Minority Report 2019-20 Talking Finance 5

The plus figures relate to club who sold their groungs to their owners in order to avoid the consequences of breaking FFP rules.

The minus figure at QPR relates to a fine of £20m for doing just that.

 

I’m sorry, but with all due respect I thought you wrote these articles to stimulate debate. You’re not listening to suggestions or engaging with the ones I made in my last post and instead are just reiterating things you’ve already said and ignoring the suggestions made.

 

I don't think many fans expect the club to spend money they don't have. We've a squad of about 30 senior players (can't be arsed to count them). I wonder what the performances on the field would have been like, if we had used the same pot of money to fund a squad of, say, 18 players?

I believe that's the fundamental incompetence at board level which has resulted in our current league position.

 

Thanks for the considered information, Red. Investing in young players is the only option in the long run. We might not find another John Stones, but I'm sure we'll find a few more Mason Holgates. Finding unknown good strikers and creative midfielders is more difficult. The Plan is a high risk strategy. If we had another couple of 24 year olds like Mowatt and Woodrow, we'd be okay. I just don't see the point of getting promoted, only to yo-yo up and down. The value of a young player with a couple of years at a Championship club is far higher than one who's struggled in League 1.

 

The club has employed a scattergun approach to signing young players in the hope that some come good & as a result we have a huge squad yet we have no experience to bring these players on & we don’t have enough coaches to develop the players either.

Keepers - Radlinger, Collins, Walton

Defenders - Cavare, J Willians, Sibbick, Diaby, Halme, Anderson, Pinillos, B Williams, Odour

Midfielders - Mowatt, McGeehan, Dougall, Styles, Bahre, Bird, Brown, Mottley-Henry, Thomas, Wilks, Thiam, Green

Forwards - Woodrow, Chaplin, Schmidt, Simoes, Miller (on loan), Adeboyejo (on loan)

That’s 28 players excluding the two out on loan.

You could add Matty Wolfe as well but I’m not sure on his status.

Take out the 3 keepers who are seen to by the goalkeeping coach & that leaves 25 players.

Yet we have just 3 first team coaches, two of which - Stern & Tonge have only been coaching a couple of seasons & the one in charge isn’t even 40 yet.

If anybody honestly thinks 3 coaches with so little experience working with a huge group of players like that is the right way to develop young talent I’d be amazed. On top of that there’s no experience on the playing staff for them to learn off either.

They need more one on one & small group coaching to bring them on.

Heckingbottom used to do 12 hour plus days at the club & then he’d be driving to watch rivals on days / nights we weren’t playing because we were so under resourced.

I’ve no doubt Stendel will have had similar issues especially after Winkler left & wasn’t properly replaced like Heckingbottom had when Wright was gone for ages before Clapham came in or when Linton Brown left & he was chief exec as well as manager for a few months.

Here’s an idea stop spending fees on nearly every player we sign, stop carrying at least 7 or 8 first team players more than we need & stop having far more players than the coaches can properly deal with.

We can’t be having discussions about scrapping the academy when we’re wasting money on such a huge squad & paying substantial transfer fees for players that don’t play who are sat in the East Stand near me when they’re in their crucial development years when they need to be playing games.

In Stones, Holgate & Bree alone there’s over £14m of money received by my reckoning in recent years with the potential for more to come. The academy might not be perfect but it’s well down the list of our current issues.

 

I'm sorry, I completely forgot about your post.

There are a number of things that Paul Conway does not like about loans. He argues that it makes no sense to use our facilities to develop another club's players. We have to pay the wages of the player, and usually there is a loan fee as well (something missing from your example). When the player returns to his club, the timing of it is rarely of our choosing. It is effectively the free transfer of a player who may have become valuable to us during his time with us but who is snatched away at an inconvenient moment at the sole choice of his parent club. In those circumstances, I can see why Paul Conway might not favour loans. I suppose my big question is whether a loan player, or indeed several loan players, could be reasonably expected to keep us in The Championship. I have all sorts of reasons why that might not even be possible, but most of them are summarised by the table and argument that I have included in this thread.

Your argument that players have a higher potential value if they are playing in a higher league is undoubtedly true. The only question then is, how much does it cost the club to guarantee to stay in that higher league, and is that sum larger or smaller than the difference in the amount of money that we could get for our players. There is also the point that staying in the higher league demands an investment now, whereas the pay back by selling players would be at some indefinable time in the future. Where do you get the cash from until it can be replaced by the eventual sale, and if you are using the cash to repay the loan, what do you use to buy the replacement player.

The fall off in revenue is also interesting. We apparently lose £6m when we are relegated, but player contracts include a relegation clause that reduces player pay in the lower league. The net reduction is somewhat less than £6m, and I argued in a different article that it could be as low as £3.8m. The question is still the same questions though isn't it. If we only just broke even with the £6m, any additional losses that attempt to secure our place in The Championship are losses on top of the £6m. The club has to know how they are going to finance those losses, and even then, there would be no guarantees because we would still be among the lowest payers in the league.

When most businesses invest, they do so after having spent time justifying that expenditure. They would look at the additional income that that investment would generate. They would look at how they planned to finance that purchase. In the case of an item of machinery, there is a good chance that they would be able to get that money from a bank, or at the worst HP/leasing. That is because if the investment goes pear shaped, the bank would be able to repossess that asset and resell it in order to get their money back. Barnsley FC has no Land and Building to act as security, and no bank is going to loan money to buy a player. Aside from any other reason, the transfer window is only open twice per year.

I know that you are frustrated, but equally, do not assume that our board are useless because they do not seem to have a solution. Throughout all of these articles, I have assumed that their long term plan is our best hope, and I continue to hold that belief in spite of our short term problems.

 

Spot on.

The other lunacy of buying such young players who ideally should be in the youth set up, you're sending a message to our academy players they aren't good enough. You're effectively blocking their path and you look at our academy players released each year and hardly any make it at all.

Yet you look at players like Bird, Mottley Henry, even Josh Kay (who played once then was let go)... all could be players better than their young but expensive peers brought in from outside on bigger wages and for fees.

There seems a big contradiction to be a team relying on youth, having an academy, but then buying players who would just about all get in an U21 team.

 

How would you have dealt with the situation when we had 3 players injured and 2 suspended. I presume you would have filled the bench with kids and picked the available 11 in the first team. How would you have reacted to the inevitable adverse comments from the BBS when we could only field 2 subs, one of whom is a keeper.

 

This, best post I’ve seen today. A few overworked Inexperienced bairns (relatively speaking) trying to coach loads of inexperienced bairns we probably paid too much for to begin with and cannot afford to keep bench warming is not a very good ‘plan’. I agree wholeheartedly.
These owners clearly do not know anything about creating a successful football team within our meagre means it seems to me.

 

I would have accepted it as a risk of running with a small squad. I would relax the view on loans, so that at least in January I could cover any long term injuries. I would accept the odd defeat because of injuries, as it would be better than averaging less than a point a game as at present. Our current squad size is ridiculous, it's enough for 2 teams, and those not involved are unlikely to improve sitting in the west stand next to our flag during games. It's utter incompetence.

 

You have picked players who are in the U23 squad and therefore you have to include the U23 coaches as well. They are Martin Devaney (Head Coach, Martin Skinner (Goalkeeper Coach), Sam Bowring (Fitness Coach) and Gavin Walker (Physio). The U18 team also has its full complement of staff as well, as do all other levels.

There are undoubtedly too many players on the books at the moment, and I expect to see some of the surplus leave in January. However, the players are on the whole very young which underlines the club's commitment to the long term plan.

 

Frankly,I do not think that the BBS would let you off that easy.

Do you accept the logic that success is linked to total pay?

 

that’s the obvious answer filling the gaps with u23 players rather than filling the first team with them.

 

That is precisely what we do.

 

To prove the point

Radlinger
Williams J Sibbick Andersen Williams B

Brown Dougall Mowatt Thiam

Chaplin Woodrow


Collins
Cavare Halme Diaby Pinillos

Thomas McGeehan Styles Wilks

Bahre

Schmidt

Plus Walton, Adeboyejo, Miller, Green, Mottley Henry, Oduor, Simoes and Helliwell (who has made an appearance) and possible Wolfe and Marsh

I don't think quantity is the issue somehow!

 

That’s the problem we have created 2 very poor championship teams in the hope that 5/6 of them we can sell for a reasonable profit

 

it isn’t we have 2 full squads of u23 players. A scattergun approach to recruitment that leaves us with 10-15 players nowhere near the required level that we spent both transfer fees, agent fees and wages on in the hope that 5/6 are assets.

 

Do you accept the link between total pay and league position?

 

No. Success is not linked to the total wage bill, it's linked to the average pay per player. We're more likely to be successful on the field if we have better players. Better players demand higher wages. We've not got much money, so we're going to have to risk running with a smaller squad. As far as the BBS is concerned, I'd issue a 21 word statement explaining my policy. That should keep that lot quiet.

 

Over a period of time then the amount you pay your players will impact on success if you are at the top end of the table. It’s the difference between promotion and mid table mediocrity. The evidence for less comprehensive for clubs merely wanting to survive in the division they are in is far less compelling. I’d recommend Soccernomics for a more in-depth analysis.