I think this is what you call evolution. If we are serious about being a top 30 club in the coming years then at some point we have to start acting like a big club and big clubs spend big money on big players and right now Stockton is certainly one of the biggest in League 1. The model that, thus far, has served us well hasn't though got us to the promised land of The Championship and you'd think signing a player like this is as big a statement of intent from Oxford as I'd have seen in the past, maybe, 25 years. When have we ever been in the market for the leading scorer of the division we are playing in ? John Aldridge perhaps but I'm pretty sure Newport were the league below at the time.
Young, aspiring loanees get you so far but we need the real deal and if the owners are prepared to back Robinson with a purchase like this then it's fantastic news for the fans , not to mention exciting to be seen as a serious player in this league rather than just little old Oxford buying, selling and striving to over achieve to maybe knock on the door of the play offs.
Don't criticise it, embrace it is what we should be doing and hopefully welcoming a new era where we are in for the best we can get.
I'm sorry - but I genuinely believe that acting like a big club
before you have the infrastructure in place is how you end up like Bury or Macclesfield (or Bolton or Pompey or Notts County or any of the other clubs that haven't died through overspending but have danced with it and dropped down the leagues as a direct result).
If you ignore transfer dealing, we currently lose, what, 2-3m per year? Maybe more?
In the last few years, we've been able to mitigate that by making a transfer profit. If we start spending rather than selling, then the annual loss will increase.
And if we get to the Championship - then presumably under your logic, we would not want to take the Wycombe route of 'bank the money and run', we would spend to try and compete in the league. To run OUFC, as things currently stand, with even a lower midtable Championship budget, we would have to be losing more like 10m per year.
And all of that debt goes on our books. Our owners may be supporting the club by loaning us the money, but they're not doing an Abrahamovich and writing that debt off. If they left tomorrow, it would still all be owed.
Personally, I'm more than happy with where we are (competing for a playoff place in a really competitive, and frankly awesome League One), and running the model that we do for now whilst we sort out the stadium issues. Once we have that sorted, the off-the-field future is settled and we know that we have the capacity to grow.....then by all means start acting like a Top 30 club. But honestly right now, I think it's premature, and frankly dangerous.
