intention being there, if you're selling a car for 5k and I offer you 1k for it, in the hope I can get it for 1.2k, can you genuinely say the intention is there?

We have no money.

We makle the highest revenues in this league when you take parachute payments out of the equation, yet we have no money, continually make losses, have to sell to buy and for the most part but utter rubbish. We must surely hold some sort of a record for highest percentage of players signed who go straight out on loan/are injured when we sign them or the week after/get sold within a year of us buying them etc etc.

There needs to be far greater scrutiny of our recruiting process and far better governance over the spending or there is another fire sale coming to cover the mounting losses.

The real shame is that you didnt have to throw oodles of cash at it, you just needed far better choice of incoming players.

Saiz is a perfect example of this, cost 3.5mill delivered little, he's going to go for next to nothing, probably to Getafe.

Norwich sign Buendia from Getafe (actually he was on loan at Leonessa, the side we're supposed to partner with under the Aspire Academy agreement, yet completely missed him off our radar, so much for that great set up). He cost them around 1 million, at it's chalk and cheese in terms of the impact these players made in the Championship.

My point in this thread is quite clear, when you haven't got the money for players, you try and distract by bigging up investment in training ground and unless we invest in players, as Bielsa has already said he is getting maximum from them, then nothing will change in terms of our chances for promotion, or success in Prem.

comment by Jonty (U4614)
posted 15 hours, 45 minutes ago
Re priority.

We're hearing training ground improvements together Bielsa to stay.

We're not hearing budget secured or transfer support agreed to get Bielsa to stay.

The priority is to mention training ground, its suggests that's all they have to offer at present.
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Because whether we are PL or Championship next season the training ground will be improved, but the transfer budget can't be decided because we don't know where we will be at next year.

Seems simple enough to me.

You want more money to be spent on players but don't like that admin costs have gone up so much when 70% of that increase is players wages?

In summary you are complaining that too much money has been spent on players and complaining not enough has been spent on players.

No, I'm pointing out that the only carrot being dangled in public is training ground upgrade as opposed to saying we have targets and budgets identified and agreed with Bielsa whichever league we're in.

Who is this carrot being dangled for?

Think the issue is not how much has been spent but what constitutes value for money.

14 Million (potentially) on Bamford and Kiko - value for money?

Didn't realise the lad from Spain with Norwich only cost £1 million - bargain or what?

Leeds United confident of retaining Marcelo Bielsa next season, regardless of whether they win promotion. Club are planning for him to be in charge and have already spoken to him about further upgrades to their training ground:

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I think this is a positive statement from the club, two things we want to hear.

no mention of signing players but I'm guessing that they'd want to keep that in house? - besides I guess they wouldn't want to state anything concrete as we don't even know what league we're in yet.

ref James, for me the club showed intent with trying to sign him, which is great BUT, I think not having an adequate replacement lined up possibly cost us promotion via the auto's, maybe, maybe not. the fact that James was all last minute.com when we had all month to sort it out was a little silly.