The point is that even if the deal construct on advanced payments is the same the actually cash availability is considerably less.
So if it’s half upfront on the figures quoted the amount of spare cash on the ins and outs is a lot less.
The club can’t then spend this gap on transfer fees - it’s extended contracts, outbidding on wages and on free transfers paying agent and signing on fees.
That alone will swallow up what we’ve had on the mcnulty sale.
The oft quoted Maddison money will not be a £2 - £3 million upfront payment and will be needed to support the clubs running costs
Break even is a fallacy and irrelevant. The club by in large has 25 or so pay days a year but has cash outflow every week and for every player taken on the burden increases.
Cash flow is and will be a huge problem - we’ve had to take sisu loans to bridge before.
That’s where the perceived surplus is going and will continue to do so
Don't get me wrong Grendel, there are plenty of reasons why we won't (and can't, shouldn't) spend the exact amount coming in from player sales on transfer fees for players coming in. You mentioned higher wages of players coming in, agent fees, signing on fees, wage increase clauses in current contracts, extensions, etc etc. All valid points that a lot of frothing-at-the-mouth-sisu-haters are blind to or just choose to ignore. That's before we even mention the fact that we are losing money and so, and quite rightly if we want a sustainable business, some of the incoming "fees" need to bridge the gap. I wouldn't want us to be losing more and more money and becoming essentially further reliant on an owner pumping money in which just happens to be big bad SISU at the moment who are clearly not wanting to do that anymore (great if a saudi comes along with money to burn but you get me).
What I don't get though is your point about payments not being upfront but rather being spread out. My understanding was that's pretty commonplace in the footballing world. So incoming transfers would be structured the same.
So if we got £3m
upfront for Maddison, what this actually is likely to mean is we get £100k per month for 30 months or whatever the phasing turns out to be.
But we can then go and pay a fee for a player structuring the payment in the exact same way.....
