To be fair, I think Simon Hallett has fairly consistently said that it’s the club strategy to develop talent and make money from selling players, hence the importance of developing our Academy to strengthen that end of things, and this has been presented as part of the route to establishing ourselves as a sustainable Championship club.
I guess they’ve never specifically said that we’d be running at a loss and the money from player sales would be needed to prop that up.
But having personally made an assumption about the level of finance needed to compete in the Championship when you only have gate income from around 16,000 a week when many clubs have 50% more than that and some have more than double, I’m not surprised to hear that some of the player trading profit was needed to cover losses elsewhere.
I usually enjoy these pieces and I respect its an opinion piece but exactly how do you get to £15 million for the following:
A goalkeeper with a year left on his contract recovering from a major injury who can run down his contract and leave for free, with only one club seriously interested. If he is as good as we all believe we will get to five million with add ons. I know we have seem keepers at a similar level ( Trafford and Bazuma go for more but these a re fees that get inflated to help with FFP and in both cases were capped internationals at various levels that Cooper never was. And still isn't.
A striker who only re-signed on the basis of having a relegation release clause inserted and who if we had sold him when his last contract was up, having never played above L1 would have maybe then have gone for half a million. Never capped at senior level. Indeed never selected. Streaky and only recently had a near six month barren spell. Don't get me wrong I loved watching prime Hotdog, but at the time of signing his release fee looked bang on. Also his replacement was half a million more but looks to have a higher ceiling already.
Randell. Hardest to call. Probably wasn't on a great contract having been one of our own. Under-rated as well but can we honestly say he was with say three times what City paid. But yes I think they got a bargain.
Twenty twenty hindsight. Deals seen in the mirror can appear larger than they were. Poku just over a million to QPR, Same for Burrell ( who looks decent on recent showings) So were we really robbed. I simply don't see the 15 million deal breakdown in your assumptions. More importantly neither did the clubs who were buying.
I don't disagree with your workings, but Tolaj had a release clause of £1.2m in L2. Some foresight from Port Vale there, who clearly valued his ceiling higher than we (club and fans) valued our assets. Yes, timing and circumstance play a large role.
I did mention that circumstances (relegation, contract status) were drivers of low revenue.
I think it will be a long time until we see three players of that quality sold in a single season again.
Spot on! And somehow the counterbalancing fact that we 'stole' £6m from Boro for Morgs never gets mentioned.
Anyway, the player trading thing is relatively new for the club, mainly because we've never really had players that anyone else has wanted before! So of course we're still learning and will make mistakes. And if you didn't realise this was part of the club's operational strategy, well you haven't been paying attention. It was clearly stated on many occasions that in the absence of a billionaire owner propping up the club, we would have to rely, to some extent, on player trading. That's why the pot was made available in the first place, to get the ball rolling.
I think sometimes we see what we want to see - loadsa £££ to be spent on expensive players, with the accompanying satisfaction of bragging rights. That's not going to be the Argyle way, as reiterated at the lastest forum. Instead we can hopefully revel in the fact that we seem to have picked up a real gem in one Bradley Ibrahim (you don't get to captain any Arsenal team without having something about you). Fingers, and everything else, crossed!
Final point, I do agree that the combination of circumstances at the Luton game brought about the love-in between fans and players. And I'm all for it.
To be fair, I think Simon Hallett has fairly consistently said that it’s the club strategy to develop talent and make money from selling players, hence the importance of developing our Academy to strengthen that end of things, and this has been presented as part of the route to establishing ourselves as a sustainable Championship club.
I guess they’ve never specifically said that we’d be running at a loss and the money from player sales would be needed to prop that up.
But having personally made an assumption about the level of finance needed to compete in the Championship when you only have gate income from around 16,000 a week when many clubs have 50% more than that and some have more than double, I’m not surprised to hear that some of the player trading profit was needed to cover losses elsewhere.
I usually enjoy these pieces and I respect its an opinion piece but exactly how do you get to £15 million for the following:
A goalkeeper with a year left on his contract recovering from a major injury who can run down his contract and leave for free, with only one club seriously interested. If he is as good as we all believe we will get to five million with add ons. I know we have seem keepers at a similar level ( Trafford and Bazuma go for more but these a re fees that get inflated to help with FFP and in both cases were capped internationals at various levels that Cooper never was. And still isn't.
A striker who only re-signed on the basis of having a relegation release clause inserted and who if we had sold him when his last contract was up, having never played above L1 would have maybe then have gone for half a million. Never capped at senior level. Indeed never selected. Streaky and only recently had a near six month barren spell. Don't get me wrong I loved watching prime Hotdog, but at the time of signing his release fee looked bang on. Also his replacement was half a million more but looks to have a higher ceiling already.
Randell. Hardest to call. Probably wasn't on a great contract having been one of our own. Under-rated as well but can we honestly say he was with say three times what City paid. But yes I think they got a bargain.
Twenty twenty hindsight. Deals seen in the mirror can appear larger than they were. Poku just over a million to QPR, Same for Burrell ( who looks decent on recent showings) So were we really robbed. I simply don't see the 15 million deal breakdown in your assumptions. More importantly neither did the clubs who were buying.
I don't disagree with your workings, but Tolaj had a release clause of £1.2m in L2. Some foresight from Port Vale there, who clearly valued his ceiling higher than we (club and fans) valued our assets. Yes, timing and circumstance play a large role.
I did mention that circumstances (relegation, contract status) were drivers of low revenue.
I think it will be a long time until we see three players of that quality sold in a single season again.
Spot on! And somehow the counterbalancing fact that we 'stole' £6m from Boro for Morgs never gets mentioned.
Anyway, the player trading thing is relatively new for the club, mainly because we've never really had players that anyone else has wanted before! So of course we're still learning and will make mistakes. And if you didn't realise this was part of the club's operational strategy, well you haven't been paying attention. It was clearly stated on many occasions that in the absence of a billionaire owner propping up the club, we would have to rely, to some extent, on player trading. That's why the pot was made available in the first place, to get the ball rolling.
I think sometimes we see what we want to see - loadsa £££ to be spent on expensive players, with the accompanying satisfaction of bragging rights. That's not going to be the Argyle way, as reiterated at the lastest forum. Instead we can hopefully revel in the fact that we seem to have picked up a real gem in one Bradley Ibrahim (you don't get to captain any Arsenal team without having something about you). Fingers, and everything else, crossed!
Final point, I do agree that the combination of circumstances at the Luton game brought about the love-in between fans and players. And I'm all for it.