Would Schopp offer the same loyalty?

The 2m isn’t a good return when you look at the problem it’s created though. Personally unless it’s a fee that brings in a big cash injection I wouldn’t agree to a coach that insists on a release clause. (Not that I think they do I think we insist on it)

 

They're all 5hit.

 

Of course they're only after the money,thats why they've sold Mowett and Woodrow 4 times in past 3 years.Maybe they should have let Val go for nothing.I'm sure the 2 million we got has gone a long way to keep the wolves from the door.

 

No we weren't. His ppg was comfortably mid-table.

 

I showed 23 years loyalty to Jaguar Cars, they outsourced my job to India. Doesn't get you anything....

 

I disagree.

 

If were are to compete in the Championship, we need a better spending budget than our income from the various sources allows. Other teams have higher gate receipts, better sponsorship income and higher merchandising income. The owners of other teams are prepared to loan them money in order to cover their losses, in the hope that some day those loans could be repaid through promotion to the Premier League (unlikely) or through the sale of the club to another rich philanthropist. Our owners operate an entirely different way of doing things. They try to cover the losses that the club make through buying young (cheap), improving and selling on. Their policy in relation to coaches is no different. I am sure that they did not see this wholesale loss of important staff coming, but nevertheless, it is part of their policy for running the club.

If we are to argue that they are wrong, we have to have another good plan for making good on the losses that the club makes under normal trading conditions, and let us not forget that the last 2 years have not been normal.because of COVID and BREXIT, and the adverse effect both have had on profitability. You can add to that the Hull City debt (almost £1m) that we had to cancel following arbitration.

 

I'd be very interested to see how much we've written off in transfer fees where we couldn't generate a sale, totted up losses where a fee has been paid initially and paying off players that haven't worked out, compared with what we've netted in incoming transfer revenue.

We have a very big problem in that the market we were so reliant on has collapsed. The heavily indebted clubs we sold to are now no longer able or willing to buy our players for a few million. Ironic really! But it also means the gap closes. Those clubs can't carry on paying astronomical wages any longer, so we're closer and the lure may not be as big, even if fees could be met.

One one hand, we should be able to keep players longer to develop and perform and benefit us. The flip side, they are running contracts down longer and we get to the final year conundrum. Sell at less, keep and lose for nothing.

Our model may have made sense to some degree a few years ago. Now, it looks less certain and I can see more losses than profits unless we find some real gems that attract PL interest.

It will be interesting to see this seasons accounts if covid restrictions don't rematerialise and how much our losses are and how perilous our cash position.

 

No we were not, we ended up 4th bottom with more points than the bottom 3 , Wigan cheated by having players they could not afford, thus cheated & went into administration & suffered the 12 point deduction , none of this was our fault & we stayed up by achieving the required number of points .

 

This is why the situation with Oakwell is so concerning. We have a stadium with around 23,000 seats and a matchday capacity of around 14,000. Any ability to grow our fanbase to an average of around 20k attendances is impossible. Add to that the lack of opportunity for non-matchday income and the rent that has to be paid on the ground, the stadium is going to become a millstone around the club's neck.

If Conway/Lee, the Crynes and the council can't reach some agreement, there's no way we can become a sustainable Championship club.

 

The practice of never revealing transfer prices for players incoming and outgoing is a long established one. It means that we can not see what really happened until the annual accounts are published at the end of February, 9 months after our May year end. The transfer transactions covered in those accounts could be as long as 1 year before that, i.e up to 21 months out of date when we get to look at the accounts. Similarly, we cannot tell accurately until we see the annual accounts what the purchase price was for our new players, or how much of that was still outstanding at the year end. My guess, and it is only a guess, is that our budget for players this summer was very much reduced on normal, even though we had the compensation fee for Ismael to play with. We know Oulare costs nothing if he does not play, and Oseka looks nowhere near the finished article to me, which means our only decent fee was for Josh Benson.

 

As you say, we've a very long wait to see the fall out from this seasons activity. I've heard this Oulare thing trotted out a few times? Is that absolutely true, I've not seen the sources, so its quite new information for me. We're obviously still paying wages, but hopefully thats firmly within the revenue budget. As for Benson and Iseka, and likely loan fees, it's still a fair few quid at a time when we've significant risk due to the collapsed market. (Obviously Cole was on a free, but its more wages.)

But with the MacDonald compensation, play off loss, and crystallised losses on Sollbauer and Chaplin, and the lack of fee for Mowatt, we're pretty much being propped up by what we got for Ismael (net compensation for Schopp and any pay off if we sack later him). We've also likely subsidies for a lot of players we've shipped out that we're going to have to take a hit on in the near term.

And obviously we don't know if the owners have drained any more cash out of the club rather than their investment vehicle.

 

Doesn't change the fact that we were absolutely gash and toothless up front and deserved to go down until the season restarted and Struber pulled off the great escape with 'my boys' and still he got poached and fooked off. We were very, very lucky that the season was paused.

 

The Oulare thing was made public at the time.

 

We could easily grow it if we put home fans in the north stand and away fans in the north end of the west. I find it unfathomable that this has never been addressed (half the west stand empty), they cover all manner of topics in the CEO meetings, maybe this needs to be on the agenda for the next meeting?

 

No certainty that we had a loss on Chaplin. Ipswich threw a fair bit of money about in the summer. I'd say the wage bill has probably reduced as well, and possibly a loan fee / wage contribution as part of the Kane deal.

 

Hypothetical post of the season..?

 

Given our owner was in situ, if we'd made a profit, he'd have put his usual bluster on it. So though we don't know, I'd be extremely surprised if it was anything other than a loss. May have been significant, maybe moderate. But still a loss.

I'd be surprised if we got a loan fee for Kane. Given we seemed to be trying to ship him out for game time. The loan fee practice seems to be more common with top level clubs pushing their kids out. Not sure how much money Oxford have to chuck about.

The wage bill is a tricky one. We've 35 players contracted who in or around the first team squad or been shipped out on loan who we are likely paying some of their wages (who knows what the deal is with the players shipped to Denmark). Thats a very very big squad. And even if we've saved on Mowatt and Sollbauer (maybe Chaplin too), we have brought in a decent number of bodies without being able to permanently offload some of the fringe players we'd hoped for.

 

Can't see it mentioned on the official statement or the one about the player. Can you recall who released that info? Granted its a fair few months ago now, but interested to see how its phrased.