24-07-2020, 06:29 PM
(24-07-2020, 05:42 PM)Jean_claude_killy Wrote:(24-07-2020, 02:48 PM)the jock Wrote: Was told lamouchi identified 3 players that he wanted. One way or another these didnt happen.
None of them were signings we made.
Bohaken would not move mid season and neither would Gonzalez; Grosicki and Freeman turned us down for differing reasons.
It is just no good relying on the January window any more; the number of Clubs who bother with the window are declining each year.
It is a sellers market; transfer fees and wages are inflated beyond belief; the only use the window will have in future will be for the loan market.
We wont get our transfer activity right until we stop changing managers every 10 minutes; once EM realises that we might just start to make some progress; ironically, EM took that approach with Olympiakos at the beginning of last season and experienced great success with many players increasing in value after being written off the season before.
Modesto and Anigo have come in for a lot of criticism, some of which may be correct, but they started the season scouting players for MON and then just when the window opened they had a change in manager; that change must have made life very difficult for them.
You could say, that is what they get paid for, and that would be correct, nevertheless it will have an impact.
We now have a window opening on Monday and you would hope that the scouting team are fully prepared for it; the last thing we need is a change of manager and the upheaval that brings.
The supporters will need to temper their expectations though because we will not be going balls out in trying to buy promotion; and that is because we cant.
The P & S rules have been relaxed a little but that does not give EM any more room to spend; a wage cap will be implemented and that spells bad news for us.
To give you an idea of what we are up against, our wage bill in the last set of accounts was 29m; the expected wage ceiling is 18m.
That wage spend in the last set of accounts was a marked jump on the previous years spend; that was down to paying off some of the fringe players to leave.
The wage spend on the previous years accounts was much lower; I did a rough calculation giving an average wage of around 17k per week.
If the new wage cap gets voted in at the rumoured rate, which equates to a 25 man squad totalling 18m per year in wages with under 21s excluded, we are faced with an average wage of around 14k per week.
The upshot is we have to lose around 4m in wages which is not a very good starting point as far as attracting players goes.
Hear what you say JK - but surely any wage cap can not be enforced in the coming season. That would create chaos in half the clubs in the division - particularly those coming down from the Premier League. For that reason any cap would surely not come into force until the 21/22 season earliest.