[Football] How would you define a ‘selling club?’

[ChickenBaltiPie]

‘You're the biggest selling club in the premier League! over £300 million in sales in 2 seasons. That's the definition of a selling club.’

‘You can't say you're not a selling club when you've made more on sales than EVERY team in the PL’

‘A selling club is a club that's main goal is to earn more through the sale of players than they're willing to invest in players for example Brighton spent about 55 million on players last season but made 140 million in sales. This season they've spent 70 million but made 186 million. Brighton are primarily a selling club.’

‘We(not Brighton) sell players but not to earn a profit because we'll always reinvest.’

 

[WhingForPresident]

We have to sell to have any chance of being sustainable, it's an unfortunate fact. If we signed players then held them hostage when a 'big' club comes in offering to triple their salary, no good players would ever join us.

There's probably only a handful of clubs that can't be considered 'selling clubs', either because they are backed by oil states (City, Newcastle, PSG) or because they have prestige and/or challenge for titles regularly (United, Chelsea, Real, Barça). Even much bigger clubs with outstanding pedigree like Milan, Ajax, Napoli, Dortmund and Benfica lose key players to those sides. The only way we ever become not a 'selling club' will be by consistently competing for major trophies over a good period of time or by getting taken over by Saudis.

 

[sparkie]

I wouldn't define it at all because it is just derogatory labelling.

 

[Rookie]

With the exception of maybe Madrid and City at the minute, all clubs are selling clubs. Chelsea have lost players they didn’t want to, Arsenal the same. Highly doubt Liverpool wanted to be raided in the way they have been this summer with possible more leaving.

 

[Mo Gosfield]

Its impossible to bridge the gap that the Greedy Ones have created. The 20-30 years of global build. Their influence with the tv companies, their ability to outspend and pay their employees much more. The unconcious bias they enjoy from officialdom and the way they manipulate and engineer the market to suit.
We have progressed to a position in the next tier down but that is as far as we will be allowed to go. The cartel hasn't been established to relinquish its position to any other Tom, Dick or Harry. They have the name, the glamour, the attraction. They are box office. We and most others, are not. The media like a an elite group. They build their schedules and agenda around them.
Are we a selling club. Yes, of course we are but so are every other club. Its just a question of whether you fall into that elite niche that only sell when they need to and have enough money, glamour, clout and prestige to keep most talented players happy and are at the top of the pyramid, winning trophies. The rest take their place in the pecking order.
We are identified as a solid, middle ranking, well run club, that invests in young talent, nurtures them, invests in them and then when the time inevitably comes for them to move onto greener grass, we extract full value for them and let them move on. We have to do it and so do most of the rest.
Football usurped boxing a while back as the big money spinner in sport. The mafia, the hoodlums, the criminals and the snake oil salesmen all got attracted to boxing and its big money and now football is full of the same sleazy element. It means that however hard you fight to hang onto talent within your club, you are fighting a losing battle. There is too much vested interest and too much pressure from agents, family, friends and hangers-on. We are dealing with young and often immature players who, quite naturally, have their heads turned. You can't fight this and as we have positioned ourselves now, as only one stepping stone below the elite level, we know we will have to sell regularly to the bigger boys, who will keep calling.
Lets just trust that our club representatives keep up the good work. Keep negotiating well and screw every last penny out of these greedy bastards.

 

[Couldn't Be Hyypia]

Brighton are a club with a goal: to be a sustainable top 10 Premier League club which regularly competes for trophies and European football.

They can't call on venture capital or sovereign wealth to achieve that goal, so need a more nuanced plan.

Our plan involves: developing world class facilities; designing and implement an industry redefining recruitment process; being an attractive proposition to managers and players despite not being able to offer top wages; offering players the opportunity to develop their career more quickly and become more valuable. Part of that plan is to identify undervalued, often young, talent, develop it and sell some of that talent at a profit.

Does that mean we sell players we'd rather keep? Sometimes. Do all but a tiny, tiny minority of clubs face the same issue? Absolutely. Almost all clubs rely on player sales to balance the books (or rather try to balance the books).

Our model is more dependent on selling players at a profit than some. That does make us more vulnerable to players wanting to move on their terms and to suit their own timing. But I don't categorise that as a selling club. I don't recognise the term.

Do all bar a handful of clubs partly sustain their existence by selling players? Of course they do. That makes "selling" an unhelpful epithet when applied to any football club.

Brighton is a club with a goal and a plan and the talent, and backing, to execute that plan. I don't believe any club is a "selling club" but that all clubs are dependent on player sales to sustain their existence.

 

[Guinness Boy]

Covered this on Albion Roar this week (already out on podcast). I broadly agree with Tom and Al. We sell a player or two for a lot of money. “Selling clubs” have fire sales and sell lots of players cheaply. This window Chelsea are more of a selling club than us.

 

[dazzer6666]

Meaningless bollocks along with ‘big club’ arguments. Who cares ? All clubs trade players, we’re just better at it than most.

 

[Simster]

Meaningless bollocks along with ‘big club’ arguments. Who cares ? All clubs trade players, we’re just better at it than most.

Exactly.

And some clubs that aren't what you might call a selling club would actually probably do better if they were.

Man Utd overpay for shit players. Everton overpay for shit players even when nobody else wants those players because their wages are too high! The absolute state of Everton!

Then you've got clubs like Portsmouth, Bolton, and Derby who could only dream of selling a player for one twentieth of our last sale, because that would mean they had players worth buying. They haven't.

 

[Cowfold Seagull]

Every club is a "selling club" if the price is right.

 

[Couldn't Be Hyypia]

Every club is a "selling club" if the price is right.

Yep. As @dazzer6666 said, all clubs are trading clubs.

 

[Hugo Rune]

Selling players is a strategy for getting us up the table. We finished above two Big Six ‘spending’ clubs (Chelsea & Spuds) last season. We got into Europe for the first time.

If this tactic stops reaping dividends, I’m sure we’ll change the way we buy and sell players. For now, we in the midst of ‘peak Albion’. Long may it continue.

 

[DavidinSouthampton]

My age old understanding of a selling club would be about lower league or poorer clubs needing to sell, albeit unwillingly, their best player(s) in order to survive - survive meaning paying the tax bill or whatever in order not to go out of business.

That’s a far cry from our Caicedo situation, whom we didn’t want to sell and had no need to sell In financial terms.

 

[Tom Hark Preston Park]

Yep. As @dazzer6666 said, all clubs are trading clubs.

The difference is we're far smarter traders than most clubs, however 'Big'

 

[maffew]

Yeah all clubs are selling clubs. Just our p&l is better then everyone elses in the respect..

 

[ChickenBaltiPie]

I agree. I also think it’s a derogatory label (that ultimately comes from a position of jealousy) and I don’t appreciate being called a selling club.

Almost all clubs globally are a selling club if you’re being ‘literal’ about it, but I don’t believe the label ‘selling club’ when used is used in the lliteral sense.

I don’t believe we’re any more a selling club than any other, with the exception of the select few mentioned that are happy to run at a loss of £100’s millions every year at the cost of their gulf state or Russian oligarch trillionaire owners, and I would rather be labelled a selling club than be one of those!!

The prices being talked about, and paid for some of our players also supports the fact we’re not a selling club IMO. If we were, and our players were being touted about in the desperate hope of selling them, then the prices paid would support that and be considerably lower. Our players aren’t ‘up for sale’ and is why the price of Caicedo was ultimately so high I believe, and why a price for Ferguson or Estupinan or Mitoma would be crazy high too tbh, because they need to be to persuade us to release them before we’re ready to, on our terms, (have realised the price paid vs performance) and as proven the players terms too, (Max Alister, Trossard, Sanchez) to an extent. (Although, with the right consideration of the fact they SIGNED A CONTRACT, at a point in time when it was convenient for them to do so!!)

Caicedo wanted out and he wanted a bigger salary and that is why we ultimately agreed to sell. Otherwise he would have stayed, I would like to believe. We certainly were not forcing him out to make a profit that’s for sure!! He was never ‘up for sale’ and definitely not for the sake of profit. Given the choice, the club may have kept him and refused all offers I’d like to think. We cannot be seen to hold on to players against their wishes (like a lot of clubs do) if we wanna attract more.

We do not sell because we need to. We do not sell in the hope of making a profit. No one is taking money out and walking away with it. We don’t have shareholders. It’s just good business.

It’s to have the funds to reinvest and slowly improve, and rinse and repeat. The money we’re spending on both salaries and players is steadily increasing but we’re not creating a huge amount of debt in doing so.

The VERY simplistic view of player sales vs player spend, is not a simple 121 equation, not for us anyway. We have huge expenses beyond player purchases that we struggle to offset against other far far lower incoming funds. There are so many other factors to be successful whilst being sustainable that have to be expensed.

We don’t have enormous marketing deals and regular European football, global shirt sales and sponsorship ‘yet’ etc etc on the scale that would be required to offset against enormous player purchases (you could argue no club does or they’d be in profit too) so when someone offers us huge money for a player, and we have 2/3 lined up behind him that have the very strong potential to be even better, we’re gonna sell and I’m glad we do. It’d be crazy(!!) not to.

We sell because teams like Chelsea offer such stupid amounts of money for players we know we have a good chance of replacing for potentially 1/10th of the price, and have a proven track record now of doing that each time we’ve sold.

Ultimately, I believe the intention is to reinvest any money made from sales, just not on any one single, highly expensive risk but many cheap ones. We loan out more players than almost anyone now. (I think?) Which is also incredibly smart cause it’s the best way to ensure their development and helps cover the cost of their salaries.

We’ve been trying to spend a large chunk of what we received for Caicedo, although struggled to do so thus far, on 2/3 guys, that seem to want to jump straight to bigger clubs/salaries unfortunately, because we wanna continue to improve, and we consider them good value for the money.

The only thing any one can accuse us of is not intentionally throwing money away. We do not wish to intentionally/happily run at a loss, basically. That cannot be considered a bad thing, and it cannot be a factor in determining what is and isn’t a selling club.

I can think of other teams that were running at an ‘unsustainable’ loss and were at serious risk of huge trouble down the road that actively sold off practically their whole squad, and/or every player they ever stumbled across that was worth something, at the very first opportunity, BECAUSE THEY HAD TO, OR, because the owner was looking to profit. That is how I would define a ‘selling cub’ …we just do it because it’s good business sense and helps us continue to steadily improve. I think it’s an important definition.

We also need to let them go tbh, cause one thing I wish wasn’t true but obv is, is that we’re still just a pathway (presently) to FAR greater salaries unfortunately but that will change too eventually, and for the time being, I’m VERY happy with that, because it’s obviously working very well for us!!

Our aim is to be sustainable, and prove to the world that being a successful football club and a successful business are not mutually exclusive. Football clubs don’t have to run at a crazy loss in order to be successful. We’re proving that. We’re taking it to the big boys and showing them up for what they are. We have yet to prove you can win anything though obv.

None of that makes us a ‘selling club’ IMO. With our academy/development and our scouting we don’t need to buy players at high prices, and as we know, we spend plenty, we just spread it on potential rather than blow it on single player purchases and crazy salaries we cannot (yet) afford, or to an extent, I believe, morally don’t really ‘want’ to pay.

We’re gonna win something eventually, and when we do, I hope we’ll have EARNED it, not BOUGHT it, and ‘that’ is gonna feel INCREDIBLE!! We could be the first club in (recent) history to win something notable and do it without accruing huge debt in the process, wouldn’t that be something?!

Regards, PBOBE

P.S. If you’re the only person that actually managed to read all that haha, I am very grateful, and to everyone else, I apologise for making you scroll that little bit further to the next, no doubt, far more succinct comment. (This one clearly struck a bit of a nerve for me!)

 

[ConfusedGloryHunter]

f*** me there are a lot of essays on this one!

We are an elite selling club.

Most other clubs are merely selling clubs.

There are a handful of spending clubs and these generally make a loss every season. What is there to be proud about with that?

 

[Giraffe]

A selling club, to me, is one which sells players that can't really afford not to. I don't think that's us. It's also one where they uncover a talent, are better, and then sell, and are then worse. So far we have not done that. Arguably we just get better each time we replace someone. Exception so far may be Caceido, but he may turn out to be the best player to ever play for us so it's a hard shout to replace a player of that supreme quality.

 

[Ⓩ-Ⓐ-Ⓜ-Ⓞ-Ⓡ-Ⓐ]

My age old understanding of a selling club would be about lower league or poorer clubs needing to sell, albeit unwillingly, their best player(s) in order to survive - survive meaning paying the tax bill or whatever in order not to go out of business.

That’s a far cry from our Caicedo situation, whom we didn’t want to sell and had no need to sell In financial terms.

This is what I think too

 

[Weststander]

A football club that makes sales.