Can someone just point to a statement from the club that says.........

From a very good source,we have money available for transfers but we can't spend a million pound on one player.Last seasons loanees cost the club two and a half million pounds.Also Hill commented in the Yorkshire Post the other day he'd like to bring in two or three perminent signings before the end of August.My view on this seasons start,not good but not alot differant to recent years.A long way to go yet and I'm sure the club will do whats required to turn things around.Patience needed.

 

well said mate, definitely a bit of time & patience required, I haven't got a season ticket yet but I WILL be getting one, even if I've missed 5/6 home games, a football club is for life not just for Christmas....

 

So - on average, across the nine months of the season, at any given time let's say we averaged five loan players with us, which was probably about the average at any time. So, thats, according to you, half a million for each one we had for the full season. So our average loanee was being paid, by Barnsley, about £14k a week if your source is correct. Expensive business innit, if he's right?

 

And don't forget the fee that many clubs now ask for to allow a player out on loan.

 

2 and a half million pounds. I make that a big fat round figure.

 

Garry O'Connor
Marlon Harewood
Paul McShane
Kieran Trippier
Matt Hill
Diego Arismendi
Paul Hayes
Jacob Mellis
Frank Nouble
Chris Wood

Yep, can see £2.5mill pissed away in the main there.

 

If we do a quick ***-packet calc, based on approximate months of the loan deals:

Arismendi 12m
Trippier 12m
O'Connor 2m (+5m on permanent contract)
Wood 3m
Hill 1m (+6m permanent)
Hayes 2m
Mellis 4m
Nouble 4m
McShane 2m
Harewood 3m

I've assumed that we paid up full loan deals if players went back early.

So 10 different player with 45 total months on loan contracts (or 56m if you count the two permanent deals aswell)

£2.5m / 45 equates to £55.6k per month, or £12.8k per week, assuming that's all wage costs. Perhaps there were some loan fees and signing bonuses in those figures, but you're still looking at over £10k per week on average, I'd have thought. (If you calculate it over 56months instead, adding in the permanent contracts, it works out at just over £10k per week).

The trouble is, I can only see maybe 4 players out of that list (McShane, Harewood, O'Connor and Arismendi) who I would have expected that we would have been paying over £10k per week for. The others are all unproven youngsters, lower league players or players deemed surplus to requirements (i.e. Hill). I remember hearing a rumour last season that O'Connor was on £20k a week, but have no idea how accurate or not that was.

Consequently, the total cost of £2.5m looks on the high-side to me, suggesting that we didn't particularly negotiate well or get great value from many of the loan deals, but we did at least get the flexibility of being able to bring in/move out players as required (the Harewood one still puzzles me as a bit of a luxury though, as we were pretty certain not to be going up or down at the time he signed). We also comfortably stayed clear of relegation with these players in the squad.

Compare that now to the 7 new signings coming in on permanent contracts on, lets say, £4k per week (I'm guessing here, but can't imagine its much lower than this), on an average contract length of 2 years. That would still equate to a wage bill of £1.5m per season, before any transfer fees/signing bonuses, etc are paid, and a total contracted wage commitment of just under £3m.

If these players all work out then it might prove to be a great bit of business, particularly if we can sell one on at a significant profit. However, we're significantly increasing the relegation risk factor (as all the players are largely unproven), the odds say some are likely to be failures at this level or will get injured, in which case we're stuck with the dead contract costs and we'll still have to replace that player in the squad, presumably via another transfer or loan signing.

My point is that the permanent transfer solution might be a false economy at the end of the day. It's a bit like bringing in temporary staff into any business - you pay over the odds for them (via the agency's fees) but you benefit from other areas (flexibility, speed of sourcing, proven ability, etc). Given our track record in the transfer market I have serious doubts that we can sell any of our permanent players for a signficant profit (look at Howard, Hamill, Shackell for examples of this) which is the only way the two options look drastically different from a financial point of view. If we're relegated then we're stuck with all these players, on Championship wages, in League One for at least another season.

I'm not saying that repeating the loan dealings of last season would have been the solution to our problems, but perhaps with a shrewder eye on the loan market we could have squeezed better value out of it than we did last season, in which case the decisions as to which route to go down look much closer to me. We could at least get more value out of a mix of the two, rather than an almost 100% fixation on the permanent market (only Addison in on loan at present, in addition to the 7 others).

Going forward, if (and it seems to be an IF) there are funds still available for KH to add more players then I think I'd perhaps prefer these to be used on quality loan signings, rather than further, risky permanent transfers in the bargain basement, which is where we appear to be shopping.

 

The message I got from the club was that we were going to try and work to the new rules which will come in next season. I believe that means we work within our income. Whether it means Pat Cryne no longer can fork out cash to help us out, I don't know, but it reads to me like he can't.

Robins went because he wasn't prepared to work under these restrictions. At the time of his leaving, I think it was common knowledge that we were going to be cash strapped this season. Probably one of the reasons Shackell asked for a move.

Hill took the job knowing the restrictions, hence him signing lower league players. I bought my season ticket expecting a difficult season.

That still does not excuse the woeful performances of the last couple of weeks. Untried or not, its no explanation for the shambles we have had to watch. Lower league does not equal Lack of Effort.

 

You're right there, no-one at the club has said we're potless in fact I don't think they've said owt about the finances. So we don't know whether Hill has signed these players because we can't afford any better, in which case we're off to League one next season, or if Hill actually thought they'd be good enough for the Championship. I don't know which is the more worrying.