Pardew: We need more sponsorship to keep best players.
Posted on February 26th, 2012 | 52 Comments |
He also added that if the club failed to bring in more sponsorship, we may lose our best players. The grey gaffer started with praise for Mike Ashley and Derek Llambias’ financial stewardship the club, though it is still in more debt than it was when Ashley gained control of the club in the summer of 2007.
The Silver Supremo gushed:
”The strategy Mike Ashley and Derek Llambias have followed has put the club in a position of relative financial strength.
“Compared to a lot of other football clubs we are in a good place. You have to worry after what has happened last week that a couple of other clubs could be in trouble this summer – but we are not in that position.
“That is down to Mike and Derek. That policy of buying younger players and being very tough with contracts and shifting the power a little bit from players back to the club has proved so far to be successful.”
With models such as the “Arsenal model,” and later the “Aston Villa model” having been bandied around by the club’s hierarchy in the past, Pardew then introduced the name of another team which has been doing very well recently, claiming that the club are now following a “Spurs model,” continuing:
“There are a couple of other models that have been similar. Spurs have gone down that line and bought young players but are now in a position where they can actually buy experienced players.
“I think, hopefully, that is now the next phase for us. Where we are right now-we are pretty healthy.”
Which kind of begs the question why we need more sponsorship money to keep our existing players, or, indeed, why the club are receiving no appreciable funds (apart from a alleged £40,000) for it’s current blanket publicity for Sports Direct International PLC at St James’ Park. Daniel Levy didn’t need to change the name of Tottenham’s stadium to the “Mr. Byrite Arena” to stubbornly hold on to players such as Luka Modric. But anyway, Pardew continued by saying that it is a good thing that Ashley’s real agenda for the club is finally out in the open, saying:
”One of the big things that has helped me is that the agenda is out in public. That is important that Mike and Derek come out and say: ‘this is the financial climate-this is how we work.’So that makes it a little bit easier for me.
“But we will still have problems down the line. Losing some of our best players to the best clubs is still going to happen because we are still not in a position to stop that.
“But we won’t be able to protect our best players until we get more revenue and bigger sponsorship in.
“The higher up the table we finish the easier it will be to attract not only new sponsors but also top players. We are now getting sound-bytes from agents that they would like to get their players here. It is a good sign.”
Hmm, before we needed more sponsorship to buy new players, now we need more sponsorship to keep the players we already have? Isn’t it somewhat contradictory to claim that Ashley is shifting power away from players back to the club, then also state that the club will find themselves unable to hold on to players unless the club unless it generates ever more sponsorship revenue through schemes which will “dissolve” the history of the club to use Derek Llambias’ words.
Meanwhile, it was also speculated in the same organ that the club will be losing right back, Danny Simpson, as he allegedly looks set to reject £20,000 per week contract offer with no bonuses, which would double his current deal. However Pardew didn’t comment on this.
What comes next in terms of sponsorhip schemes, I shudder to think. Will it involve renaming the club as “Sports Direct United” and changing it’s traditional colours to red, white and blue? I’m off to read Aesop’s fable about the boy who kept crying “Wolf!” too often.
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NUFCBlog Author: workyticket
workyticket has written 1092 articles on this blog.
why more sponsors when ashley has so much cash? or is that how he has got it HE KEEPS IT !!!!!