A post that begins with "I don't know if the owners have put in that much money..." needs to be dissected point by point? He's said he doesn't know, then gone a posted a bunch of guess work.
you should read that as "I wouldn't be so sure about that" rather than I don't know at all. Not everyone is as rude or as strident as you.
Southampton were heavily in debt when Liebherr bought them, roughly 20 million or so. That was cleared as part of the purchase. They immediately went out and paid 3m for players whilst in League One. That got them promoted to the Championship. They spent 5m in that season.
but they sold players for far more than that. The major impact of Liebherr was to replace the bank debts with an owners loan, which was then turned into equity. and stand over the losses in the season they were promoted. this is money that they will get back when the trust eventually sells the club.
Since promotion to the Premier League they've spent around 50m on players, and their turnover until June 2012 was 21m. Even accounting for the Premier League revenue boost, that's a substantial investment. Norwich have spent a little over half that.
their turnover in 2012 has nothing to do with it. Last season Southampton will have earned in the region of £70-80 million quid. This season that will jump to at least £100 million. as long as Southampton kept moderate control over their wages they should be well able to afford net spending of about £30 million a year. The New Tv contract means that clubs like southampton are now quite rich. The last available financial results for Southampton are for the first six months of last season, and they showed that they had trebled their turnover, and posted a small profit. This is consistent with them being able to just about afford the players that they signed last season.
And it is true that norwich have spent a lot less than southampton, but they have a) cleared their bank debt b) cleared the debt owed to their owners c) invested in facilities. Southampton haven't had to do any of that. The thing is that there are now a bunch of moderately sized clubs in the premiership who can spend a lot of money on players if they choose to.
Now obviously there is a logic behind spending silly money to stay in the Premier League because if it pays off the return can be significant. However only someone who has no clue about the way the club is run, and more importantly where the club was when Liebherr bought them, would make a dismissive, uneducated statement along the lines of "it's like Norwich". That isn't the case, because Liebherr's trust hasn't come anywhere near recovering their investment into the club, and there has been no suggestion that relegation/parachute payments are an option for them.
But Liebherr's trust have made a massive financial gain in the value of the club. They have effectively bought a midtable premiership club, with a decent modern stadium, for an outlay of about £25 million quid. Fulham were just sold for in the region of £200 million. southampton may not be in central london, but they've still increased massively in value.
There is also no point in spending silly money to stay in the premiership, because it means that there is no financial advantage to being in the premiership, and you disappear in a ball of smoke and flames like QPR. The championship and league one are littered with teams who spent silly money in the premiership and got into severe financial difficulty when they were eventually relegated. some like Norwich, southampton, leeds, wolves, forest and charlton have gone into league one, and there's no compelling reason why blackburn won't follow them.
Now since you like defending RedHopper so much, maybe you should go through his post history and see why his posts are to be treated with disdain.
you should consider being less rude. You may not agree with what I say, but you could be a little bit more polite about it.
