tilehurstender surely we should be able to better any offer Swansea could make????
What makes you think that?
Swansea are a similar sized club to us, will have a similar income in most aspects, and they're in their second year in the Prem with a fairly settled squad and probably won't see many players other than Sig inbound this Summer.
We will likely have a similar budget (not sure why people seem to think TSI will be injecting huge sums of cash - all along we've been told this was unlikely to be the case...), but we'll have to strengthen in a lot more areas than Swansea - Brain has already said four or five players coming in....
Yes, income does increase a lot in the PL, but it's (only) £40M or thereabouts in the first year.
Let's take SIg, cost us around £7M to Hoffenheim, plus his salary of around £2M, plus agents fees etc etc - you'd be talking about £10M or thereabouts, on one player - that's 25% of the additional income.......!!
Then we'd need a minimum of 3 or 4 other players, going to be at least another £10M there....another 25%
What else do we need to spend? Salaries will go up undoubtedly, last time in the Prem our wage bill was around £28M, so that would be an increase of £8M (not including SIgs wages whoops there goes another 20% of additional income).....let's build a new training ground (few £M there), additional expenses incurred through being in the PL (additional policing etc), contingency for January signings if needed etc etc etc....
£40M isn't really very much when you think about it.....
If we're going to spend £10M (as we would have to with Sig) I'd prefer it to be spent on 2 or 3 signings (like Marriapa for example) to give us real strength in depth, rather than one "marquee" signing, who could quite feasibly pick up an injury early on and be out for the rest of the season.......
I'd still be happy to see him back, but if I'm honest I can't see it happening. Swansea have a significant advantage in being able to throw more of their Prem income at a "marquee" signing, so I find it no surprise that at present they're in pole position to take him...