32 minutes ago, dingles staying down 4ever said:

or get the player to back his own talent by increasing pay for targets acheived

Good luck with that one when agents are involved drumming up future free agent interest, sadly.

6 minutes ago, Hoochie Bloochie Mama said:

Personally I read it like he was having a dig at whoever makes the financial decisions.

"We have to look after and protect our assets at our football club in my opinion.  Those are conversations that we’re going to have to have at some stage. You can’t in my opinion just let the assets run down and potentially just walk away.”

Maybe struggling now to get longer term contracts with big pay rises signed off owing to all the uncertainty.

A way around it is perhaps in cases like NYambe give him a big re-signing fee out of this seasons budget in return for a more modest wage over the next few years ?

The train of thought here might just be Mowbray was sweetening him up thinking one of our better mids may be moving on.  A bit of a 'just in case' job.

Might not have wanted to buy him straight off and find a place but fancied him to snap up late if Evans was snapped up or a big Travis bid came in.

Just lining the ducks up as Jack would say but maybe not going to pull the trigger.

9 hours ago, TBTF said:

That would leave us paying close to £15k a week for a bloke not to play for us . Add that to the last 9 months when he has also been paid not to play for us and we’ve blown our brains. No wonder football clubs are deep in the soft stuff.

Doesnt really make me want tax payers money to be used to shore up an industry that’s rotten to the core and one that’s certainly no more deserving than any other part of the economy whose plight isn’t any where near as self inflicted as football is. 
The whole thing is pretty sickening tbh especially when it’s been fed to us by the likes of Swaggot on £300k a year .
 

This is it with football it's just ridiculous yet it's amazing how everyone seems absolved from blame.

Manager and CEO/Owners gave him that it's not the players fault.

Manager & CEO - he was captain and playing well at the time and other clubs were sniffing so we tied him down.

Player - Hey it's not my fault they've dropped me, they offered me that and i signed the legally binding contract.

The whole thing needs a major major reset but meanwhile in the middle....

Agents/advisors - Thanks everybody we couldn't do it without you !

Just now, pjt said:

Ex city player with injuries since he joined and a buy back clause, maybe he will come good yet.

 

 

 

 

Hope so and yes the injuries won't have helped but the other bit ?  Nah it doesn't mean a lot really, Hart for example ex Liverpool.

4 minutes ago, 47er said:

He's another one where you wonder why we signed him.

Squaddies, bodies, numbers.

1 hour ago, islander200 said:

Preston haven't bought anyone this window and Risdale said no incomings.Their best player Pearson is also out of contract end of the season and doesn't look like he will be signing a new contract.

Giving people the option of a refund on the season tickets is the right thing to do but WE are all on the transfer thread demanding money to be spent on signings aswell.

Waggot hasn't handled the ticket situation well but at least we are spending some money and trying to improve the team to sustain mount a promotion challenge

300k is a lot for a club our size and we didn't get him from a Prem club did we he's been around the lower leagues mostly.

End of the day 30 thousand is a lot if you don't justify it although i don't envy his job recently.

22 minutes ago, Atko's Engine said:

Agree to a point, but it wasn't just Dack was it? I'd argue that Cunningham was as important a loss, given that in his absence we had Bell and then, when he was injured along with Del, right-footed Bennett or JRC.

Left back is the 1 position we still all crave to be improved on now.

We also lost Evans & Holtby at similar times too remember 

To me he's the only one who might have made a significant difference.

It's all assumption though and I agree all of them fit and we'd have been a few points better off. Still don't think we'd have made it though because at the end of the day we still had a crap keeper and defence that leaked too easy. Cunningham would have given balance to it but the centre was still flawed. We still lost gam s with all those guys in early on.

Agree the left back could and should be strengthened. If he doesn't it will bite his ass again.

4 minutes ago, Atko's Engine said:

Marginal last season yes, perhaps, but that's in the context of suffering several long term injuries to key players at key moments. That's not the only reason we missed out on the 7/8 points needed for the playoffs granted, but in my mind it was surely the most significant.

Hmmm but if the big money signings had done what they were signed for and stepped up it should have balanced out. Not sure we could hang our hat on being in the play offs off the back of Dack alone, fit or not.

The main issue for me is when we had chance to just go for it with sod all to lose after lockdown we simply didn't. That's how he works and there is no reason to think this time would be any different so that's why i'd just like to see a fresh approach. We are bustling with youth now and with Dack to come back, a new keeper, possibly the solid centre half we've craved and Brereton another year on there's no reason not to have a go.

It's not shit or bust there isn't that kind of pressure but there should be a little bit applied from above now with the backing he's had.

1 minute ago, unleaded said:

Hart was signed for a undisclosed fee and it took the management 3 long years and a few loan returns from clubs not interested in him to figure out he's not up to the standard .....

Its amazing what goes on  these so called recruitment meetings ... still doesn’t beat J Lowe Story ......

What's the story ?

Imo not much problem with the Hart thing although giving him another contract to loan him out again when it was clear he wasn't up to it is a bit odd. However i'm presuming he didn't cost much so if they were giving him every chance and it just didn't work out that can't be that unusual in football. 

Anyway what was the Jlowe story /

12 minutes ago, Atko's Engine said:

And yet at the end of each full season he's been here, there's been improvement in our league position from the previous season ...

Marginal gains, very welcome after relegation but  now is the time to put the foot on the gas a bit more to show significant improvement because as we well know it can go backwards very quickly.

We've nothing at all to lose in having the 'just go for it' mentality.  At worst it's midtable again baring a serious injury crisis or selling players. No point tip tapping around now.

12 hours ago, AshleyClifford said:

Around 500. If 200k salary is correct. I think it's lower than that. 

So it's over a thousand season tickets just to pay him and the middleman.

Quality needed not not quantity we are past that juncture thanks to the youngsters. We've also offloaded a few out of contract well paid squad fillers, some who's sole purpose just seemed to be there to fill the headcount.

Resources should go into the best player possible now.

31 minutes ago, MarkBRFC said:

Taken from that article..

This is why we'll never progress with Mowbray, if you're signing players for any other reason than improving the first 11 then what's the point?

We have enough squad fillers as it is.

Every fooking window we have this from him even if he has the opportunity he's terrified of pushing it and upsetting the pecking order.

How many STs do we have to shift just to pay him ?  

51 minutes ago, Herbie6590 said:

The club is owned through the Venky’s group of companies. Funding is via inter-company loans (usually converted, at least in part, to share capital at some point) rather than directors loans.

 

Yep the personal funds bit needs putting to bed it looks clear that VLL sits in a corner of the group portfolio gobbling up other profits.

1 hour ago, danger19_80 said:

And that's thanks to TM, like him or not.

Along with the several audit firms they employed....

I genuinely think they'd still fund the club if crowds were ruled out altogether as long as there was tv coverage and an income from that. Might even suit them the way they do things they'd just micromanage it from India with the manager and coaches over here.

Out would go swaggo and everyone in office here and the agents would sub contract the needed official staff as and when needed.

Come to think of it we've already had that model !

30 minutes ago, PeteJD13 said:

its not so much a second wave they are still on the first wave, over 5.65 million cases so with no income for the club they will have to put more money in than normal on this i cannot blame them for not spending. Maybe Tony should have thought about money when he was dishing out extra contracts to smallwood and co

I think he was simply using up what was left in the budget at that point whilst it was there. Looking after his mates for sure he's very good at that with someone else's money.  Yes he needed to keep a squad together as they didn't know what was happening but to extend contracts for guys you told you were never going to use whatever and others who knew they were on their way doesn't sit well with me at all.

As iv'e said several times before going back to last summer all these little things add up when you then down line find yourself a few quid short to sign someone else.

46 minutes ago, USABlue said:

I was never a big Raya fan but I don't remember Walton pulling off too many worldies.  Raya made some memorable saves, which I have forgotten but he was better than Walton in that regard.  Waltons kicking was just as erratic.  Did not command his area any better and was at times way too slow releasing the ball.  Raya was better keeper but I wanted him replaced just with someonenbetter. 

I was in the keep camp but replace him as number 1 with an experienced keeper or someone with similar potential. That way we could see if he developed and he had better standards to train with and fight it out for number one.  He never had that here he just wasted time sat behind Steele then straight replaced him to learn on the job. Luckily for him that was in league 1 i think he'd have sank Jake Keane style thrown straight in the Championship then with no real back up.

Of course all that is easier said than done but if the clock could be wound right back i think it could have been handled a whole lot better. 

For now though if we got another million quid on top of the 3 and they've got someone capable finally in the sticks then it's best to draw a line under it.

Difference was Raya would lose you 9 points but literally save you 7.

Walton would lose you 9 as well but only save you maybe 5.

That's the roulette wheel of these keepers. Pleased to say so far I prefer the new lad to both of those.

The more some rate Raya and the more they pay for him the better so it's not really a point scoring or laughing matter to be honest. 

3 million sounds shite but add ons taking it to 4 or 5 sounds right.  It seems like Brentford wanted more than 10 million and they rate him highly enough to play hard ball and risk losing the fee. 

They've been better at wheeling and dealing with big money than us recently so fair play to them. Maybe it's the add ons that caused the problem.

7 hours ago, Angry_Pirate said:

Our transfer activity screams uncertainty.

It is like we identify a player (McGinn, Kipre, Garner, Reed) and make a "shallow/token" move... but then we delay and piss about pulling the trigger.

It's not until another team comes in that we then suddenly decide we really want said player 100%, only for the player to (rightfully) take the "Fuck You" attitude to our recruitment team and move to the new (actually committed) bidding team.

We didn't even get Holtby or Ayala in first time around when they had trained with us, only for them to go abroad after being teased, to eventually come back to us as their own Plan B. Last year Adarabioyo took about a month to complete as well for similar reasons.

Seems very indecisive and, ultimately, detrimental, and is why we lack in some areas.

I reckon that might be down to the pitch being we'd like you to come to us and sit on our bench in the natural pecking order and you'll get a chance at some point. If not then fine we understand and wish you well whilst we'll look elsewhere.

Everybody seems to come in as back up i suspect when they finally nail a left back it'll be the same. I'm hoping Ayala proves an exception to this but if Williams is playing well then it's all good competition.