Bit of a risk considering his injury record. Fairplay to him must have earned some coin out of all these moves.
This from statement from bfc at the time "It is in this context, and faced with the prospect of losing the player for free in the Summer transfer window, at which point his current contract with the Club will have expired, that the Club felt it had no other option than to reluctantly accept what was a significant bid. The transfer deal agreed between the clubs allows the Club to reinvest in the squad and retain a future financial interest in the player. "
Which underlines what stupid transfer business this was for us. One of the craziest decisions I've seen at Oakwell in many a year.
The player demanded to leave, and we would have received nothing for him at the end of the season. The only driver for refusing the sale would have been principle. I don't see what other options we had, other than getting him on a longer contract.
You mean we should've let him go for free 6 months later? Yes, that sounds like a much more attractive scenario than getting some money for him.
Why ? He was going for nothing in may & we got a fee plus there are obvious add ons as it states we have a future financial interest in the player . Curious , what would you have done if you were in charge at Oakwell ?
I've every sympathy with the club in this regard. Hindsight is wonderful. In the circumstances, I'm not sure what else they could've done. Since that summer, they've offered longer deals. Sadly, the development of those new players has been far slower than we'd hoped and several are now getting to the last year of their contracts. Moncur, Bradshaw, Davies, Jackson, Hedges, Cavare and Mowatt will be our of contract this time next year. Do we sign them up on longer contracts, and potentially face being stuck with them or having to pay them off? Do we wait and see what happens the first part of the new season to see if we may be in with a shot at promotion? Or do we sell them now? With hindsight we'd have offered Winnall et al bumper contracts a few weeks before the promotion season ended. But I certainly didn't know if we'd succeed (though the ex head coach didn't want that interruption for him or his players), and many others thought we'd struggle too, especially after the opening day defeat at Ipswich.
I'd offer Jackson and Bradshaw a contract now, give Hedges a year extension if he's cheap and force the rest to prove themselves
I agree from turn of the year Jackson was our best center half for me and Bradshaw will score in league one and did well to score as many as he did last season been played upfront along with no service. Moncur is our most talented player but must try harder for me.
Reckon Bradshaw will be trying to get his move this summer as it’s realistically our last chance to get a decent fee for him. Otherwise I reckon he might do the same as Yids and play out his contract and look at getting a decent contract on a free transfer next season - which would work for us as it means he would need to give his all.
I’d have kept him whatever he wanted and invested in the squad to try to break into the top 6 Let’s face it things could hardly have ended up any worse. Doubt that the transfer fee will cover Mowatts fee and wages.
A club who are going to be without a manager, wanting to sign a player that the new man they bring in might not want.
I don’t know about RichieD but to me that was our once in a generation chance of getting promoted through the play offs like Huddersfield & Blackpool did. In normal circumstances I’d have sold him but it wasn’t normal circumstances, the club had already got around £5m for Mawson & £7m for Stones with his sell on that season so there was no need to sell. We were fine financially & had a rare chance to get promoted. The squad were getting better by the game & if we’d have kept Hourihane, Winnall, Bree & Morsy I believe we’d have made the play offs. Obviously it’s a 1 in 4 shot in the play offs but we’d an advantage in that most of our side had experience of winning them & we weren’t renowned bottlers like Wednesday for example. It’s all in the past now but I’d have loved for us to have kept that side together another few months to see what happened.
19k a week he on at Wednesday so 3million over 3 years plus he would of got a signing on fee is imagine. If we did offer him that then everyone else would of been knocking on the door for a rise. But the top and bottom of it is he wanted out before the window had opened and No doubt his agent wanted a nice earner too. Can't keep players who want to be elsewhere.
I don’t think we’d have made the play offs. Which means we’d have finished the season in the same league that we did but with the same players leaving for nowt.
Could have been but I think we should have gambled. We didn't need the money, we had a chance that may not come again for many years. Now I respect the decisions were the pragmatic thing to do.
Basis for my view on the Winnall episode. In real terms we got very little for Winnall. Not worth letting him go at that stage. The add ons for appearances etc and promotion were a way of us actually sharing the risk of the transfer that effectively scuppered a play-off push. Wednesday were one place above us and hence biggest rival. Whether they played Winnall or not it deprived us of his services. He was under contract - the timing of his departure was within our hands. His departure at such a critical time sent a signal to the other players and their agents. Mawson cash gave us some latitude. Had we insisted he stayed he would have got the monk on for a fortnight then his agent would have whispered it doesn't look good and he would have pulled his finger out. How much he could earn at Wednesday is irrelevant. Other clubs turn down transfer requests - in fact we did it with Marley soon after. The only winners from this situation were Sam and his agent and the Owls who got cut price way of getting rid of a rival.