Reality Check

There is a misunderstanding about the money that is available in the Premier League. It might be £100m, it might be more, but the club would spend every penny of that money in strengthening the team and on player wages. When we were relegated, as inevitably we would be, the parachute payments would be spent on paying the wages of the players who had failed to keep the club in the Premier League. The better players would want to leave, just as they do now. The rest would scrap on for a few years until their contracts and the parachute ran out. Where would we be then. Exactly where we are now. You might ask me how I know all that. I have just described our previous encounter with the Premier League, when we began with a far superior team to the one that we have now. Of course, it does not have to happen the same way twice. Our return to the lower league does not necessarily have to lead to the twin demons of overspending and insistent ambitious fans, the twin demons that inevitably led to Administration, and death, were it not for Patrick Cryne. But without a plan and without restraint, it most certainly would.

I honestly do not believe that our team prior to January was that strong. If you have read Minority Report at all, I do not need to repeat my assessment of it again. It was stronger than it is now, but not as strong as it will be next season, when the process of gradual improvement continues with our new signings. The fans are making their judgement before the start of a new cycle. The last cycle included promotion to the Championship, who knows where future cycles might take us, provided we keep our heads. Patience, as always, is the key.

 

You do not know that we ha

You do not know that we have sold half our team and not replaced it. All you know is that we have sold players and not replaced them YET. Hecky has said that we have a busy summer, and that we will probably bring in at least 12 new players. WE also know that you get more value for money in the summer, have a better choice and are not under the same time pressures. Our scouting will all have been focused on targeting players for the summer. You can be depressed from now until August if you like because we did not bet a measly £7m on an outside chance of promotion. Personally, I am glad that we will have that money, as well as the Mawson and Stones money to invest on new players and our future.

AS I have said elsewhere £100m is no good to you if it costs £100m to join the club.

 

Going to the extreme of putting all the 18 million on 36 black is just ridicules... Its not what people are saying, just up the anti a bit, Go over the million pound mark for a striker, instead of having a panic attack if a club wants above the fee we are willing to pay
Am sure if we have any realistic ambition of staying in the championship.. We will have to up what we are willing to pay.. but not sell the family silver at the same time

 

You are confusing success on the balance sheet with success on the field. I agree that another promotion would constitute success on the field, but would that equate to success on the balance sheet. Like many others, you will point to the £100m that comes with promotion, and as I have done before in this thread, I would point out that the cost of joining the club is at least that in transfer fees and player wages. Ah you will counter, what about the parachute money, and I will point out that the parachute money is designed to meet the contractual commitments to the players contracted to play for the club whilst it was in the Premier League. It is a reducing amount in order to reflect the expiry of those contract terms. If you remember, our only other visit to the Premier League led us to Administration and very nearly the undertaker.

The club is being run very well at the moment. We have money in the bank (or more probably owed to us by other clubs), and our position in the Championship is all but assured. The problem with fans is that they judge their team on its last match. The more long term judgement of some is based upon the league position at the end of the season. Given that our business plan includes the buying and selling of players at a profit, the business would be judged on that cycle, and on that basis we have made a wonderful improvement. At the start of the last cycle, we were in League 1 and Mr Cryne was having to fund our investment in new players personally. At the start of the next cycle, the club will be able to fund that investment without any help from its owner, and we will be in the Championship. I cannot see how that can be anything but a successful 2 to 3 year cycle.

It might not inspire the crowd to get to their feet and cheer like a Hourihane goal would, but over the long term fans will find it a lot more satisfying if it leads to a more lasting success..

 

Red Rain your posts are all about lowering the supporters expectations. You seem to forget that supporters want to believe that we can achieve the impossible and we were close to doing that again this season, take that away and there is little to get excited about on a Saturday afternoon.

 

The first part is factual as borne out by results the second part is pure supposition masquerading as fact.

You've no idea if we will be stronger next season and in any case we need so many players than inevitably quite a number that we sign won't work or won't work quickly enough to help maintain our Championship stays let alone challenge.

I'd be intrigued to know who you think is going to be better next season than this too, certainly from the dearth of options available.

The main two you'd have to look at are Mowett and Moncur but the chances are one won't be here next season.

I think that the issue staring us in the face is that the Plan is on a long term basis incompatible with league success, certainly at this level ( unless of course if success is staying up every season)

What happens is we have developed and improved enough players at once to have a team too good for L1 and good enough to chase a top 6 position in the Championship but of course the finances dictate that we will lose those players and have to start again.

The issue at the minute is that there just are not enough even partly ready replacements nor did we try and sign many which frankly smacks of the club knowing enough has been done so let's chalk **** on it. The last few signings gave largely been failures. No one is knocking on the door of the first team from from the Academy and even if they are, overrated and unsuccessful loanees are keeping them out.

 

The club is very well run but loses money every season.

Who are you trying to convince here?

 

I completely disagree about the parachute payments, we wouldn't be in the same boat as the last time we got up, they're far more, spread out & you bank some of the money to help you in the long term.

Burnley's the example to look at, they didn't spend all the cash on wages, they've improved facilities at the club whilst gradually improving the playing staff without going overboard.

Developed a lot of young talented players like Keane, Mee, Arfield, Gray etc in the same way which we would try to do without breaking the bank.

They've finally spent decent money last summer on Hendrick & Defour but that's nothing at the side of other recently promoted clubs & they're still been run superbly well.

I certainly don't think our team pre-January was the best in the league but we've seen since that we could compete with Huddersfield, Brighton, Norwich etc but it's just that bit of quality that's made the difference, that bit of quality was in my opinion the players that left.

We had a young squad that was only getting better

 

A business, any business has to have a business plan. Without a plan to guide you, the decision-makers end up making bad decisions. We know about the plan to buy young (or sign from the academy), develop and sell for a profit. We know that we do this because our revenue from football activities is not sufficient to run a team in the Championship. All of that is what we know.

What we do not know is whether any part of the profits from selling player is to be allocated to the wages budget. I have guessed in the past that it will not, but I do not know that for certain. Clearly, the club would have no problem in funding the transfer fee for a £1m player. The problem is that a £1m player will want £500k per annum. That is, a £1m footballer will cost the club £2.5 million over a 3 year contract and it is that figure that scares the club management. It scares them because the last time we spent that sort of money, we signed Mike Sheron on a 4 year contract, and he was useless. He was so bad, and his wage was so good that we could not give him away. We could not even give him away because he could just sit on that contract, and so long as he kept fit and looked interested he was not breaking the terms of his contract, so we could not even sack him.

Seriously, the fee is not the problem. The wages are the problem.

 

Correct, otherwise what is the point?


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The last time this regime sanctioned the signing of a £1 million player was an absolute disaster even prior to the assault so I can understand the reticence.

 

We do know the answer. Patrick Cryne has already stated that the transfer income will not be used to subsidise wages outside of the normal income levels of the club.

The point we don't know is what the normal income levels are considered to be. My guess is L1 levels are considered normal.

It's nothing to do with Mike Sheron. It's more to do with Iain Hume.

The fact is you don't sign players for £1 million then pay them £4.5 k a week. So the point is moot.

The transfer income is there to subside one thing - operating losses of which we can only guess if they are planned or not, given we cannot know where we lose money.

 

There isn't one.

But we all need lessons in being ruled by our heads not our hearts. But don't withdraw support as a consequence

 

Again the decisive supercilious nature of your comments is unnecessary. You are not necessarily right. Not everything is black and white like you seem to want it to be. Some of the points you make seem valid to me others not so but the way you express them is pretty unnecessary

Football doesn't depress me there are real problems and issues in life that occasionally do so. You may never want us to be successful or even attempt to be so. I doubt it but that's how it comes across. If the club pitch the same ideas to players anyobe with a modicum of ambition will be long gone in the summer.

The 'logical' argument doesn't work though. I am not suggesting that we ' bet 7 million quid' on anything in fact there would have been no cost whatsoever in doing so. I was suggesting we spend zero not a 100 million quid. I

Neither you or I live in the future so we may or may not replace our departed team. And when I say replace I mean with players of an equivalent quality not just numerically. What we can say factually at the moment is that we have not. What we can say factually at the moment based on our post January form the team we are left with is bottom of the form league and struggling. Just as signing players in January is difficult a point I agree with signing the 12-16 players we need in the summer and integrating them will be equally so.

A club 1point outside the play offs has more than an outside chance. I'm no betting person but I'd say that's a reasonable chance. I'm sure Burnley are regretting not selling all their best players when they got relegated. I bet they curse every day.

 

I will accept that my enthusiasm about next year is based upon hope rather than expectation if you accept that there is no reason to believe that the pre-January team would have been promoted. Both suppositions are obviously built more upon hope, and less upon expectation.

I agree that Mowett and Moncur do not fit in, especially when we play a 4-4-2 system, but part of that is that they would be better suited to 4-5-1. We do not have a striker who can play up top on their own so there has been no opportunity to test that supposition. We have an opportunity this summer to remedy that situation if we sign a big man who can play the traditional role in a 4-4-2 system or play up on his own in a 4-5-1.

There will be times when the long term plan matures at the right moment to give us another, and hopefully a better chance of promotion. It will not be next season as there will have been too many changes, but our nest egg gives us time. We must not panic if the new players take time to gel, but I think that we have learned that lesson from our Lee Johnson experience. As always, my watchword is PATIENCE. After all, we waited 125 years for the last one.

 

Firstly, who this season who will go up will it have cost £100 million to go up?

Secondly, we won't be spending any of the transfer income on players as that will mean we have to pay wages consistent with transfer fees and it's been stated we have no intention of doing that.

I'll be amazed if we actually sign 12 players and even more amazed if 6 of them are good enough, quickly enough.

It seems to me you are happy to bet that receiving £7 million will result in better results in the future. An as potentially flawed "bet" as keeping said players and having a tilt at the play offs, promotion and a really secure future.

 

We cannot claim any great learning from not sacking Johnson. If he'd have stayed we'd still be in L1.

The plan also says we play 442 so I assume we have hoped to develop messages Moncur and Mowett into more complete players rather than adapt the system and style to accommodate them.

I'd venture there is more evidence to support a play off tilt with the 1st Jan squad than there is for success of signings next season.

It's interesting you're writing next season off as too early. The sad fact is if any player is any good next season we will have to flog em. And start again. Futile.

 

A club 1 point outside the play offs in January has almost half a season left to play. Anything can happen in half a season. Players can get a serious injury, lose form etc. We had no back-up for any of these unforeseen occurrences... none. A long term injury to Hourihane would have left us in exactly the same position as we were in Keith Hill's tenure, when Butterfield was injured. But let us say that you are right. That we had by some miracle scraped into the play-offs, we then face teams that have beaten us easily in league games, out classed us. Our chances were vanishingly small, and certainly not worth an outside bet of £7m (the transfer fees received for Hourihane, Winnall and Bree). No, the club was right to cash in when it could and use the money to begin the whole process afresh.

 

Sorry, but I have no trouble getting excited and I am unfortunate enough to believe all of it.

 

You may be right about Mowett and Moncur, but surely you agree with me about the need of a big man up front.

I think that bringing so many players together all at once is bound to give us settling in problems. It always takes a while for players to understand the system and their role within it, and it always takes the coach a while to fully understand the strengths and weaknesses of new players. Next season will be a season for consolidation. If they are signed on 3 year contracts, we still have a season and a half before we need to make a decision about when to sell.

But I am not sure what your alternative is to this strategy. You say "flog em" like there is an alternative. That is what this thread is all about really. What is the alternative to the policy that the club is pursuing.