OK, caution if you are about to embark on this blog post.  Get a drink, sit comfortably and relax...for what you are about to read is one mother of a shitstorm...

Background

In January 2018 (half way through Season 3 of my save) Grasshopper Club Zürich (GCZ) were bought out by Italian tycoon, Franco Soldati.  I wrote a blog post about it almost 9 {real life} months ago and ran a Twitter poll as to what direction my save should go in:

60 out of 100 people voted for me to 'Adapt' my save: continuing with the Homegrown project but by purchasing 1-2 BIG name players each season.  The attention and support I got from the FM Community was overwhelming and I thank you all who helped me out on this.

My save is now in June 2023 and the unthinkable is happening: GCZ are failing their Financial Fair Play (FFP) targets and are in serious danger of being excluded from Europe competitions for the 2024/25 (for what would be my 10th and final season in FM16).  This simply CANNOT and WILL NOT happen under my management.  Today's blog outlines how (1) I (with the addition of a lacklustre Boardroom) got into this position and (2) the remedy I will put in place for Seasons 9 and 10.

'Snapping necks and cashing cheques' (Transfers)

Under my management GCZ have won 8 consecutive Swiss Super League titles with 4 Domestic Doubles (4 Swiss Cups).  We are the indisputable Heavyweight of Swiss football and have represented Switzerland in 7 consecutive Champions League Group Stages.  In the past 5 years we have progressed into the later stages of a European campaign (either in the Champions League of Euro Cup).  You could be forgiven for asking what the fuck has happened with all that money?  I am partly to blame with some of the names and wages I have bought in, so let's take a look at the errors of my ways first...

Season 3 2017/18 (after board takeover)

After Soldati ploughed £26m into the Transfer budget, I only had a few days to invest in a big name player.  I chose Niklas Stark at £11m to be the marquee signing.  Nicklas arrived on big wages for the time (£39k per week).  He became a great DM for us and left just 18 months later for £18m, when Liverpool bid for him.

Season 4 2018/19

Season 4 was also pretty low key for GCZ.  We only made two purchases, both under the £11m Stark fee: young forward Franco López (£7m) and Spanish right back Patric (£3.5m).  Hardly a huge outlay...both signings commanded wages of around £30k per week.

Season 5 2019/20

By Season 5 I had a really good team and wanted to polish it around the edges with a transfer record, so we went with Iuri Medeiros for £16.75m on £70k a week.  But this was countered with the sales of midfielders Marko Grujic (£15m) & Nicklas Stark (£18m).  So we were still a relatively healthy financial position: an overall balance of £24m.

Season 6 2020/21

I once again broke my transfer record by adding Julian Weigl at a price of £24.5m from Dortmund.  Julian was an earner similar to Iuri on £60k per week.  Despite this, I still made a profit on transfers of £19m by moving on Patric (mentioned earlier) for £16.5m and Homegrown Wonderkid Marco SImon for £20m.  Our cash reserves had swelled to £36m.

Season 7 2021/22

Two major marque signings arrived for Season 7: Roman Bürki (£15.75m) and Victor Silva (£8.75m).  I once again made profit (£26m) which included the record sale of Iuri Medeiros to Man Utd for £30m.  We had maintained a balance of £36m.

Season 8 2022/23

Season 8 was one of the 1st years where I spent more than I made back from sales: around £2m.  We made big investments in Brazilian Regen Casado and Swiss International Silvan Widmer (both at £9.5m).  But we had fairly big sales of Adama Traoré (£8m) and Homegrown talent Stephan Hotz (£6.5m).  In January 2023 I also bought back Franco López (£15m) for his second spell at GCZ.

Overall, I think I managed the transfer dealings quite well over my 8 years - although admittedly I have been a bit relaxed with wages and have had several players on £50-70k per week at any one time.  Below is a break down of profit/loss on transfers in each Season:

Now my success in the transfer market has masked over a critical issue at GCZ, and it's the transition from Season 8 to 9, which has highlighted the fragile nature of our business. The FFP is a box probably overlooked by a lot of FMers, (including me for the most part):

In short, what the above states is: GCZ is not permitted to make a loss of more than £9.89m over a twelve-month period.  Immediately I was crying out that this was a bug in FM and that SI had got it all wrong.  After all, I had only made a loss of £2.22m in the transfer window and I surely didn't spend £8m on Agent fees (or any other expenditure outside of transfers).  But the key thing to emphasise here is the 'twelve-month period', for all the good work done through transfer dealings in Seasons 5, 6 and 7 is not considered for the period between 8 and 9.

Sadly, the answers to the problem are found in the very small details of the finance tabs in FM, which is something I do not like doing.  I'm not a huge stats man to be honest, I passed with good scores in my stat modules during my BA and MSc degrees, but I play FM to watch football...not view budget sheets.  Plus the software in my degrees did all the work for me, sadly in FM...I had to go back to basic pen and paper (and calculator).  Luckily the partial answers are easily visible within the top 4 club expenditures by comparing Season 7 against Season 8:

By comparing the above two seasons we can see that there has been an increase of £7.5m expenditure at GCZ (from the Top 4 streams).  Now we have to look at the income between the two seasons and see what has gone wrong there...

Below is the income from Season 7, I only have to look at the top 3 income streams to see why there is an issue with FFP in the first place:

So what does the above show us? Well, we improved marginally on Gate Receipts (something I will come on to later) but didn't do too well with the prize money or players sold income streams.  By comparing the two seasons in isolation, Season 8 is around £28m short in income.  This is primarily what has brought the FFP issue to the forefront of my awareness.  Basically, player sales and performance related prize money were masking an underlying issue at GCZ: we are not a self sustaining club.  So if you have got reading this far, you might wonder why this FFP issue did not arise sooner...notably in Seasons 3 or 4 (years where I made greater losses in the transfer market).  Season 3's FFP commitments were met through the cash injection made by the Soldati buy out:

And Season 4 had a really successful run in the Champions League (Quarter Final).  Check out the prize money below:

So Season 8 is a combination of higher than previous year wages (800k per week on wages) AND not over achieving in Europe.  I am happy to take some portion of the blame for this, but the real culprits are found in the GC Boardroom, as one bad(?) season shouldn't jeopardise the Club.  (I say bad loosely - we broke the total points record in the Swiss Super League and won a Domestic Double).

Frugal Soldati

Stadium

I genuinely thought after the initial cash injection that Franco Soldati would invest regularly into GCZ, improving all facets of the Club infrastructure - most notably the Stadium.  As outlined in my 1st ever blog post about this save, one of my major desires for GCZ was to see them return home to Hardtrum.  An extract from that blog:

GCZ have had a bittersweet relationship with FC Zürich and now ground share at the Letzigrund.  For all intents and purposes, this remains FC Zürich's spiritual home and not GCZ's.

When I first arrived at GC the attendances were shocking, we barely scrapped 6,000 at home to Vaduz in 2015/16.  However, fast forward to 2022/23 and our lowest attendance is twice that figure (13,291 against Thun).  Furthermore, we have increased our Average Attendance during the 8 years by circa 9,000:

A further frustration of mine is that GC have sold out 6 times in the league (and are only 4k off a maximum average attendance), highlighting that there's clear demand for the Club to invest in a better stadium.  This also doesn't include our Champions League games...which are nearly always at maximum capacity.

I have lost count the number of times I have asked to relocate stadiums, especially when we were floating around £40m disposable cash reserves (I know stadiums cost A LOT more than this, but a £40m deposit + some of their investment would make a sizeable mortgage claim).  Each time I am refused saying that a sizeable increase in fanbase is needed.

Sponsors

Franco and company have done some work here on bringing in Sponsors, they have now arranged additional deals for an additional kit sponsor, continental sponsorship & training kit sponsor but we are still behind the Heavyweights like Man Utd who have a deal for almost anything.  But what really irritates me, is the length at which it took Soldati and co to arrange these deals.  It was only in Season 6 that these additional sponsors were arranged.  So they took 3 years to get their arses in gear!

Furthermore, on an initial view...it looks like the deals they got GC are fantastically better than the previous ones before the Takeover:

*drumroll*

If we look at the above, Soldati seems to have got us a great deal on the Main Kit Sponsor...until you realise that the duration of the contract arranged is longer.  The value per season is actually not that dissimilar to what was happening 4 years ago.  I can understand the Board having difficulty marketing a Swiss team abroad due to the league rep (after all, you can't polish a turd), but I struggle to understand why it took so long to arrange the additional deals...we were already in Europe at the time of the Takeover.  I could go on about other Income streams, but for the purposes of today's blog...you get my point:  I have a lacklustre Board who are not proactive in making this club self-sustaining.

Also, here's a free Soldati dartboard for you all...

The Remedy

So as we approach the final two Seasons of my GCZ career, there is only one remedy for coping with the FFP Fiasco: go back to making net transfer profit whilst remaining competitive in Europe.  In a lot of ways it feels like the save has gone full circle, as I've reached the limits of my transfer indulgence.  Here are the deals so far, which have tipped us back into meeting FFP (but it's still perilously tight):

The one big sale so far is Casado (£20m), who you may have read about in my Casado Experiment series.  Unfortunately I am taking any bid of value into consideration, as I absolutely detest offering out happy players to clubs.  It's bad for morale and I find on FM that there is no guarantee that clubs (even interested ones) will bid...even for lower than market value.  It's for this reason that I am just biding my time and waiting for bids (puns!).  The signings of Rahn (£6m) and Ngissah (£10m) are necessary but arranged many months prior to the FFP fiasco.  This leaves us meeting FFP 'by the skin of our teeth':

So we approach Season 9 with a large imbalance in the First Team squad - we are 1 day away from starting our league defence.  Most worryingly there is absolutely no left back whatsoever (not even a viable youth option) and we only have 3 capable Centre Backs.  It's time to work the magic in the loan market, mirco-manage the team again and do whatever made me successful during the formative years in this save.

Can we still compete in Europe AND the league?  Or will I see GCZ slide away into obscurity, tarnishing my legacy with this great club?  Keep and eye on my Twitter and on this site for further updates.

As always, thanks for reading.

FMG