It's that time of year again!

[OCD]

There are players bought that left  most supporters shaking there heads in disbelief, when you look at the sheer waste of money over four years it makes me angry.

Who remembers pelty on here dropping the fact that Heskey was the highest paid player at the club?

That's Emile Heskey, who was nudging 32 when we threw a 3.5 year deal at him.

That's an example of the sort of dreadful decision making we've engaged in.

There's nothing wrong with shirking players with no future value and buying wisely so that you'll have sell on potential - even Spurs do that. My problem currently is that, we seem to have realised that now, but we're doing it on far too large a scale, too quickly.

Or giving a 35-year old goalkeeper a 5-year contract.

[OCD]

We haven't mentioned Spurs for a while, and we'll never tempt VD back if that isn't rectified.

For 2011, their wage bill was £91m compared to ours of £83m.  VD should be glad that we're finally paying less than them, it's just a shame how it's been achieved, ie they're still knocking around the top 4, while we're more concerned with the bottom 4.

£8m a year is about 2-3 top players.  Spurs are abviously more than 2-3 players better than us.  So it just goes to show it's all about how the money is spent.  And if you take those 2-3 players and also have our higher earners contributing as befits their salary, then would be that far off them?

That's one of the biggest problems - the big earners who should be the backbone of the team just haven't contributed this season.  I'd say in each area of the team, the following are by far and away the highest earners:

GK - Given
DF - Dunne
MF - Ireland
ST - Bent

When you add in Hutton, Warnock, N'Zogbia and Gabby, I reckon you are talking well over £400,000 pw for a group of players who have contributed hardly anything.

Just for Given, Dunne, Ireland and Bent I think that would amount to £220,000 per week or £11,440,000 over a year. For those 4.

[eamonn]

Still, at least we're not the only club dicing with disaster:

Queens Park Rangers has said that its wage bill doubled during its first year back in the Premier League.

Spending on wages nearly doubled from £27.6m to £56m in the year to 31 May 2012, financial results showed.

It reported a loss of £22.6m and debts jumped 57% to nearly £90m according to the accounts, which do not include the club's latest spending on new players.

QPR chairman Tony Fernandes admitted that spending needed to be "closely monitored and controlled".

However, he added: "A critical driver of any club's value is its presence in the Premier League and the club achieved its key objective for the 2011-12 season by successfully securing its Premier League status.

"The financial results reflect the club's focus on on-pitch success."

Since the end of the last financial year the club has brought in a number of players, both during the summer and during the January transfer window.

The club twice broke its transfer record during January when it spent more than £20m on Loic Remy and Christopher Samba.

QPR are currently bottom of the Premier League and the signings aimed to strengthen the squad for its battle to avoid relegation.

The club sacked manager Mark Hughes in November and brought in Harry Redknapp.

QPR are partly owned by Mr Fernandes, and the Malaysian business tycoons Kamarudin Bin Meranun and Ruben Emir Gnanalingam, who have a combined 66% stake. The remainder belongs to the Mittal family.

[Rudy Can't Fail]

..he has radically changed his mind - in a perfectly rational way.  The MON approach wasn't working.  That's why we didn't finish any higher than 6th.  What was meant to happen in that situation?  Carry on throwing ever larger cheques at it until he was bankrupt as well as the club?  We're going about it a different way now but unfortunately there's a lot of repair work that's needed before we can start to grow again.

Perfectly summed up, Ad@m. Mistakes have been made and most of them very costly but the problem had to be addressed. Which ever way you look at it, our ambition will always outstrip our revenue. The only risk I see is maintaining our Premier League status this season but that responsibility falls with Lambert not Lerner. He's been given the funds and on paper inherited a decent squad that with the right leadership and tactical nous, should be nowhere near the foot of the table.

[pauliewalnuts]

I'd say there are a lot of us who agree that something had to be done re the spending - vast amounts getting pissed away, nobody wants to see that.

It's not the fact something had to be done about costs which we argue about, it is the fact that it has been done way too fast, and the ultimate reflection of that is the current squad, where we are relying on too many inexperienced young players at any one time, which contributes largely to our league position.

Look at Baker, Lowton, Bennett and Clark who have formed our defence very frequently. Total lack of top flight experience, yet thrown into it, week after week.

[Billy Walker]

An analysis of Liverpool from the Guardian:

"The effect on Liverpool of signing expensive players in the first year of ownership by the Boston-based Fenway Sports Group [FSG] has been revealed, with accounts showing the club lost £40.5m in the 10 months to 31 May 2012. During the period, which covered Liverpool's transfer activity in the August 2011 and January 2012 windows, the club's biggest signings were José Enrique, from Newcastle United, and Sebastián Coates, from Nacional, but the wages still accounted for 70% of the club's total income.

The wage bill, £109m for the 10 months, equating to £131m over a full year, was very close to the £134m Liverpool paid in the previous year, and included the salaries of Andy Carroll, Luis Suárez, Jordan Henderson, Stewart Downing and Charlie Adam, all signed in the early months after FSG's October 2010 takeover.

The accounts disclose that Liverpool paid £9.6m in termination payments "to former employees ... including the change in coaching staff", which relates to FSG's sacking of several people last May, including Kenny Dalglish and his assistants.

Liverpool's managing director, Ian Ayre, argued that the club is in a transitional period and has now "implemented a new transfer strategy" which aims to "bring in talented players on sensible contracts".

Ayre claimed that despite the £40.5m loss and increase in net debt to £87m from £65m in 2010-11, Liverpool are being prudent. "We've done it in a frugal way," he said, explaining that players have been put on "the right contracts", with payment in instalments both for them and the selling clubs. "It's important that we have that sort of prudent approach as we want to create sustainability for the club, he added.

The £40.5m loss followed another of £49m for the year to 31 July 2011, covering FSG's first months since its takeover from the former owners, US-based Tom Hicks and George Gillett. Although John Henry, principal of FSG, is a confirmed advocate of financial fair play rules, Liverpool, if they repeat these figures next year, would fail the new regulations introduced by the Premier League, which limit annual losses to £35m.

FSG has been loaning money to Liverpool in an effort to improve the club's financial position. During its first months, FSG lent £30m, then in the 10 months to 31 May, the club repaid FSG £8m. In August, FSG loaned a further £47m to the club, which was used to pay off bank borrowings, including £38m owed in loans relating to the club's work on its stadium plans. In October, FSG clarified that it intends to expand Liverpool's stadium at Anfield rather than build a new stadium on Stanley Park, which had been planned for a decade.

The accounts show again why Liverpool are seeking this expanded capacity, to make more money from fans and thereby narrow the income gap on Manchester United, Arsenal and the other highest-earning Premier League clubs. Liverpool's income was £169m for the 10 months to 31 May 2012, a period covering the full 2011–12 season. Matchday income, £42m, was lower than that from TV and media rights, and commercial revenue. By comparison, Arsenal's turnover for 2011-12 was £243m, while United's was by far the highest of any English club at £320m.

Liverpool have spent a net £39m on players since, including Fabio Borini, Joe Allen, Daniel Sturridge and Philippe Coutinho. The club will expect to record a loss again for the current financial year, as FSG struggles to steer Liverpool into the top rank again."

It'll be interesting to see how they manage things because they are, in my opinion, the  club whose current position mirrors our the most.  The pattern of their spending since Fenway took over seems very similar to Lerner's and I believe Henry is of similar wealth to Randy. 

If they are following a similar pattern to us could Rodgers be their Houllier and Sturridge their Bent?

[Rudy Can't Fail]

So who's to blame, Paulie? Is it Lambert for spending his budget on untried full backs whilst ignoring the two he inherited, only one central defender, three central midfielders from the Dutch and French (Div 2) leagues and English Third Division, a winger unwanted by Spurs trying to make a living in the MSL, whilst spending £7m on a striker when we already had a £24m top striker, Gabby, N'Zogbia, Holman, Wiemann and the Fonz?

Or is it Lerner for not giving Lambert more to spend?

[pauliewalnuts]

So who's to blame, Paulie? Is it Lambert for spending his budget on untried full backs whilst ignoring the two he inherited, only one central defender, three central midfielders from the Dutch and French (Div 2) leagues and English Third Division, a winger unwanted by Spurs trying to make a living in the MSL, whilst spending £7m on a striker when we already had a £24m top striker, Gabby, N'Zogbia, Holman, Wiemann and the Fonz?

Or is it Lerner for not giving Lambert more to spend?

They're all to blame to some degree.

It's too easy and facile an argument to lump it on one person alone. The club didn't start declining when Lambert rocked up, it has been on the way down for three years now, so if you want me to make it easier and start saying it is all Lerner's fault, or all Lambert's, you're not going to get it.

Lerner has run the club abysmally for three years now. Look at the spunked away sums of money on paying off managers. Look at the McLeish appointment, and look at the kind of financial profligacy that caused us to cut back so much, so quickly, we look to be getting relegated.

I notice that all Lambert's signings have come from low wage, lower league sides or selling European leagues. Having been told for three years now that the wage bill is a problem, I suspect that is no coincidence. In fact, I think you'd have to be nuts not to spot the connection on that one.

They keep telling us they want the club to be self sufficient - that is going to mean a considerably lower wage bill, no getting away from it. You can't have failed to notice their self sufficiency mantra, can you? We've heard it again, in the report with the annual accounts.

There has been absolute zero footballing nous at the club, above the level of team manager, for several years, with the result that we wound up with a plethora of shit players on big money, many of whom sat out their contracts right to the end.

How many clubs in this league could you see wasting the sort of money we did on the likes of Beye, Heskey, Cuellar and NRC? How many clubs see so many of their assets walk away for nothing at the end of their contracts? How many clubs would have a situation like the Makoun one? How many of us had actually forgotten he still played for us?

I don't just want Lerner to throw more money at it, I want him to start managing the business properly, because, much as I would like to see evidence to the contrary, the only way a club can go right back to where it started in 2006 - unbalanced, poor squad, broke and fighting relegation - except now with £165m worth of debt, is down to some pretty piss poor management.

For three years now, it has been an utter shambles both on, and off the pitch - that is not going to be the fault of one person alone, but there is only one person who can - and should - start to appoint some more clued up people at the club to make it stop.

[eamonn]

It comes down to whether there was scope for Lambert to buy more proven players at higher wages last summer and in January. In the case of last summer the Dempsey bid suggests so.

Save for signing yet another two untried players he didn't do anything in January either and yet there are strong murmurs from the likes of Gnasher and Eastie on here that he had more money to spend but didn't.

I feared last summer that he was still in the mindset of being the Norwich manager -  picking-up lower league players en masse and giving them a shot at the big-time and I'm worried that will come back to haunt him.

Is he uncomfortable dealing with "stars"? The biggest players he's managed in his career are Darren Bent, Shay Given and Stephen Ireland; all currently ostracised or dropped. Even TSM managed to get something out of each of them.

[Rudy Can't Fail]

It comes down to whether there was scope for Lambert to buy more proven players at higher wages last summer and in January. In the case of last summer the Dempsey bid suggests so.

Save for signing yet another two untried players he didn't do anything in January either and yet there are strong murmurs from the likes of Gnasher and Eastie on here that he had more money to spend but didn't.

I feared last summer that he was still in the mindset of being the Norwich manager -  picking-up lower league players en masse and giving them a shot at the big-time and I'm worried that will come back to haunt him.

I'm thinking along the same, Eammon. I don't see the line of we had to buy lower league players to get the wage bill down. I'm sure we now have a wage structure in place but to say it's so limited we have to buy untried players is at best, unfounded. You make an interesting point about Lambert's transfer targets. Maybe he went for those players that were just out of Norwich's reach but within ours, the error in that plan was the fact he had a very settled side at Norwich and was looking to improve on it, rather than  here where he made a complete rebuild.

I guess he never counted on a season without Dunne, nobody wanting to buy Hutton and Warnock, not getting to meet Jean Makoun, Vlaar and Bent missing so many games, his inability to get anything out of Ireland, N'Zogbia only turning up in February, which add together give him some defence of such a poor season.

We most certainly needed a centre half in January but didn't the news of Dunne's setback come just after the window closed? As Paulie pointed out, we have no football nous on the board and I do wonder if the board are repeating the mistakes of MON by giving Lambert a free reign to do as he pleases, which in principle is fine but as we're finding out, in practice could have devastating consequences.

[pauliewalnuts]

Save for signing yet another two untried players he didn't do anything in January either and yet there are strong murmurs from the likes of Gnasher and Eastie on here that he had more money to spend but didn't.

Ah, the true route to the inside track - Gnasher!

[eamonn]

In Gregory we trust (not John...though he's not a bad'un).

[SoccerHQ]

Huge worry for me is the wages of course.

We have lost a lot of big names over the last 18 months to the effect the squad still has a few big names floating about but is mostly youth and untried cheap players from abroad, we've cut 15m from the wage bill and yet shaved only a cut of % off.

Said this time last season anymore cutting and we'd eventually get relegated and it's happening, either this season or next if we go down the same route in the summer of getting cheap kids in.