The idea that we need to cut costs is not new.
Before going deep, let's look at what our books are offloading in June:
- Spalletti and staff ~10m
- Young ~4.5m
- Kolarov ~6m
- Candreva ~5.5m (we weren't paying most of this figure this season either)
- Politano ~3m (same as above)
- D'Ambrosio ~3.5m (we have an option to renew this deal, we don't seem eager to do so and I'm not sure if we're going to negotiate an extension)
That's over 30m off the books, or just north of 20m if you don't want to include the two loan + obligation deals.
That's not including Conte and his ~20m cost (including staff) leaving, which for some fucked up reason we have to end up paying half of, but still. That's ~40m off our books thus far.
We will have following the next season the following:
- Lukaku ~13m gross
- Eriksen ~11m gross
- Sanchez ~10m gross
- Perisic ~10m gross
- Vidal ~9m gross
- Nainggolan ~9m gross
- Hakimi ~8m gross
- De Vrij ~7m gross
- Brozovic ~6m gross
- Skriniar ~5m gross
- Joao Mario ~5m gross
- Vecino ~4.5m gross
- Barella ~4.5m gross
- Martinez ~4.5m gross
- Sensi ~3m gross
- Pinamonti ~3m gross
- Darmian ~2.5m gross
- Bastoni ~2.5m gross
- Gagliardini ~2.5m gross
- Lazaro ~2.5m gross
- Dalbert ~2.5m gross
- Radu ~2m gross
Ranocchia is costing ~3m gross, I guess he'll be staying with a pay cut, but let's assume it's going to be the same.
I'll add something like 6m (gross) for salaries of Primavera and loanees. Most of these kids do not make more than 300k anyway, but someone like Dimarco does.
That gives us a figure slightly less than 140m euros from the remaining players. Plus 40m on top of that. For the sake of "worst case scenario", I'll assume that what is being said for 20% cuts is true and I'll use the figures of the remaining players for that and not the original sum from last season as we've already cut over 20% with the 40m difference and we're still including Radja, Mario, Lazaro and Dalbert on the books.
We all understand that the problem is with cash and not the FFP/accounting shit. This means, we can afford to take some capital losses here and there. We've already done that with Miranda for example, when we cleared the Settlement Agreement.
From this figure that's a little shy of 140m, the 20% cut means that we need to get rid of a little less than 30m.
Now, if we only offload Perisic, Nainggolan and one of Vidal or Sanchez, we've hit this mark. But since 3/4 of these guys are still part of the team, let's go another way.
Out:
Nainggolan 9m
Mario 5m
Lazaro 2.5m
Dalbert 2.5m
That's 19m in costs for the next year. Mario and Radja are expiring next season. Now Dalbert and Lazaro have contracts until 2023, but their salary isn't too high. We can manage to perpetuate the loans to reduce salary costs or we could name a price and cover part of the salary for 2 years. Gives us cash and also reduces our wage bill.
Now, obviously if we need money, we're not getting 70m from these guys. At best, we can get 5m for Radja from Cagliari, maybe 7m for Mario which is his book value and maybe we can get something short of 10m for Lazaro from Germany and for Dalbert I doubt we can get more than 2m. That's ~30m but it's a best case scenario. So let's assume we can get ~15m from sales here is possible.
Now, looking at the players we have, the ones that are "attractive" to offload from the management's perspective obviously cannot be determined just by this alone, as we have to consider book value etc. But other than Lukaku, no one else has a high book value so the argument becomes redundant.
The players there are actually possible to sell are:
- Romelu Lukaku
- Christian Eriksen
- Marcelo Brozovic
- Stefan De Vrij
- Nicolo Barella
- Alessandro Bastoni
- Milan Skriniar
- Achraf Hakimi
- Lautaro Martinez
- Matias Vecino
- Stefano Sensi
- Roberto Gagliardini
- Ivan Perisic
Now, from these, obviously the amount each can bring differs, the cost on Inter to offload them may vary, the book value may not be met for some.
But assuming that for example we sell:
Lukaku (80m?)
Perisic (5m?)
Brozovic (40m?) [alternatively, De Vrij, 50m?]
Vecino (10m?) [alternatively, Gagliardini, 10m?]
That gives us 135m. Plus the 15m from the 4 unwanted guys, that's 150m incoming. This also brings the salaries from 140m to ~88m and automatically, within 12 months, Suning has halved the annual core operation costs, which is that of having a team.
This leaves us with at most 70m to play with in the market, but it's not as relevant as cash deals are rare anyway, but it will allow us to have some incoming transfers that will total to 50-70m spent and it will allow us to add a little over 25m in salaries, including that of the new coach, which will be the tricky part.
Assuming that we manage to bring in Dimarco for a small extra fee (like 4m on top of what we receive) and a salary of 2m, whatever system we opt for, this is not really that bad. You can argue that losing Lukaku would be terrible, but I feel that Brozo or De Vrij's loss would be worse. It will all depend on what the tactical setup will be like as well.
After Dimarco, we'd be looking for a new striker, a new MC (if we stick with 3-5-2, no need to be starter), a backup striker, we could still use guys like Esposito, Mulattieri, Pirola and so on to fill roster spots.
Belotti (30m cash and 9m gross salary?)
Giroud (no cash and something like 5.5m gross salary)
Dimarco (5m cash and 3.5m gross salary)
Locatelli (30m cash and 4m gross salary)
Obviously for Belotti and Locatelli that's not the total sum of the transfer, but we all know how you can inflate those without actually having to come up with money.
That's 22m gross salary added and 65m spent on transfers. Add 6m gross to the new coach, new deals for Lautaro and Bastoni, adding something like another 8m gross and voilà!
We have 85m net received and a salary structure that comes up to ~125m.
And this is actually one of the relatively bad scenarios, but obviously not the worst case. It's a rather realistic one and I haven't even discussed about cutting off the likes of Vidal, Sanchez and Eriksen who earn the most.
We have money problems, yeah, so does almost every other club but 2-3 in the world (Chelsea, Man City, Man Utd pretty much). We'll get by, as long as we don't shoot ourselves in the foot, which must be said we're pretty good at.
