The winter transfer window is an opportunity to upgrade your squad. If an obvious relegation candidate fails to take advantage, then they are either extremely optimistic or they have accepted fate. Huddersfield have a manageable net debt of £43.7m, down 13% from the previous season, with some nice parachute money in the pipeline.
It was enough of a windfall for the owner to pay off a big chunk of his own loan money and the directors to pocket almost 600k each.
Written by whom? Also of note is that the bankruptcy hearing is for past taxes that weren't paid, so relegation from the Football League can't be blamed. Crap management can.
So signing Michael Keane - subsequently an England international - wasn't an upgrade? Yes, he was already on loan, but it was a half-season loan, like Chalobah's. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014–15_Burnley_F.C._season#Transfers Enjoy the trip to Eastleigh for your first National League. Oh, are you going bust first??
I see they signed six players during the mid-season transfer window. So you got that one completely wrong as well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009–10_Burnley_F.C._season#Transfers
What they're doing is disappointing, but I don't think you can really call it "tanking" which implies deliberately losing. What Cincy is doing is just throwing in the towel. They can't compete as currently constructed, so they're gonna wait it out until they can begin rebuilding.
Personally, I don't think the business plans of poorly-performing clubs tells us much of anything about league structure. YMMV.
Does tanking imply "deliberately losing"? In the NBA, they don't throw games, do they? It's more like they don't bother to win. Which feels pretty similar. Given that the intentions are different (playing for draft picks, vs. keeping costs down until contracts expire), I wouldn't necessarily say that because they have no incentive to actively lose doesn't mean they aren't still tanking.
Tanking implies teams playing for better draft picks, usually by using less talented players, unless you're M in which case you use it interchangeably with "cartel" for anything American. But isn't a team that receives $130 million, then possibly another $60 million and uses it to pay down debt, give the directors a big payout, or invest in infrastructure, as opposed to acquiring obtain better players, doing something similar in principle?
The issue with tanking isn't that teams do it, it's that there is no penalty for it (and in most cases there is reward through draft position - and regardless of general opinion about the SuperDraft, FCC got one of their most productive players through it). They get to keep their market monopoly status in the top league and the fans are just stuck with it because they have no alternative.
Honestly asking, what is Cincinnati doing to bring up the tanking charge? I don't quite get it from that Tweet.
They have no intention of spending money to improve the team until the 2021 season. They're hitting autopilot until their bad contracts run out.
Fair enough, my wording was poor. You're right, it's more about not trying to win not deliberately throwing games. But I still say that doing so in order to get better draft picks is different than just saying "the next season is a wash."
They did earn their place in the Premier League based on performances on the field of play rather than through acceptance of a cartel membership fee. I will merely lol that a team can buy their way into a league and then do nothing to be even remotely competitive in it in the knowledge there's no price of failure.
That's not what they've said. Their GM said that their next coach will be a caretaker on an 18 month contract. That way they can bring someone else in when their shiny new stadium opens up. FCC's biggest misstep was not hiring a GM/Sporting Director prior to moving to MLS. Jeff Berding is the President of FCC, and he was pulling double duty as the GM while they were in USL. That's great when you are in USL and can outspend all of your competition and win games simply on talent alone. They've found out very quickly that they can't do that in MLS. All of the other teams have either had more time to build all of their infrastructure and front offices out, or that have more resources at the their disposal that has allowed them to quickly close that gap (i.e. they have $$$$$ that allows them to make great hires and build infrastructure). FCC did everything right to get accepted into MLS. They royally f'd up everything ever since that party like MLS expansion announcement day though. The other Sporting Director's and GM's in the league played Berding and Koch like a fiddle in the MLS transfer market, fleecing them for nearly all of the league provided year one expansion resources (allocation $$$). They seriously overpaid for Waston, Adi, Alashe,Garza, Haggland, & Manneh among others. FCC makes Orlando City look competent.........
Written by whom? Where are the panic buys? But rewarded financially, especially in regards to their "new" competition at a "lower" level ...
I wouldn't call either of them 'traditionally top flight clubs', Rovers have been outside the top flight 48 of their 120 years and Forest 60 out of their 116 years. People seem to 'think' Forest were a big club because they had a few 'golden years' under Cloughie, the reality is before him they were not particularly successful and since him they have fallen back to mediocrity. Of course thanks to Pro/Rel they can come back to being European Champions if they 'play their cards right'.
Aston Villa seems to have jumped the 90 million fence of new transfers after promoting to the epl. Let's watch what that pays off.
The one good thing you can say about Randy Lerner is that he cleared their debts before he sold the club (although he did receive £30M following their promotion).