Should we be more grateful for Fosun?

[Skrilla]

First and foremost, I know people will point out the continually rising ticket prices and the lack of quality football that has been on offer for the last two years. No complaints from me there, it hasn't been up to the standard we'd come to expect under Nuno, and it certainly hasn't been justified. I will precursor this by saying I don't think they've gotten everything right, but that doesn't mean they've also gotten everything wrong, or deserve the stick to the extent they're currently getting e.g. 'Fosun out' threads and similar sentiments across social media(s).

I don't mean to turn this into a "remember where we came from" thread, but it was hard to envision the club being much more than an eternally yo-yo'ing club before the takeover in 2016 that transformed us. I keep seeing people moaning about lack of investment this summer, while continually ignoring the fact we're faced with genuine Financial Fair Play problems that restrict continued outside investment - £46m losses in 2021/22, and £80m~ losses in 2022/23, leaving us in a very awkward position this year trying to stay under the permitted £105m rolling three-year losses with a continually mounting amortisation bill and the coaching staff being on a considerable salary.

We spent the best part of £200 million last season if you include Cunha and Traore's obligations to buy. We were forced to do this summer's shopping in January to keep us up. We can expect more, but we can also be realistic to the type of club we are. Finishing 7th in consecutive seasons in this era of the 'Big Six' is about as good as it's likely to get, and hopefully in the long run we can get back to those dizzying heights of European away days, but consistently achieving midtable in the Premier League is more of a regression to the mean rather than an actual decline.

We haven't spent anything yet this summer, but this squad is hardly the car crash some have made it out to be. We could use a little more strength in depth in certain areas, and we have a month to address that, but we have some serious quality across the pitch. Fans have been crying out for Fabio Silva to get his chance this season, and it looks like he will. Nunes, Cunha, Gomes, and Kilman are as promising a spine as we've arguably ever had. Neto has had his first injury-free preseason in three years. Big Sasa is finally healthy.

I think we need to give them the benefit of the doubt, and let them right their wrongs, they deserve that much before we start calling for their heads.

 

[Hawkguy]

Yes.

They've very close to doubled the money invested than they've taken back.

It wasn't even that long ago where I couldn't even watch the games on TV.

As I said in the other thread, their biggest problem is not seeming to have a direction. Clearly Shi and Sellars can't be trusted with big money. But maybe Shi and Hobbs can? Or maybe Shi is the problem? They need to figure this out.

In reality, we do better on smaller transfers anyway. Every time we've spent big money we've either got a dud of a player or someone who will never return their value in a sale.

 

[Supadavewolf]

Well argued IMV.

Our sixth consecutive season in the top division - when on earth did we last achieve that? Must be half a century ago.

No, Fosun aren't perfect, but under them we've survived the rigours of the PL and I'm optimistic that the current squad - assuming the mainstays remain with us - can stay the course.

To me the bottom line is (not that I like it, but there you go) an investment company will always take action to protect its investment, as we saw last January.

 

[KBWWFC]

I think we need to give them the benefit of the doubt, and let them right their wrongs, they deserve that much before we start calling for their heads.

Fosun have been shown to be inept every time we give them benefit of the doubt.
They have stepped on rakes every step of the way.

What makes you think this time will be different?

 

[lets all have a disco]

Fully agree ...short memories for some....lived a dream following Wolves round Europe and that was all down to Fosun...... if that is ever repeated by other owners until then, I won't be too critical.... that's not to say I don't get frustrated with some things that happen......

 

[Urko]

They’re an investment company who‘ve recently made some dreadful investment decisions.

For geopolitical reasons the sooner we have a parting of the ways the better.

 

[KBWWFC]

They’re an investment company who‘ve made some recent dreadful investment decisions.

For geopolitical reasons the sooner we have a parting of the ways the better.

They bumble along with zero strategy, makes you wonder how they would get on if they weren't propped up by the CCP.

 

[CelebrityWolf]

Why can't we be both?

Grateful they turned us around but disappointed with the current situation which has been building the last couple of years.

 

[Timberwolf]

I’m grateful and all the soft spined, Lilly livered panic shysters are extremely ungrateful.

 

[Skrilla]

Why can't we be both?

Grateful they turned us around but disappointed with the current situation which has been building the last couple of years.

That, in essence, is what I'm trying to say. I don't think it's fair to bash them now after several brilliant years reaching heights many of us couldn't have imagined. It was never going to be all uphill.

 

[wolvesaywe]

The lunatic fringe are heavily over represented on here and Twitter and the wider fanbase are more level headed about the situation. Certainly more respectful for what Fosun have done for the club and city

I can't recall any collective apoplexy in the stands since Nuno left, even through Lage's worst days. Was there ever even a good old fashioned "Lage must go" or "sack the board"?

 

[Timberwolf]

Fosun have been shown to be inept every time we give them benefit of the doubt.
They have stepped on rakes every step of the way.

What makes you think this time will be different?

Wow! How on earth have you managed to rewrite history so comprehensively, in only 26 words? Brilliant!

 

[Supadavewolf]

They bumble along with zero strategy, makes you wonder how they would get on if they weren't propped up by the CCP.

Well, if their past 'zero strategy' continues to keep us in the PL, that'll do for me.

 

[SmiffyWolf]

Give Jeff keys to the city . Rename the Mander centre to the Fosun centre and erect a statue of Guo in the City centre .

 

[KBWWFC]

Wow! How on earth have you managed to rewrite history so comprehensively, in only 26 words? Brilliant!

Argue the point rather than being flippant.

Zenga and relying on mendes 100% success.

Then flip flopping to cutting the mendes ties and going to Lambert. Another masterstroke.

Decide to do another 180 and rely on Mendes. Luck out on Nuno. Definitely no sign of a strategy.

Two seasons later (which were good, guided by Mendes and Nuno rather than Shi and Thelwell ) they decide to move away from Mendes and start to not back Nuno in the second season of prem. Leading to Nuno moaning sarcastically in the press when asked about lack of squad depth (we have 60 players).

Nuno asks for a rebuild and change of strategy. Fosun do not back him.
Thelwell leaves, appoints Scott Sellars, a man so woefully out of his depth that he's actually killed somebody but his management of the club somehow comes out as topping that as the worst thing he's done in his life.

Admit they've made mistakes, sack Nuno appoint Lage, still no transfer strategy, do not back him. We start the season with three midfielders.

After Sellars and the talent department offer the square root of **** all they decide to completely forgo all judgment and just hand Mendes our money, rather than doing due diligence on the transfers. Leaving us with grossly overpriced who don't want to be here.

Finally get the manager they originally set their sights on, pivot away from the Sellars structure, and then choose not to back him, big firesale of players, stripping most of the depth from a squad that spent half of the season at the bottom of the table.

To top it all off, their cashflow is so poor they're reliant on loans leveraged against future TV money and transfer revenues. Relegation would be an absolute disaster for us, yet Fosun don't appear to have learned anything from their mistakes.

 

[Darvo]

Fosun have been shown to be inept every time we give them benefit of the doubt.
They have stepped on rakes every step of the way.

What makes you think this time will be different?

Whether you like it or not, Fosun have been at the helm for our most successful period for decades. Just imagine what we could have achieved if they weren’t ‘inept’.

 

[Rhoswolf]

I’m grateful and all the soft spined, Lilly livered panic shysters are extremely ungrateful.

, personally think like most good things in life reached their sell-by date

 

[Oh When the Wolves]

Grateful for their investment but furious at their decision making

 

[WWFC4EVA]

I’m grateful and all the soft spined, Lilly livered panic shysters are extremely ungrateful.

I'm grateful and concerned at present.
Neither is mutually exclusive.

 

[Skrilla]

Grateful for their investment but furious at their decision making

I think that's fair. Hopefully it improves back to the level of decision making that got us to promotion and consecutive 7th placed finishes. Not sure it's fair to call for 'Fosun out' at this point though.

 

[Skrilla]

Give Jeff keys to the city . Rename the Mander centre to the Fosun centre and erect a statue of Guo in the City centre .

Yes, that's exactly what I was saying. Well done.

 

[Skrilla]

, personally think like most good things in life reached their sell-by date

Or like most things in life, there are ups and downs.

 

[WalsallWolf]

Forever grateful for there investment into the club until now, but it has become even more obvious that the real driving force of the club was Nuno. I will credit them for originally bringing him in obviously, but it was such a poor decision sacking him and my word how we are paying for it.

 

[Rhoswolf]

Or like most things in life, there are ups and downs.

See nothing but downs from here, global geopolitics, Chinese economy, Fosun's debt exposure but hey ho keep dreaming

 

[Wagstaffe Was Magic]

You could lump all the previous owners together and they won’t come anywhere near the amount of investment which Fosun have put in!!

Established in the Premier League

A rethink going on?? we don’t know!!

 

[Hawkguy]

They bumble along with zero strategy, makes you wonder how they would get on if they weren't propped up by the CCP.

How do you know they don't have a strategy?

They've invested 177 million last year plus committed to 60 million this year and we barely survived.

They kind of had to trust Shi. We got to a place we haven't seen in so long. But maybe their trust in Shi is wearing thin. Maybe this is FOSUN saying I gave you a ton of cash, this is what I want this year before we invest again, and if you can't be successful by January, we will find someone else who can.

Fosun could easily have a plan and they'd be stupid to make it public.

 

[NewarkWolf]

We should yes but the frustration is how we invested so much at at point where we perhaps didn’t need to as much and in turn it has effected the stages where we could have to bridge what was a smaller gap than it is now.

That said, they transformed our club and got us to where we longed for immediately. Bit like Nuno weirdly enough, we need better if we are really wanting to improve.

 

[reanswolf]

The boom bust sort of policy is alarming, but I totally agree with the OP.

I know everyone is entitled to an opinion, but personally I recoil in horror when I see posts urging them to leave.

I do look back and I realise that they have brought us our very best years arguably for nearly 50 years.

I’d be amazed if there is a queue of people waiting to spend millions on a midlands club ( other than Villa) without financial return.

I think it is appropriate to say ‘ be careful what you wish for’.

But I don’t like the disgraceful season ticket pricing and lack of recent transparency.

 

[Vietnam Wolf]

Argue the point rather than being flippant.

Zenga and relying on mendes 100% success.

Then flip flopping to cutting the mendes ties and going to Lambert. Another masterstroke.

Decide to do another 180 and rely on Mendes. Luck out on Nuno. Definitely no sign of a strategy.

Two seasons later (which were good, guided by Mendes and Nuno rather than Shi and Thelwell ) they decide to move away from Mendes and start to not back Nuno in the second season of prem. Leading to Nuno moaning sarcastically in the press when asked about lack of squad depth (we have 60 players).

Nuno asks for a rebuild and change of strategy. Fosun do not back him.
Thelwell leaves, appoints Scott Sellars, a man so woefully out of his depth that he's actually killed somebody but his management of the club somehow comes out as topping that as the worst thing he's done in his life.

Admit they've made mistakes, sack Nuno appoint Lage, still no transfer strategy, do not back him. We start the season with three midfielders.

After Sellars and the talent department offer the square root of **** all they decide to completely forgo all judgment and just hand Mendes our money, rather than doing due diligence on the transfers. Leaving us with grossly overpriced who don't want to be here.

Finally get the manager they originally set their sights on, pivot away from the Sellars structure, and then choose not to back him, big firesale of players, stripping most of the depth from a squad that spent half of the season at the bottom of the table.

To top it all off, their cashflow is so poor they're reliant on loans leveraged against future TV money and transfer revenues. Relegation would be an absolute disaster for us, yet Fosun don't appear to have learned anything from their mistakes.

Top notch post

 

[Plovdiv Wolf]

Grateful for Fosun getting us into the prem and Europa.

However what we are seeing now is very disappointing. We cant even spend 10m on one player to improve ourselves!?

 

[Kebab Warrior]

Grateful for Fosun getting us into the prem and Europa.

However what we are seeing now is very disappointing. We cant even spend 10m on one player to improve ourselves!?

How much did we spend in Jan? Last summer? What’s our income? Should we risk the FFP ban hammer?

 

[Plovdiv Wolf]

How much did we spend in Jan? Last summer? What’s our income? Should we risk the FFP ban hammer?

Jan had to be done or we would of gone down?
50m profit makes no sense 30m we could of spent 20m
Are they taking the money out of the club?
FFP risk, many clubs are about to break the rules. Everton already done so. Forest, Villa are on the brink. They don't seem too worried??

 

[Banks's Mild]

I am very grateful for what they have done and after hoping to be an established top division team for so many years I had pretty much given up hope until they came along.
It's just a shame they never put a proper football man in charge as I believe we could and should be challenging for a regular top 6 position if the amount of money they have spent and wiser decisions on who and when to sell had been taken and I appreciate all clubs make mistakes on that front but we seem to make far too many.
As for the now as much as we don't really know what's going on again the decision, if true, to not just spend a bit to get the 2 or 3 players we could do with and Julen apparently wants having now recouped so much would be yet another poor one to add to the list.

 

[KBWWFC]

How do you know they don't have a strategy?

Could you honestly say, hand on heart, you know the clubs strategy?

The only time we've truly had a strategy was the early days when Nuno / Mendes link up enabled us to reach for young, hungry players with a point to prove.

The strategy now? Scramble around sniffing at 30+ year olds on the downward spiral on free transfers?

They sacked Bruno without a manager lined up, got rejected by some rando at QPR and ended up appointing a man who's last job was a woeful failure in the conference - for 20% of our entire season!

 

[Direwolf]

If you had told me twenty years ago we would be signing some of the best International players in the world for over 30 million I would have never in my wildest dreams thought it possible. Plus Premier league footie for years in a row and a sound European campaign. So many self entitled fools who don't realise how lucky we are with our owners.

 

[SheldonWolf]

Yes we should be grateful and many aren't grateful enough - but that's all in the past now.

We need to evolve and move to the next level. The first step of that is stability and finding new owners that want to partner us in that "project"......

Thanks for the memories, but we both need to move on and "consciously uncouple"

 

[Wolf 82]

I am frustrated with them right now, because I feel they are maybe risking the position that they have played a leading role in getting WWFC into. I have been nothing but supportive of them to date though.

I, like most, am not ready to give up the enjoyment and pride in watching us take on the best teams in the country and getting results. When JL was appointed, I really felt like as long as we stayed up, the best days would return. So this summer has become a huge disappointment.

However, the season hasn’t started yet, and Fosun have enough credit in the bank for me (not literally of course, they’re clearly skint).

 

[WolfLing]

Yes, absolutely. Fosun's problem here is they had too much success, too soon and people became too accustomed to it!

When Fosun took over, if you'd have asked any fan if they would be happy to be where we are today, they'd have snapped your hand off (and probably thought you were joking!).

The biggest area they fall down on is PR. They may run every other business in the same way, but this is a football club. More transparency from the very top goes a long way.

 

[jrpb-3]

I think there’s been a similar issue with our last 2/3 owners initial investment which they saw concrete improvements and promotion in the last 2 cases, then some investment once up but no real improvement and then the slow realisation of the realities of how much money it takes just to stand still in the prem let alone progress to the next level. At the higher level it’s more difficult to find guaranteed value for money signing that are better than what you have without spending a fortune. They’ve all switched to being cautious with some spending which in some ways is no bad thing , but when you have relatively limited funds you need to get maximum value out of what you do spend , Morgan mistakenly spent on the ground first. Fosun have made some good signings, but many of the more recent ones have fallen between cheap value for money and expensive but guaranteed quality and we’ve paid/overpaid for average players who haven’t all worked out and haven’t been much better than what we already had

 

[oldgoldheart]

The fact is things have changed a lot in the economy here and in china. I think they run the club like a typical PE firm. Basically the admin part of the club is very low budget. So, we are not set up for long term success. The management of cashflow and balance sheet leaves something to be desired but its partly (obviously) down to changes of direction in china both with fosun and the CCP. They have done OK. Got us up and kept us up so far but the time has come for them to sell I think. They have very limited resources and with interest rates higher their model is stressed. Finding a good buyer wont be easy at the moment but their time is up i reckon