Mads Andersen

The question in my mind is have we renewed Mads contract since he first signed for us or is it the original one? I believe it’s still the original one in which case it’s hard to think that there is value written into it which would automatically trigger a transfer if it is met, because it would have been difficult to foresee in 2019 what Mads might be worth fourth years on. If this be the case then we should be able to let a bidding war run it’s course.

 

The board have a difficult job balancing the on field quality with the finances of the club.

With a pure football view I’d want to keep him, he is probably the best league one centre half and would slot in to any championship side.

Money wise though the owners are struggling, despite the success on the field this year the finances will have been further stretched. Turnover will have fallen from around £14m to £8m which means, even with significant pay cuts and the transfer dealings of last summer the club will be short of cash.

As most are aware the owners have put in over £6m last year to keep the club solvent. If Mads played 40 games next season and we think the club could get £2m for him now the cost of him playing each game would be £50k a game. At the end of the season he would be a free agent. My view would be that it would be sensible to sell now and improve the overall team using some of those proceeds to bring in a blend of youth and maturity and ease some of the financial pressure.

That’s not in the slightest a dig at Mads who has been brilliant for the club but reflects how the club needs to operate to stay afloat.

 

Regrettably that makes a lot of sense. Be nice to think we could get a bit more than £2m for him though

 

Unfortunately the books have to be balanced, him and Williams and possibly Collins are saleable assets. Mads has earned his move stayed this season to try and sort the previous season's mess good luck to him hope he does as well as Pinnock.

 

As plenty of others have said Mads deserves to play at an higher level. He's shown commitment and loyalty to the club far more than most modern footballers and he'll always be part Barnsley.

Really hope we get more than £2m for him though. I mean, we got £1.4m for Carl Tiler in 1991and whilst he was a decent player it was 30 odd years ago.

 

We will do well to get £2million. He’s only got twelve months left on his contract. Just about halves his value.

Anything north of £1million will likely be considered.

 

If we can get Thomas back, I’d reluctantly let Mads go. He deserves to play at a higher level.
If not, then we keep Mads until January (at least).
if we’re not top 2 and well clear of 3rd by the mid season window, sell him then.
At best we’ll get 2M for him now.
If we get 500k in January (worst case), we’ve only “lost” 1.5m and have the chance of being right up there.

 

Define 'higher level' e.g. would you say S.W.F.C (Championship) play "higher level" football than Barnsley F.C. just because we are currently League 1? The grass is not always greener. Besides if all goes to plan Barnsley will play in the Championship soon with a better quality than half the sides in that division (
IMHO)

 

Yes I agree but I think you're misunderstanding what churton was saying. He meant that BECAUSE it's a team game then mads Andersen may increase your chances of promotion but it doesn't guarantee it so you can't use a simplistic calculation of selling mads = £1.5m, promotion= £8m therefore keeping him = £6.5m profit. If it was as simple as that then we'd be a championship club now.

 

Again, I say keep him if at all feasible to do so. The potential long-term reward for the club in keeping him outweighs the obvious short-term boost to the finances. I dont get this ' he deserves to play at a higher level' comment in the current context. Its tantamount to rolling over and having our tummies tickled again. There's no reason why he can't play at a higher level with Barnsley if the club hold their nerve and maintain support for Duff and the spine of the team

 

It's not going to be merely playing at a higher level for Mads though. If we keep him next season and we go up he'll be a Championship level player again, out of contract. We'll then offer him a contract for probably a very generous estimate of 10k and various other Championship clubs will offer him one at well north of 30k.
Unless he's a secret multi millionaire he's not going to choose us. And I know some people are going to say it's not completely about money for some players and if you were talking a difference of a couple of grand a week between offers I'd say maybe we could keep him. We all know though that any offer we make will be blown out of the water by a bigger Championship club.

 

So we offer him 20 odd thousand to stay and then Luca Connell taps on the manager's door and says how come I'm only getting 5k?

 

I am probably not the one to judge this as I have never been particularly money motivated ( just as well having spent quite a bit of my working life as an unsigned musician) and supported by my missus. The best paid job I ever had and the one which enabled me to retire here debt free was one I came to hate and was one, personally I believe I was not particularly good at. Mads like many footballers at his level should earn enough in his relatively short career to set himself up for life even a couple of years playing for a team like Barnsley with relatively (a key word) lower salary compared to big clubs.. He can still earn far more than most people will earn in their entire working life. Job satisfaction is underrated these days.

 

I've said this before, but Mads is the best central defender outside of the Premier League.
Pretty sure he signed improved terms during a Championship season but unlikely to have matched Woodrow at that time.
I think we should offer him same as Woodrow was on with a £5m buyout clause.
Without Mads, there would have been no trip to Wembley.

 

Championship is a higher level than League 1. Don’t think that can be disputed.

 

But you can't go on like that Fi. You've already hiked Andersen's salary. Now Connell's. The next thing is that we're the kind of club we all love to run down and look down our noses at because they pay players salaries we can't compete with with money they haven't got.
We have a wage structure for a reason. It's what we can afford. Unless we magic up some billionaire benefactor who wants to throw money at us or an extra 10,000 fans it's not sustainable.

 

Not by me it isn't. But if you genuinely think a player is going to work for a quarter the pay doing basically the same job as every other club offers him I think you're very optimistic.
The reason pretty much every good player we've ever had with the possible exception of Ronnie Glavin left us is because they could get better money elsewhere.