Phoenix Shrimp 2017 wrote:The sooner this happens presumably the larger the war chest we can give Derek so dig deep folks and lets give the club the best chance of success we can provide!
I don't really think Derek's budget will be affected by whether we sell say 1,750 or 2,000 season tickets. The difference in revenue is pretty trivial given the total revenue and players' wage bill.
Derek will have been given a figure based on forecasts/projections as he needs to know now rather than faffing around waiting until the Summer when it's too late (as Robbo found out last year) to bring in the quality signings we need.
I'd like to think Derek's budget will have been "supercharged" by some of the monies received in the last season such as player sales, cup runs, etc which wouldn't have been planned for/forecasted for last Summer and may not have been received by the time the January transfer window closed so will be still sat in the bank? We also have to factor in the EFL rules about players' wages in total compared with total club income etc.
Against all that, unlike Robbo, I'd expect Derek to be aware that the "windfalls" may not happen again, and so it's a dangerous game to contract players for more than a season just in case we don't sell any players and don't have any cup runs/televised games, etc. Derek will have to keep a "cushion" in case of lower income than expected and of course to bring in loanees/new signings in January in case the team doesn't work and/or to cover injuries etc.
Projecting/forecasting is complicated. An extra or loss of a couple of hundred season tickets at an average of £150 is maybe the difference of an extra player (youngster or bench warmer) at most and won't pay for anyone decent at this level.