Well im the only one to vote so far.

Investment can be a great thing as long as it is respected by the chairman. The Manchester City chairman has invested a safe able amount after promotion and although it was appreciated and used towards progression I dont believe it made a massive difference in todays market. I personally would have enjoyed watching my younger players develop another year rather than being rushed into decisions that I dont believe was needed because of investment. I think the club may have progressed further without the investment and less pressure from the chairman for the top 6 spot but then my plan was always a progressive team so indifferent to the chairmans maybe. Maybe I should have destroyed the talented youth I had and built a team of older players to compete but that is something I was unwilling to do.

I still believe with the money investment the clubs has moved forward massively compared to Newcastle who were in far better shape when promoted from the championship but have moved backwards while Manchester City have moved way ahead and not because of the investment.

While I have enjoyed the investment I dont think it as needed as some people think and they may be unaware of the pressure that comes with it.

I much prefer building the team gradually the way i like rather than just one big splurge, if you do well and get rewarded by your board/chairman then that's fair enough but having a large investment and then your targets being made bigger and more unrealistic is not a healthy thing for me.

I think that teams when they get promoted especially if via the play offs are given a target to stay up although they dont get much of a cash boost as a result of getting promoted.

One suggestion would be to make the money given out to clubs via end of season payments more clear. I dont think they are published anywhere. When I got Chievo promoted via the play offs I dont think I got any money and to compete agaisnt established teams without a cash injection was extremely difficult.

However, I can see that getting money means more pressure. I think that for managers of teams promoted they should be given more either more time ie more than just one season (or even half a season as the rug was pulled from under me for being bottom of the league) or more money.

JD Napoli

Teams that get promoted do get prize money, as do the teams who win competitions etc. The fact is, all end of season money is sorted at once. The problem with teams like say Chievo is that they buy in players from Serie A to get promoted, then have a small cash prize for the promotion but the large wages of the squad often cancels out that winnings, which is why it doesn't show as much of a change. If your wage bill is too high, even promotion money won't stop you making a loss, so its about balancing the books. After all, is it realistic to allow teams in the bottom league to afford to keep players who would otherwise ply their trade at the top?

Nottingham Forest went into administration, and had a strike force of Di Natale (from Serie A) Crouch (from the Premiership) and Fowler (from the scouting, but on a par with Premiership players)... and it cost them via their huge wages.

In relation to some chairman taking funds away because they don't think the team needs it, this falls in two parts. Firstly one major issue everyone brings up is the gap between bottom and top teams, so allowing Chelsea to sit with £40 million in the bank when they're top of the league already is doing no one any favours in closing that gap. Secondly it depends on the chairman but if they team is good enough to win the league, why shouldn't the chairman take some of the money out if it suits his personality? Again it comes down to what sort of chairman is at your club.

Your situation JD was similar to Simon at Arsenal. You both made it clear it was rebuilding seasons and even with both chairmen taking that into account, both of you started to underperform significantly, not slightly. Simon went one way, hit good form and got back close to his target for the season. You went the other and kept going backwards into the relegation zone. A play-off team should be able to rebuild without being threatened with relegation if theres decent assets at the club, and there were at both of the said clubs. So I'm not sure about rug pulling, but you didn't have a chairman that was able to bail you out with a huge cash boost, whether it'd have been warranted or not.

A lot of clubs for real have huge debts, which FA doesn't carry. So its not an overly unfair representation of that to have those clubs cash strapped instead of in huge debt in FA. Hopefully thats addressed some of the points raised above.

Richard.