If you belive the papers Connor currently earns £7k per week or £364k per year. When rival club comes in and offers 4x wages. At first I was thought how the hell can we compete. Thats £1,46m per year. Scenarios as I see them. 1. Accept cut price deal £1.5m now. 2. Allow him to leave for free EOS 3. Offer New deal match £28k offered, and include minimum release clause. The key questions are: 1. how much is he worth? 2. If we sell how much would it cost us to replace him? Connor is our captain and lead us to promotion and silverware twice last term with Wembley wins, had recent call up to national team, offers regular goals from midfield and leading our team assists, key to our set plays, he is a good age and proven experience and influence at championship level, no history of major injury or injury prone. No doubt he would be a huge loss should he leave us now. He is arguably priceless to us. £1.5m in modern terms would feel like daylight robbery. With recent player sales and money from previous tranfers rather than spend on transfers I hope we could use to extend and improve deals for key players (assets). Lets face it if Connor had 2years left to run, I would expect offers £7m+ as starting point. That considered is it not worth offering him bumper deal with a release clause? And then if he were to move on at least we may they have the capital available to be able to replace him? A 2year extention £30k per year, would cost £3m, surely he is worth that. It would cost us more to bring in replacements.
In last 18months Holgate £3m? + Mawson £5.5m? + Stones £7m? + Winnall 0.5m = £16m ish (hypathetical of course) PC has bank rolled us for a long time and I accept not all will go back in to transfer pot. But surely we have £3m avail for CH wages for 2yr deal.
It won't happen o matter how much we all want it. As soon as we give him that sort of money the managers door gets hammered by other players wanting rises. Harmony is disrupted etc and everything spirals out of control. It's **** I know as we all know money is in the club at present but we can't piss it up the wall and knacker up a wage structure.
Not to mention money from 2 Wembley visits last season & the increase money received from been in Championship. I think its been reported that if he get relegated we would be 6-8 million worse off in league 1 a season.
1. wage structure 2. path of no return 3. others would also demand it or cause unrest looking for moves 4. what if hammill has a clause making him top earner? he woudl also need the increase? dont know this but maybe one of his demands.
Paying league one wages to championship players doesnt work there has to be a middle ground otherwise were going to continually sign lower league players on relatively low salaries who will then decline a contract extension & get sold for peanuts.
What about the harmony with the fans that pay money into the club to see our play off challenging team sell a star striker to a play off challenging local rival? It's going to take something big for the board to get the feel good factor back that's been lost these past few days. I don't believe Conor will be on 7k a week as it seems far too much to give a 4th division player the chance to progress at an higher level.
Wage structure policy at BFC is a good thing but should not be totally rigid. In exceptional circumstances and IMHO this is one of those, we should reward the standout players (and captain) - Let's face it in the Entertainment business, session musicians on a world tour, however good they are, do not get paid the same as the star performer. Nor does the chorus line, or smaller part actors get paid the same as the star of the show or film. They too are a 'team' and reliant on each other to deliver the final product. Conor is in demand from other clubs because he is so good. The other players are not because, currently they are not as good. They should realise this. Life ain't fair. If they throw their teddies out of the pram - 1) they are replaceable far easier than CH and 2) it should be made clear that they are welcome to take their chances elsewhere. On the other side of the coin if they stay with the side and make it a success thei kudos goes up and their turn will come to be in demand It is like any business. Talent attracts interest and offers from competitors. You either give the employee a payrise or some enticement to keep them or lose their contribution. Agree that you cannot overspend on wages but if you keep losing talented employees to competitors at best your business will never grow and at worse you will eventually go under. I know foptbaòll has found itself in a ridiculous situation where agents and players themselves think they are all Lionel Messi and should be paid the same but a 'flat rate' policy is unworkable in the long term - There will always be pay differentials in any line of work. This sjhould be outlined in the initial interviews with players. Oh! and death to all football agents IMO !
Think how much more revenue we'd have in the club if we had a few thousand 40 plus quid replica shirts to sell since a month into the season Would have come in handy offering that bit more in contract negotiations.
Rather than increase his wages could we offer him an extended contract with a release clause of say 8 million (which wouldn't deter any club worth him moving to) and a contractual guarantee of a 2 million bonus when he leaves? I'm no expert on employment contracts but if that was do-able it would achieve the same end result as increasing his wages without breaking the wage structure and he could leave the club as a legend knowing that he had left a 6 million pound legacy to the continued success of the club that gave him the leg-up.
The way to achieve this without upsetting the Squad. Why not offer the pay rise by way of a signing on Fee and balance in wages for example £2 million signing on fee and £9500 a week in wages. Contract proposal 18 month extension to his current deal upgrading his final 6 months of his contract and paying him equivalent to £29000 a week which is £3 Million over 2 Years with a Buy out for him to a Premiership Club a Minimum of £5-6 Million in a Transfer Fee to appease his agent for a easier pathway to the Premiership if he and is agent was accepting all the above terms we would also have to put in there plus bonuses for promotion and a wage increase for the promotion written into the new contract. This protects our Signing on fee investment and us from losing him for free in the summer. Lets break the structure for this tremendous Captain and build team round him for the near future.
Re: The way to achieve this without upsetting the Squad. So that means giving the money direct to the player and keeping him rather than having to pay huge transfer fees to another club for a replacement and still paying lower wages which means the same thing happens over and over again. (Cut out the agent fee that they get from touting to other clubs) I am sure most agents push players to move against the best interests of the player just so they, the agent, get the big fees. It is an incentive to existing players to stay surely or is that too simplistic?
Offer him £1m up front, plus £500,000 a year, for three years. Total £2.5m over three years and does not totally destroy the wage structure.
I don't think he's bothered about the money. It's all anyone seems to go on about but he wants to play for Ireland and wants to play at the top level. He has more chance of that happening in the summer when he's out of contract. It's as simple as that.
