In other words, no other clubs want Dom Hyam

If you don’t pay your best players their market value and play hard ball they will leave and rightly so. Travis, Batth, Brittain and Tronstad should have had their contracts renewed last summer! Pasha et al deserve all the hard luck they get. The fans don’t deserve it and are the victims as usual.

Today we failed to match the wages offered by Derby County and were seemingly outbid by Oxford Utd. We still haven’t renewed the contracts of any of our key players and the players we have signed are unproven gambles. I suppose the uncertainty about whether we will be able to field a team that’s competitive in this division in a few short weeks is kind of exciting.

‘But we didn’t know what division we’d be in’. This would be a great excuse if it didn’t apply to all clubs every season.

The strategy of buying cheaper overseas is fine but it’s the lack of planning beyond this which is frustrating as we don’t seem to offer follow up contracts. Tronstad is a good example. If a player does well, they will rightfully expect to have a pay rise or they will look elsewhere. Once they are established in England they are going to expect the same pay as an equivalent English player. If you are unwilling to do this then you don’t protect the asset and they will leave on a free transfer.

We are relying on no competitors coming in for Kapuadi. Could be this summer’s De Lange. He seems to have good pedigree and if he’s interested in coming to us we need to get it sorted.

Nicko claims we are signing a Portuguese midfielder for £2 million. I’ll believe it when I see it!!

We have multi-billionaire owners. They can afford to match the wages that Wrexham are offering. They can afford to renew contracts of our key players and invest modestly in new signings. Owners with a fraction of their wealth invest considerably more because they actually care! As owners they don’t have to invest, it’s entirely up to them, but what is the point of owning the club if you can’t even be willing to renew contracts?

The only reason they don’t invest is by choice and not by impediment. Their wealth means they can easily afford to support the club with modest investment (eg a couple of decent signings and new contracts for our better players). If they don’t have the desire to properly fund the club then they need to sell up. It all makes zero sense.

Any model whose main objective is to save money will always lead to ruin eventually. There may be times when they strike it lucky and get a good manager or sign a hidden gem, but the overall direction of travel will be downwards. This has clearly been the sticking point with our good players who are running out of contract. They have done well and understandably expect to be paid accordingly and the club refuses as its overriding objective is to scrimp and save. When does it stop? Today is Travis and Tronstad, but in 5 years will we be competing with Accrington to meet the demands of a league 2 plodder? They may try to advertise it as a Brentford model or a Sunderland model but in actual fact it’s a Venkys model of degradation. Those models take proper planning and some decent strategy and investment to it pull off. They need a strategy with a genuine desire for improvement as the main objective and not money saving. A completely flawed model that raises the ultimate question, why on earth do they bother?

The urgent priority when the season ended was to tie key players down to new contracts. Brittain, Batth, Travis, Tronstad and Dolan. These are the mainstays of the team that got us to the brink of the playoffs last season. Zero contracts signed so far and very little talk of anything imminent. Seeing as players have stated they want to stay, they shouldn’t be hard deals to complete. You have to assume the plan is to sell the players. More asset stripping.

He did a great job keeping Derby up and good on him. Infuriating/embarrassing that he is the second excellent manager we’ve had leave us in 2 years due to our moronic ownership. I dare say either coach could have seen us promoted to the promised land with just modest investment. The complete lack of ambition shown to not capitalise on that opportunity is appalling.

Danny Batth was imo one of the main reasons we did so well last season. Tying him down to another year is the most obvious decision ever and clearly he deserves to be paid according to his influence. Just get it done for the love of God.

There is only a trajectory of decline in any business when the primary objective is cost cutting. You can get lucky for a while, but in the end it will fail. I guess the intention is to keep unearthing cheap gems, but even if we manage to achieve that we would probably not tie down their contract due to penny pinching. They can rebrand their so called model as many times as they like, but the true model is to save money and it’s an utterly depressing state of affairs with a downward trajectory.

We could have funded the women’s team by getting rid of one of Steve or Pasha. It seems that everything is being cut apart from director pay.