Most are massively in debt and don’t make much profit compared to turnover. That’s why they keep expanding into new areas. But if they fail, there’ll always be another one coming up on the rails. The last TV deal was slightly smaller than the previous but the PL sell off the right across the world for huge amounts ($700m to China alone). The PL couldn’t care less as long as they can keep whoring it out to the highest bidder.
I wonder how long BT can keep churning out the billions for CL money? In fact, it’s just been announced that they’ve lost the rights for NBA basketball and UFC because of spiralling costs. If you’re football, NBA and UFC fan, you’re going to have to dig deep if all your favourite sports are scattered across different platforms. I don’t know how long that can last for. Traditional TV is dying and I’m sure one day we’ll see a Premier League app that gives you access to all games in one place.
You would think the club would have learned by now. I used to blame Wenger for naively believing that all of his players would definitely sign new contracts with us. It's really disappointing that the club is STILL getting caught in this situation after all the experience we've had with players running down their contracts.
This isn’t a ‘STILL’ situation imo. It’s an inherited issue from Wenger’s era. Ramsey isn’t a solid performer. He’s injury prone and can be a liability. The only real reason to offer him a new deal would be to keep his valuation high on the market. But as pointed out in an earlier post, we’ve just extended Xhaka and Iwobi’s contracts. That’s two more players that divide opinion and we’re not all pleased with that move. The clubs damned if they do and damned if they don’t in a lot of these cases. I think we have enough cover for Ramsey and I like what I’ve heard about this new French kid we’ve just signed. No need to panic over this situation at all.
Ramsey has far more value than Iwobi or Xhaka to be fair, he seems to be rated by maby clubs, Xhaka and Iwobi we'd stuggle to give away!
No panic but if we sell someone I expect us to spend the money on someone else, point is it should be done and dusted by now, IMO he should have either signed or we should have already sold him and had someone else coming in, the fact we haven't is just a repeat of what happened last summer.
With or without Ramsey, I'm a lot happier about our CM options going in to this season - Torreira, Guendouzi, and Maitland-Niles all look like exciting talents who are ready for regular games, we have Elneny as an unspectacular-but-steady performer, Iwobi might be a wildcard option, and there's at least a chance that we might see something more out of Xhaka with a proper DM next to him. I'd even chuck Smith-Rowe's name into the hat for a few games.
Certainly better than last year's offering of Xhaka, Elneny and Ramsey / Wilshere (who really only amount to a single player in terms of appearances)...
This is the damned if they do/don’t statement I’m talking about. Iwobi is 22 years old. If he starts putting together great performances under Unai, his valuation will rocket and you’ll be pissed off we find ourselves in the same situation we’re now in with Ramsey. Same for Xhaka. Even if they don’t improve significantly, if we decide to sell next year, they maintain their valuation and we don’t have to sell for a knockdown price. If the likes of Everton are throwing around silly money, I bet a few clubs lower down would be willing to spend some money on these guys.
As said in my previous post, I think we may have already signed Ramsey’s replacement.