There is a fine line in football between ambition and recklessness. The Premier League era, and in particular the Abramovich-driven age of the super club in English football has permeated through the pyramid and, as much as we probably don’t like to admit it, conditioned us all to believe that ambition = spending.
An owner cannot look himself in the mirror, nor face his fanbase, without putting his hand in his pocket to spend extravagant amounts of transfer fees and wages that allow supporters either to puff their chests out, feel a sense of reassurance that it somehow equates to the club's custodians caring, or simply for something to be proud about on social media.
But, as we should all surely know by now, money, and the spending of it, doesn’t always buy you love, or success on the football pitch. In fact, when it goes wrong, it can do the complete opposite.
Each case and example needs to be judged on its own merit but in very simple terms, the idea of Todd Boehly lavishing £290m in a single transfer window is framed as a sign of ambition from the American. Which, I guess, on one hand can’t be debated because the money has been spent, and some people just like that sort of stuff.
But as unpalatable as it seems, it could prove a masterstroke and Chelsea’s success has been safeguarded for nearly a decade. However, it wouldn’t take much - as history has shown us due to the uncertainties of football and footballers - for it to be a move of such rank stupidity and recklessness, those eight-year contracts and the bloated mess their squad now appears, could be a burden well into the 2030s.
Staying with the simple thought-process, at the other end of the scale, is Brighton & Hove Albion investing £8m in two largely unknown teenage midfielders from Sweden and Argentina while they are sixth in the Premier League, amid a season in which a number of clubs of considerably greater resources are vastly under-performing, somehow a lack of ambition?
Well, no, of course not. Because we should all be familiar with the absolutely outrageously prolific scouting operation they have in Sussex and the constant progress it’s enabled the club to make (plus, of course, they managed to retain Moises Caicedo).
Three-and-a-half years ago, Bristol City ended the 2018/19 season with their best league position in the pyramid for more than 10 years: eighth, four points outside the top six and of the seven teams ahead of them in the standings, five had been recent beneficiaries of parachute payments.
On the one hand, it was a successful season. But the perception was also of a missed opportunity - the carousel-like situation in goal, a lack of an established Championship goalscorer and the Robins held back by Lee Johnson’s safety-first tactics. These, and others, were some of the arguments - of varying credibility and legitimacy - thrown the way of that team.
Internally, some of that was recognised, of course, but there was a feeling - as evidenced by the table - that they weren’t that far away, and with the right upgrades in the right areas, the 2019/20 season could lead to further improvement.
“If you stand still in this game, you get left behind” was a familiar mantra delivered by CEO Mark Ashton, Johnson at times, and Steve Lansdown around those summer months as City signed 11 new first-team players, spent around £15m in transfer fees, including a new club record, also while recouping more than £30m through the sales of Lloyd Kelly - at the time a promising squad player who was still probably 6-12 months away from being a consistent starter, at least in Johnson’s mind - and Adam Webster, who was as important a player in the squad as can possibly be conceived.
But with the Tomas Kalas and Jay Dasilva converted into permanent City players, a new No1 in Dan Bentley, two very exciting midfielders from the continent in Adam Nagy and Han-Noah Massengo to replace Marlon Pack, a raw but exciting EFL prospect in Sammie Szmodics plus the loan arrival of Benik Afobe, there weren’t too many dissenting voices, once that dreadful opening day defeat to Leeds United was behind them.
That cost of that expenditure - plus the January arrivals of Nahki Wells and Markus Henriksen and Filip Benkovic on loan - bloated the wage bill to a new record £33.5m, although at the time, only the 13th largest in the Championship. Any idea of the Lansdowns not showing ambition in the rawest sense of the word when applied in a football context, was quite simply nonsense. Those people still, of course, existed. And probably now very much engage in the told-you-so arguments around City’s desperate financial situation over the last 18 months.
However, with the exception of the Webster sale - and the inability to replace him was as catastrophic a move as any made that summer - Ashton and Johnson could not say they weren’t backed in the market. And that was unquestionably realised, as the bar was now raised. Instead of tip-toeing around the p-word, from a very early stage, Johnson was laying out the requirements on the team and himself.
And before this sparks the usual flurry of rocks thrown the way of the erstwhile CEO and head coach, they were, after all, simply following a brief - to get promoted. Granted, there were mistakes on the micro level made - many of them, as it turns out - but the overall concept of what they were doing was perceived wisdom at the time.
Imagine the outrage if, in the summer of 2019 and the status City enjoyed at the time as an upwardly mobile and progressive Championship club, Ashton turned around and told the fanbase the wage bill needed to be reigned in, Kalas and Dasilva were too expensive, and they needed to integrate a greater volume of academy players. Asda Bedminster would have sold out of bedsheets.
Case in point, once Afobe suffered his ACL injury, the immediate course of action was to look for a free transfer - and another wage on the books - than try and cover the loss internally. That was just how things were being done at the time. It seems totally alien now.
As we know after the usual ebb and flow, elation and frustration of a football season - heightened and complicated by a global pandemic - City fell short, quite significantly so, six places and seven points, which ultimately cost Johnson his job.
Covid-19 unquestionably plays a part in this story and is, in many ways, the underlying influence because, in normal circumstances, that summer City may well have been able to sell Famara Diedhiou and Niclas Eliasson, who were on expiring contracts, for significant money - they had turned down a bid far in excess of the £2.3m the Swede went to Nimes for, six months earlier - regrouped and gone again.
But that lack of financial flexibility hamstrung Dean Holden’s ability to do business beyond buying Joe Williams. City’s transfer work was modest but still the wage bill rose as they tried to build on the foundations of the previous 12 months. And, as we know, they fell short, quite significantly so, and it cost Holden his job.
It probably wasn’t quite realised at that moment in time, at least not to the full extent, but with Covid still an uncertain beast and its impact on football still not properly known, the moment when Holden sat in solitude in the dugout at Ashton Gate, wishing to speak to his father, knowing his fate was sealed, was the brutal end point of an era (if you want to call it that).
The ramifications have since been huge, and have been detailed many times, but essentially City found themselves burdened by a wage bill they couldn’t afford due to a financial model that had collapsed as the transfer market outside the Premier League disintegrated. And, due to the contracts given in 2019 - which, we should reinforce, nobody was really complaining about at the time - that situation wasn’t going to change any time soon. City had to navigate themselves through what would be very choppy financial waters for the next two years.
It’s no coincidence therefore, that this most recent transfer window has felt like a bit of a fresh start. There’s no doubt it’s been building, as high-earners have been shed, often at a cost, while the work of now-former CEO Richard Gould and Nigel Pearson have increasingly pinpointed this coming summer as the true fork in the road in terms of the financial reset, but heading into the final 18 games of a season in which they are far from safe, something about the club feels lighter and less anchored by the recent past.
Of those signed in the summer window of 2019, only Kalas and Dasilva remain, and the latter would be a Coventry City player by now if AFC Wimbledon had played with a straighter bat than the one they deployed on deadline day. Having reduced the wage bill by £5m for the accounts ending 2021/22, the saving for 2022/23 should display an even more stark decline.
But, crucially… well, hopefully… the squad should be in a better place; assuming, of course, City preserve their Championship status which, I think we can all agree on, looks a more than probable prospect based on recent performances and the quality of those below them.
The idea of ambition is now a very different one. The odd shout of, “Lansdown put your hand in your pocket” is still there, amid bafflement at the sale of Antoine Semenyo on an expiring contract being some kind of raising of a white flag that will only lead to League One. The counter-punch to that of Anis Mehmeti looks a pretty strong one.
Clearly, and reassuringly, there is a plan in place, driven by Pearson and now plotted by technical director Brian Tinnion who has been instrumental in providing the bedrock of academy talent that has enabled City to change course. Without that supply chain of players to cover gaps in the squad, on what are mostly minimal salaries to the players they have replaced, it’s frightening to envisage where the club would be. Well, maybe that’s a bit hyperbolic because the answer is very much in the division below.
It’s not been a great watch at times, and the prospect of relegation has been a lingering fear, but for all the doom-mongering that has existed at times, they’ve only been in the bottom three for the space of eight days under Pearson, and that was August 13-21 with the current season only four games old.
We, ourselves included, were a bit hoodwinked by the concept of sustainability when it was regularly spoken pre-pandemic. As has transpired, albeit through unprecedented and unforeseeable circumstances, the idea of selling your best players every summer and a benevolent owner converting debt into shares to cover various shortfalls isn’t really that sustainable.
Sustainable is: moving a second-choice left-back on a significant wage, and trying to sign one of the brightest young full-backs outside of the Championship as his replacement. Okay, it didn’t work out that way but you can see the process at work.
It’s also creating a culture whereby academy players can make the step into the first-team environment and produce the best of their ability in such an atmosphere. It’s taken for granted but many young players can be crushed under the weight of pressure or simply because, at some clubs, it’s an unpleasant atmosphere that doesn’t support those making the first steps in their career.
Some invariably get through, but a healthy dressing room mentality enables it. Having figures like Andy King at the club (check how many under-21 players making their debut reference him in interviews) create such a bridge and allow the much-vaunted pathway to prosper in practice as well as theory.
Of course, circumstance has dictated a lot of this but a manager a few miles away in the city said recently that football is the survival of the most adaptable, more so than the fittest (or most financial flushed), and the Robins look to have successfully pivoted to a new path, one that feels a little less reckless but still carries a sense of ambition.
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