There's no way Dack is only on 11k, which puts the veracity of the rest of the list in doubt.

I hope one of the first things Broughton does is assess and revise our not-fit-for-purpose wage structure (that's structure not budget) and contract renewal strategies. We can't be routinely shedding millions off asset values every summer like the last two just because of the penny pincher's ineptitude and false economy.

There is some serious over-optimism going on here to think there is a chance BBD is going to sign a new deal here unless he gets a Dack style injury, or maybe doesn't find a suitor this summer and his form collapses back to the Brereton we signed or by some miracle we go up before he becomes a freebie. I can't envision why he would sign a deal on less than 40k p/w, and I can't envision us offering much more than about half that. Tbh I'm not even sure 40k would do the trick when some of the interested clubs would probably offer 60k and a better league/profile. It'll be easier to resign yourselves to the fact the absolute longest he will realistically be here is until next summer, which would represent a disaster as it means a lot of money pissed away. Best we can hope for is a quick big money sale. Not saying we shouldn't try to get him to sign, but that's more on principle than expectation.

The physical side seems to be the most impressive thing about him. 6 ft 5, and when we played Spurs u23s, there was a scrap between the players...the lad who started it was charging towards someone else and Phillips pinned him to the spot with one hand. Didn't look like it was any effort for him at all. Don't worry about the physical side, he's huge and he's strong. The question will be whether he can adapt quickly enough to the mental and positional sides of the senior game.

Why would a newspaper story about him not signing force the agent's hand? Especially when he has told the player what he was leaking, making it an obvious ruse? If anything it just tips off clubs to his continued availability.

No, the house wins more often than it loses because the odds are specifically designed to make that happen whatever the outcome, based on what people bet.

No. They're quite short deals, some of them are still only 18 and may improve, we need to field a competitive u21 side, and the money will be a relative pittance. The only one I've voiced concern on is in fact how pointlessly short Patrick Gamble's 1 year deal is.

Fantastic 🤷‍♂️. I didn't realise we were exchanging schedules, but I'm off to see a show in a couple of hours, then possibly out on the town.

I'm gonna go with 'not'.

That was exactly my thought when he said we had a 'healthy budget'. Glimt did get some decent money coming in from player sales after their success someone said, but I still imagine Championship money is a step up from what they had to spend. On the other hand, he has worked at Norwich before, so although there has been inflation since he should have a broad idea of what constitutes decent money here. Then again, he wouldn't have had close eyes on the budget there in his role. I do wonder if it will surprise him (as it seemed to perpetually surprise Mowbray) if he isn't able to do as much with that budget as he thought. But hopefully his prior experience in England means he has some sense of it. If the transfer budget itself is a few million, I think our biggest issue will continue to be an inability to pay high enough wages. It would be interesting to know how much room is in that wage budget after all the departures the last two seasons. Our 3 contract rebels were probably only on about 20-25k between them though (guessing 4k for Nyambe, 7k for Rothwell and 10-12k for Lenihan). At least a lot of the previous departures were on more so you'd hope for some room. Given we mostly loaned last summer though I suspect the wage budget was cut at that point, unless we just decided to leave a load of room in it (which would mean even less reason to let these contracts expire).

I think he meant versus the offer we have made rather than the deal he was on.

Christ, if we haven't started discussions with Brereton a while ago, I truly despair! On principle mostly, as realistically there is no way he signs a new deal. If we couldn't get two players who came through our academy to stay, one of whom we had made captain, there is no chance in hell we persuade (and pay for) the 22-goal Chilean superstar to stay.

Believing something is imminent for 2 years is stupid.

I don't think it puts that to bed. It's still a reasonable explanation to say he got fed up and had doubts about signing a new deal because of Mowbray, but now at this late stage he has had his head turned by better pay offers and perhaps already been planning for his new home by the time we showed our managerial hand.

But we just lost our captain to another Championship club who some on here are claiming are paying a lot more than us.

Firstly, no. It's their money, sure, but it's also the club's money. We support the club. The amount of money they get or don't get for players affects the ability to get new, better players, which affects our enjoyment of match days and the club's overall fate, which we are invested in emotionally. I actually think most of us care more about that than Venkys do, and they can certainly shoulder the losses so I doubt they're crying into their fried chicken. Secondly, I could be wrong here, but I think 14 million is still above what they can put in for FFP calculations, and they just put that in to keep the club solvent. I could be wrong though as I say, not clear on the current FFP rules. On the third point, they aren't mutually exclusive, and we had more time left on Travis and Kaminski to resolve those anyway. I notice you didn't say 'and Sam Gallagher' 😉 Maybe if we had made proper overtures at 18 months left like with those players, they would have signed and saved us the pointless expense of replacing them. Or at least we could have sold them to fund replacements.

The same 28 year old centre back with tons of experience and no fee is exactly what was on offer to us too. And our need for CBs was more pressing than theirs. Yet they're paying him about 10k a week more than we pay any of our best players? For a CB? When they have plenty of good ones. Nah not buying it.

I don't believe that at all. Maybe when the signing on fee is factored in or something. If Lenihan was already on 14k here I can only assume we offered him a pay rise too. 14k or more means 30k would be more like 2x not 2.5x.

Do you know what they were offered? If you don't, then I don't understand how you can be so confident they were offered what they were worth, other than by adopting a blind 'the club knows what it's doing' mentality that has no room for facts. Lenihan at least, probably was offered what he was worth...by Boro.

The only rumblings I've heard about what they offered is that it was a bit more, but not tons. 2.5x what we offered is extremely unlikely. At a guess, we were offering him at least 12k p/w at the absolute bare minimum (we're bloody idiots if we weren't). I highly doubt Boro offered 30k p/w for a CB in this league when they were already pretty well stocked there.

There were problems with Derby before that, some of their points deduction was for FFP violations, so without the administration they were still going to lose points. Clubs have been sanctioned, it's not a myth. Hell, we have been sanctioned before. You used to be able to work around it, and I agree we should have done that a lot more in days gone by if the owners were as willing as has been claimed. But these days the league don't take kindly to trying to skirt the rules. It's probably still possible to get away with it, but it's now a risk, one that could cost more than it's worth. None of those clubs you named have gone up. There's no point throwing loads of money at it anyway until you've got the right management to spend it properly, hopefully we do.

The way I remembered it, he went bankrupt further down the line. At least, I only realised years after, and it softened my tears a bit. I was never mad at him leaving though, I was hurt lol. Whether it was before or after though, clearly he felt he needed the extra finance. We had helped with his academy though, albeit not financially I don't think (beyond his healthy but beatable wage).

Like the bid we rejected for him last summer, then.

Honestly, and people will disagree with me but it's simply not up to them, Dolan. Love his work rate but most of all I love his magic lil feet. The only player in the last two seasons who I would get genuinely excited whenever he gets the ball. Seem like a genuinely good lad too. Nobody pop up with arguments please about how you don't rate him, not enough end product blah blah. I've seen them all and I'm not interested, I really like him and that was the question. That said I don't get too attached to anyone since Friedel left. I always thought he would never leave us for money, then he clearly did. Turned out he was in a bit of financial trouble tbf, but since then I've known any player can leave at any time, especially for money.

Absolutely there are. But in the price bracket we are operating in, it's really hard to know if they're up to Championship level until they play for a season. We already know Nyambe is up to Championship level. I'd say he's one of the better 8ish RBs in this league, some might disagree but I'd be stunned if any significant number of us think he just isn't up to this level at all. Since it's unlikely we can afford a proven player at this level, it would be far better to keep Nyambe, sign our 'Tooting & Mitcham' type future replacement and let them understudy. They'll break past him if they're good enough, then sell a (contracted) Nyambe for actual money. People need to stop acting like losing these valuable players for nothing is totally fine. My original point though of course is just that it doesn't matter how good another RB we definitely can't buy or loan is.