Do you think the COG fee...

I take some of the points on board. We have the thinnest squad in the football leagues (with the possible exception of Blackpool). If Cranie and Kennedy tho we will only have M'Voto, the perpetually injured Nyatanga and maybe Hourianne who have played over a 100 first team games and below that not many if any who have played 50 or more. We have let 20+ players go without replacing them. I would go for slashing the team in half cutting outvote chaff still leaves at least 10 players.

The squad we have at he minute is an absolute bottom of the table one. For example up front we have Danny Rose less than 10 professional starts team with Hemmings no experience beyond lower reaches of the Scottish league.

There's a difference between bringing younger players on and throwing them to the wolves.

Still exciting times.

 

Not disputing that, but how much were these players on? We're talking about just 4 players on big wages aren't we? Cranie, Steele, Cog and Kennedy. Our season ticket sales have held up, not quite as good as last season, but 7,000 is pretty good. I would imagine it's more than the majority of clubs in our league. We've lost a fair chunk of TV money, but we've released about 20 players. Can we really not afford any more experienced professionals than the above 4 plus Nyatanga, Jennings, M'Voto and the two new signings?

We must be paying our galacticos in gold bars.

 

Turnover to May 2013 was £9m, of which £2.8m was transfer fees - so let's say Champ turnover about £7mgive or take - what we losing ?£2m ? That gives us a turnover of £5m, 60% of which is £3m - COG/Steele/Crainie/Kennedy could take up about a third of that on their own, so there's some hard decisions with such a finite budget.

 

I wonder if there are two additional things to consider though.

Firstly, how much we spent last year. We had over 40 players with us during the season, some expensive loans, increased agents fees i suspect and we paid off a number of players to get rid and free up the squad. We must have spent a small fortune. I know if i owned the club, i'd probably want to try and claw some of that back. Just a perception I have, don;t know if its the case or not though.

Secondly, just about all the players we seem to be linked with are under contract and seem to be wanting a decent fee. By decent i mean 6 figures.

I think i'm right that the SCMP is based on wages and transfer fees?

So yes, we may have got rid of huge amounts of players, but you can see the appeal to Danny and Ben that if Steele, Cranie, COG and Kennedy arent hugely thought of, getting rid frees up huge amounts of opportunity to get hungrier players in and better value for money.

Personally i would have liked to have retained Cranie and Steele and invested in more pace and movement up front and get proper full backs in.

 

I reckon you're not getting much change out of £1.5 million a year for Kennedy/Cranie/Steele & O'Grady. I know no one knows what players are on but the figures I've heard are from pretty good sources so no reason to doubt they're there or there abouts. Add in Nyatanga & M'Voto and we're talking £2 million a year. On 6 players & with the 60% rule it doesn't make it easy.

We probably could do it with those lads remaining but it'd be tight and the way this Summer has panned out it seems that we've needed to get these off the wage bill before any real activity can take place (although it might be a coincidence that activity has seemingly picked up whilst outs have been touted about).

The point will be whether Danny wants them and the players want to stay. I think the point will be that if we did manage to get them off the wage bill Danny would be able to bring in his players, experienced at this level and on less money. Maybe not a bad thing.

I'm rambling. Really, no one knows f.ck all. I'm just bored.

 

3 weeks to go we really do need to start signing players. Not moaning or complaining just stating a massive fact.

 

Scary thought though innit, 7,000 season tickets sold and we can't even afford 11 players! Only 3 of which (Cranie, O'Grady and Steele) are what you might consider decent Championship players. And it's only possibly Steele who could command a place at a top Championship side and even that wouldn't be guaranteed.

When a reasonably well supported football club can't even afford to field a team there's summat very wrong with the game.

 

As with most things, lower down the pecking order you go, the harsher the rules, and the more forcefully they are applied.

 

*pssst*, we're not in the Championship!