NFFC Financial Talk

[wassy04]

Swiss Ramble’s annual superb analysis published

Summary, we lose enough money to reduce most accountants to gibbering wrecks but not as much as some clubs.

His analysis really is excellent.

Takeaways for me:

1 According to Swiss Ramble only squeaked meeting FFP this, largely due to a hefty loss a few years ago. Looks like he's added a covid adjustment so I'm guessing thats how they're going to police it. Can't see them being too strict but we can only afford a 6m loss. Given our operating loss is 32m, we're going to struggle next season. I wonder whether that means we'll have to sell Worrall early to get him in the next accounts. Did we sell anyone else aside from Cash? Even with 14-16m from that we're still around 10m short.
2. Parachute payments are a disgrace and these accounts once again evidence it. Even with the excessive losses and a turnover to wages ratio of 143% we're still only 11th in wages spent! We're in a halfway house strategy of spending too much to ever get wages under control but not enough to actually realistically challenge. 
3 Brings me on to the strategy for the summer, I suspect we'll just sell Worrall, sign a load of frees/loans and try and win with the current squad. However this would be clearly wrong. In my opinion we have three options:

Option one we spend nothing and clear out as much wages as possible. Don't commit to any high contracts and also sell Worrall. Basically balance the books and then start again, hopefully in a few years when Parachute payments are gone we'll be nicely poised with a squad predominantly from the cat 1 academy. Obviously pretty big risk we go down and a pretty depressing few years ahead but I'm sure it would be popular with some. Can't see Marinakis doing this but probably the best option.

Option 2, the fun option, gung ho. f**k FFP, f**k Parachute payments. We accept we'll fail FFP and gamble on going up next year. We wouldn't be punished until the following season so we'd have one shot at it. Spend excessively, keep Worrall and go all in. Ideally on players with resale value for the firesale the following year when it fails so the punishments aren't too severe. Perhaps some creative accounting surrounding FFP and the pandemic that we could take advantage of.

Option 3, listed above, we sell Worrall (or perhaps get away with selling Carv, Grabban, Mighten or Johnson maybe and use FFP write-offs to cover the difference), buy low and cheap/loans. Basically current strategy and hope CH can perform some magic. I'm assuming this is what we'll do but none of these options are great are they.

We will be within FFP limits for 20/21 100%.
There are accountancy procedures you can do because of the lockdown that have been announced with regards to FFP accounting.
You can add inlost revenue, and costs associated with COVID, reduced player values, and I also believe the 3yr rolling period has been increased to 4 yrs.
Also the large losses from 3 yrs ago are no longer in the rolling period.

We will be fine, there is no way we will fail the criteria.

Yes agreed, I wasn't suggesting we'd fail this season, next season might be tighter though. Swiss has included covid cost estimates in his FFP estimate for this year which I assume just accounted for lost income. 

Yeah mentioned those separately, So that's good actually I didn't account for the 4 year aspect, which means we get to keep our 6m loss from 17/18. Actually works out really well for us then. That's good then so we can afford to make an FFP loss of around 13m again I reckon if I've understood it right. 

So quick back of a fag packet maths,

17/18 - 6
18/19 - 20
19/20 - 13
20/21 - 13 (estimated)

Total - 52 which will be the total FFP losses allowed.

So to meet that 13m, assuming our operating loss of 32m is net of covid decreases (as in it'll be way higher but readjust back to that when you remove covid write-offs) 17-18m for sales (Guerroro and Silva worth a few m?!). Probably actually implies we're fine more or less. Although I guess I'm not including an inevitable increase in amortisation from signings of Soh, McKenna and Arter (shudders).

What it means for this summer is unclear as it depends on if it goes back to 3 years or 4 years next time. If its 4 years we still we're stuck with the 18/19 loss which means we need sales. If it's 3 years again we get to ditch that so can still with normal strategy which still requires around 15m of sales!

Contrary to certain reports on social media, Soh was apparantly around 1m and Arter we paid a fee that in effect paid up his contract.

So for the 2 of them the amortised cost is prob less than 1m a year.

It is the Carvalho amortised cost we need to rid, that is 3m a year.

Would make a difference to remove that.

Oh really, that's good news then on both fronts. I heard 5m bandied around for Arter which I assumed was rubbish. 

Soh L'Equipe said up to 5m euros at the time so £1m up front sounds pretty accurate. How about Mckenna? 6m odd?

Yeah if Soh was 1m will be way less than 1m a year amortised, Soh probably has a 5 year deal. So maybe closer to 500k year combined at most.

Yeah although in FFP terms if we sold Carv for the remaining amortised value it would have no impact on FFP as it's already accounted for. So in FFP terms it's not really worth doing unless we get 6m (if that's how much is remaining?) Obviously another 6m to go towards the amount the owners have to put into the club is always welcomed of course!

In fact if we sold him for less than 6m we'd actually take a hit on FFP as we'd have to book the cost straight away.

Just gives you a good indication of how valuable academy players are and how tempting it is to sell them.

[wassy04]

It’s also worth noting the wage bill will reduce greatly this summer, I will give it a guess on the conservative basis.

Dawson - 10k
Hefele - 15k
Diallo - 5k
Ribeiro - 8k
Sow - 20k
Bachirou - 10k
Ameobi - 15k

Total - 4.3m

Loans
Christie - 20k
Garner - 10k
Knockaert - 40k
Freeman - 20k
Krovinivic - 15k

Total - 5.4m

TOTAL SAVING 9.7m

we will need 2 full backs, a striker, a number 8, and let’s assume we also get Krovi, Knockaert and Garner back on same wages.

If we average 15k a week on the 4 players added to the loans they would be around 6.5m

So I reckon we will knock off over 3m on the wage bill.

I guess we will also try and find a taker for Arter, but we may need to pay a % of his wages.

But I think the wage bill is coming down, which will also help.

Imagine Ameobi will get renewed though, maybe for less. You could probably add Grabban to the list above too, surely he'll go this summer. I think with pandemic losses we'll be stuck with losses on the likes of Arter and Jenkinson. Particularly Jenkinson would make a fraction elsewhere so unless we paid him off he's going nowhere. Makes sense to just keep him as the backup RB/LB really.

[Reds73]

Swiss Ramble’s annual superb analysis published

Summary, we lose enough money to reduce most accountants to gibbering wrecks but not as much as some clubs.

His analysis really is excellent.

Takeaways for me:

1 According to Swiss Ramble only squeaked meeting FFP this, largely due to a hefty loss a few years ago. Looks like he's added a covid adjustment so I'm guessing thats how they're going to police it. Can't see them being too strict but we can only afford a 6m loss. Given our operating loss is 32m, we're going to struggle next season. I wonder whether that means we'll have to sell Worrall early to get him in the next accounts. Did we sell anyone else aside from Cash? Even with 14-16m from that we're still around 10m short.
2. Parachute payments are a disgrace and these accounts once again evidence it. Even with the excessive losses and a turnover to wages ratio of 143% we're still only 11th in wages spent! We're in a halfway house strategy of spending too much to ever get wages under control but not enough to actually realistically challenge. 
3 Brings me on to the strategy for the summer, I suspect we'll just sell Worrall, sign a load of frees/loans and try and win with the current squad. However this would be clearly wrong. In my opinion we have three options:

Option one we spend nothing and clear out as much wages as possible. Don't commit to any high contracts and also sell Worrall. Basically balance the books and then start again, hopefully in a few years when Parachute payments are gone we'll be nicely poised with a squad predominantly from the cat 1 academy. Obviously pretty big risk we go down and a pretty depressing few years ahead but I'm sure it would be popular with some. Can't see Marinakis doing this but probably the best option.

Option 2, the fun option, gung ho. f**k FFP, f**k Parachute payments. We accept we'll fail FFP and gamble on going up next year. We wouldn't be punished until the following season so we'd have one shot at it. Spend excessively, keep Worrall and go all in. Ideally on players with resale value for the firesale the following year when it fails so the punishments aren't too severe. Perhaps some creative accounting surrounding FFP and the pandemic that we could take advantage of.

Option 3, listed above, we sell Worrall (or perhaps get away with selling Carv, Grabban, Mighten or Johnson maybe and use FFP write-offs to cover the difference), buy low and cheap/loans. Basically current strategy and hope CH can perform some magic. I'm assuming this is what we'll do but none of these options are great are they.

We will be within FFP limits for 20/21 100%.
There are accountancy procedures you can do because of the lockdown that have been announced with regards to FFP accounting.
You can add inlost revenue, and costs associated with COVID, reduced player values, and I also believe the 3yr rolling period has been increased to 4 yrs.
Also the large losses from 3 yrs ago are no longer in the rolling period.

We will be fine, there is no way we will fail the criteria.

Yes agreed, I wasn't suggesting we'd fail this season, next season might be tighter though. Swiss has included covid cost estimates in his FFP estimate for this year which I assume just accounted for lost income. 

Yeah mentioned those separately, So that's good actually I didn't account for the 4 year aspect, which means we get to keep our 6m loss from 17/18. Actually works out really well for us then. That's good then so we can afford to make an FFP loss of around 13m again I reckon if I've understood it right. 

So quick back of a fag packet maths,

17/18 - 6
18/19 - 20
19/20 - 13
20/21 - 13 (estimated)

Total - 52 which will be the total FFP losses allowed.

So to meet that 13m, assuming our operating loss of 32m is net of covid decreases (as in it'll be way higher but readjust back to that when you remove covid write-offs) 17-18m for sales (Guerroro and Silva worth a few m?!). Probably actually implies we're fine more or less. Although I guess I'm not including an inevitable increase in amortisation from signings of Soh, McKenna and Arter (shudders).

What it means for this summer is unclear as it depends on if it goes back to 3 years or 4 years next time. If its 4 years we still we're stuck with the 18/19 loss which means we need sales. If it's 3 years again we get to ditch that so can still with normal strategy which still requires around 15m of sales!

Contrary to certain reports on social media, Soh was apparantly around 1m and Arter we paid a fee that in effect paid up his contract.

So for the 2 of them the amortised cost is prob less than 1m a year.

It is the Carvalho amortised cost we need to rid, that is 3m a year.

Would make a difference to remove that.

The other thing to take into account, is the above losses are the total losses and not the relevant losses for FFP purposes.

For example infrastructure and academy costs aren’t included in FFP losses.

The academy costs 2m a year to run and employs over 50 staff, yet those figures are in the accounts.

So in those 4 yr losses around 6-8m can be taken off plus whatever costs we have that can be attributed to infrastructure.

Even though we know the headline losses, we still don’t know how much of that loss is the exact amount for FFP purposes.

[wassy04]

His analysis really is excellent.

Takeaways for me:

1 According to Swiss Ramble only squeaked meeting FFP this, largely due to a hefty loss a few years ago. Looks like he's added a covid adjustment so I'm guessing thats how they're going to police it. Can't see them being too strict but we can only afford a 6m loss. Given our operating loss is 32m, we're going to struggle next season. I wonder whether that means we'll have to sell Worrall early to get him in the next accounts. Did we sell anyone else aside from Cash? Even with 14-16m from that we're still around 10m short.
2. Parachute payments are a disgrace and these accounts once again evidence it. Even with the excessive losses and a turnover to wages ratio of 143% we're still only 11th in wages spent! We're in a halfway house strategy of spending too much to ever get wages under control but not enough to actually realistically challenge. 
3 Brings me on to the strategy for the summer, I suspect we'll just sell Worrall, sign a load of frees/loans and try and win with the current squad. However this would be clearly wrong. In my opinion we have three options:

Option one we spend nothing and clear out as much wages as possible. Don't commit to any high contracts and also sell Worrall. Basically balance the books and then start again, hopefully in a few years when Parachute payments are gone we'll be nicely poised with a squad predominantly from the cat 1 academy. Obviously pretty big risk we go down and a pretty depressing few years ahead but I'm sure it would be popular with some. Can't see Marinakis doing this but probably the best option.

Option 2, the fun option, gung ho. f**k FFP, f**k Parachute payments. We accept we'll fail FFP and gamble on going up next year. We wouldn't be punished until the following season so we'd have one shot at it. Spend excessively, keep Worrall and go all in. Ideally on players with resale value for the firesale the following year when it fails so the punishments aren't too severe. Perhaps some creative accounting surrounding FFP and the pandemic that we could take advantage of.

Option 3, listed above, we sell Worrall (or perhaps get away with selling Carv, Grabban, Mighten or Johnson maybe and use FFP write-offs to cover the difference), buy low and cheap/loans. Basically current strategy and hope CH can perform some magic. I'm assuming this is what we'll do but none of these options are great are they.

We will be within FFP limits for 20/21 100%.
There are accountancy procedures you can do because of the lockdown that have been announced with regards to FFP accounting.
You can add inlost revenue, and costs associated with COVID, reduced player values, and I also believe the 3yr rolling period has been increased to 4 yrs.
Also the large losses from 3 yrs ago are no longer in the rolling period.

We will be fine, there is no way we will fail the criteria.

Yes agreed, I wasn't suggesting we'd fail this season, next season might be tighter though. Swiss has included covid cost estimates in his FFP estimate for this year which I assume just accounted for lost income. 

Yeah mentioned those separately, So that's good actually I didn't account for the 4 year aspect, which means we get to keep our 6m loss from 17/18. Actually works out really well for us then. That's good then so we can afford to make an FFP loss of around 13m again I reckon if I've understood it right. 

So quick back of a fag packet maths,

17/18 - 6
18/19 - 20
19/20 - 13
20/21 - 13 (estimated)

Total - 52 which will be the total FFP losses allowed.

So to meet that 13m, assuming our operating loss of 32m is net of covid decreases (as in it'll be way higher but readjust back to that when you remove covid write-offs) 17-18m for sales (Guerroro and Silva worth a few m?!). Probably actually implies we're fine more or less. Although I guess I'm not including an inevitable increase in amortisation from signings of Soh, McKenna and Arter (shudders).

What it means for this summer is unclear as it depends on if it goes back to 3 years or 4 years next time. If its 4 years we still we're stuck with the 18/19 loss which means we need sales. If it's 3 years again we get to ditch that so can still with normal strategy which still requires around 15m of sales!

Contrary to certain reports on social media, Soh was apparantly around 1m and Arter we paid a fee that in effect paid up his contract.

So for the 2 of them the amortised cost is prob less than 1m a year.

It is the Carvalho amortised cost we need to rid, that is 3m a year.

Would make a difference to remove that.

The other thing to take into account, is the above losses are the total losses and not the relevant losses for FFP purposes.

For example infrastructure and academy costs aren’t included in FFP losses.

The academy costs 2m a year to run and employs over 50 staff, yet those figures are in the accounts.

So in those 4 yr losses around 6-8m can be taken off plus whatever costs we have that can be attributed to infrastructure.

Even though we know the headline losses, we still don’t know how much of that loss is the exact amount for FFP purposes.

These are estimated FFP losses by Swiss Ramble:
17/18 - 6
18/19 - 20
19/20 - 13

Ie includes removing allowable losses already. In fact some of the headline figures are usually more generous as they include the large write-offs that the owners tend to do.

[Sabricadabra]

Swiss Ramble’s annual superb analysis published

Summary, we lose enough money to reduce most accountants to gibbering wrecks but not as much as some clubs.

His analysis really is excellent.

Takeaways for me:

1 According to Swiss Ramble only squeaked meeting FFP this, largely due to a hefty loss a few years ago. Looks like he's added a covid adjustment so I'm guessing thats how they're going to police it. Can't see them being too strict but we can only afford a 6m loss. Given our operating loss is 32m, we're going to struggle next season. I wonder whether that means we'll have to sell Worrall early to get him in the next accounts. Did we sell anyone else aside from Cash? Even with 14-16m from that we're still around 10m short.
2. Parachute payments are a disgrace and these accounts once again evidence it. Even with the excessive losses and a turnover to wages ratio of 143% we're still only 11th in wages spent! We're in a halfway house strategy of spending too much to ever get wages under control but not enough to actually realistically challenge. 
3 Brings me on to the strategy for the summer, I suspect we'll just sell Worrall, sign a load of frees/loans and try and win with the current squad. However this would be clearly wrong. In my opinion we have three options:

Option one we spend nothing and clear out as much wages as possible. Don't commit to any high contracts and also sell Worrall. Basically balance the books and then start again, hopefully in a few years when Parachute payments are gone we'll be nicely poised with a squad predominantly from the cat 1 academy. Obviously pretty big risk we go down and a pretty depressing few years ahead but I'm sure it would be popular with some. Can't see Marinakis doing this but probably the best option.

Option 2, the fun option, gung ho. f**k FFP, f**k Parachute payments. We accept we'll fail FFP and gamble on going up next year. We wouldn't be punished until the following season so we'd have one shot at it. Spend excessively, keep Worrall and go all in. Ideally on players with resale value for the firesale the following year when it fails so the punishments aren't too severe. Perhaps some creative accounting surrounding FFP and the pandemic that we could take advantage of.

Option 3, listed above, we sell Worrall (or perhaps get away with selling Carv, Grabban, Mighten or Johnson maybe and use FFP write-offs to cover the difference), buy low and cheap/loans. Basically current strategy and hope CH can perform some magic. I'm assuming this is what we'll do but none of these options are great are they.

Thanks for that. Really useful insights.

[Fumanchew]

It’s also worth noting the wage bill will reduce greatly this summer, I will give it a guess on the conservative basis.

Dawson - 10k
Hefele - 15k
Diallo - 5k
Ribeiro - 8k
Sow - 20k
Bachirou - 10k
Ameobi - 15k

Total - 4.3m

Loans
Christie - 20k
Garner - 10k
Knockaert - 40k
Freeman - 20k
Krovinivic - 15k

Total - 5.4m

TOTAL SAVING 9.7m

we will need 2 full backs, a striker, a number 8, and let’s assume we also get Krovi, Knockaert and Garner back on same wages.

If we average 15k a week on the 4 players added to the loans they would be around 6.5m

So I reckon we will knock off over 3m on the wage bill.

I guess we will also try and find a taker for Arter, but we may need to pay a % of his wages.

But I think the wage bill is coming down, which will also help.

Imagine Ameobi will get renewed though, maybe for less. You could probably add Grabban to the list above too, surely he'll go this summer. I think with pandemic losses we'll be stuck with losses on the likes of Arter and Jenkinson. Particularly Jenkinson would make a fraction elsewhere so unless we paid him off he's going nowhere. Makes sense to just keep him as the backup RB/LB really.

To have paid Diallo around 180k to not even warm our bench makes me rage

[stirred]

FFP to be scrapped?

[Strawberry Avenger]

It’s also worth noting the wage bill will reduce greatly this summer, I will give it a guess on the conservative basis.

Dawson - 10k
Hefele - 15k
Diallo - 5k
Ribeiro - 8k
Sow - 20k
Bachirou - 10k
Ameobi - 15k

Total - 4.3m

Loans
Christie - 20k
Garner - 10k
Knockaert - 40k
Freeman - 20k
Krovinivic - 15k

Total - 5.4m

TOTAL SAVING 9.7m

we will need 2 full backs, a striker, a number 8, and let’s assume we also get Krovi, Knockaert and Garner back on same wages.

If we average 15k a week on the 4 players added to the loans they would be around 6.5m

So I reckon we will knock off over 3m on the wage bill.

I guess we will also try and find a taker for Arter, but we may need to pay a % of his wages.

But I think the wage bill is coming down, which will also help.

Insightful post.

That could be 12 players out.  13 if we get a fee for Car'.  14 if we get a fee for Grabban. 15 if we offload Arter.

That would be a lot of wages saved to reforge the squad.  And it needs it under the guiding hand of somebody who really knows what they're doing to make us a real competitive Championship outfit.

Be nice to keep Krov, Knock' and Garner back on loan.  I suspect Hughton will try to retain the services of Murray.

SA.

[Tricky]

Of the three players making an impact on loan for us this season, I can only see Krovinovic being the only possibility of us seeing again next season so far.

If Fulham do get relegated, I can see them having to offload the like of Loftus-Cheek and Harrison Reed, who won't want to be playing in the championship next season. That would potentially give a squad place back to Knockaert.

Whilst I would love to see Garner back on loan, I suspect CH will want to bring in his own players and not have to rely on loan signings. He will want to build a team for not just next season, but for 2-3 seasons and not be in the position he found himself in when he first took over of having a squad of 20 or so individuals to knock into shape. He will want consistency and players forming good partnerships with those around them. Man Utd may well want Garner to go out on loan to a bigger platform. Lower Prem, Europe (Brexit laws permitting). 

I don't think Grabban will leave this summer if i'm being honest. I think CH will want him to stay and re-find his form and also wear the armband. I do think Taylor will be sold though, as I get the impression he is a bit of a disruption behind the scenes, always moaning about something, but I could be wrong there as I am only concluding on things previously said about him in articles. I feel Arter too may well be sold as another who is a bit disruptive (again reading between the lines of things said). 

Will he re-sign Murray on a short term deal again? I don't know. Murray may be offered a good deal somewhere else, which would see out his playing career. We may not get in a decent striking replacement for Taylor, in which case Murray will act as back-up to Grabban.

Cravalho will have to return for pre-season training, unless he is sold beforehand. If he isn't sold, he gets the chance to try and impress CH. Will he do so though? or is he just too lightweight and not what CH wants from his players? Who knows.

I get the feeling that many on this forum are hoping to retain the services of Garner, Knockaert and Krovinovic next year, possibly as loans again. We don't want to be relying on other clubs players to get us promoted. We need our own players. Players who will be able to step up to the PL, should we get promoted. Not ones who will return to their parent clubs, never to wear the Garibaldi again. Out of the three loans, I can see Krovinovic being the likeliest to sign for us. But will CH see something in Carvalho and decide Krovinovic isn't needed? We just don't know.

[ThePromisedLand]

Of the three players making an impact on loan for us this season, I can only see Krovinovic being the only possibility of us seeing again next season so far.

If Fulham do get relegated, I can see them having to offload the like of Loftus-Cheek and Harrison Reed, who won't want to be playing in the championship next season. That would potentially give a squad place back to Knockaert.

Whilst I would love to see Garner back on loan, I suspect CH will want to bring in his own players and not have to rely on loan signings. He will want to build a team for not just next season, but for 2-3 seasons and not be in the position he found himself in when he first took over of having a squad of 20 or so individuals to knock into shape. He will want consistency and players forming good partnerships with those around them. Man Utd may well want Garner to go out on loan to a bigger platform. Lower Prem, Europe (Brexit laws permitting). 

I don't think Grabban will leave this summer if i'm being honest. I think CH will want him to stay and re-find his form and also wear the armband. I do think Taylor will be sold though, as I get the impression he is a bit of a disruption behind the scenes, always moaning about something, but I could be wrong there as I am only concluding on things previously said about him in articles. I feel Arter too may well be sold as another who is a bit disruptive (again reading between the lines of things said). 

Will he re-sign Murray on a short term deal again? I don't know. Murray may be offered a good deal somewhere else, which would see out his playing career. We may not get in a decent striking replacement for Taylor, in which case Murray will act as back-up to Grabban.

Cravalho will have to return for pre-season training, unless he is sold beforehand. If he isn't sold, he gets the chance to try and impress CH. Will he do so though? or is he just too lightweight and not what CH wants from his players? Who knows.

I get the feeling that many on this forum are hoping to retain the services of Garner, Knockaert and Krovinovic next year, possibly as loans again. We don't want to be relying on other clubs players to get us promoted. We need our own players. Players who will be able to step up to the PL, should we get promoted. Not ones who will return to their parent clubs, never to wear the Garibaldi again. Out of the three loans, I can see Krovinovic being the likeliest to sign for us. But will CH see something in Carvalho and decide Krovinovic isn't needed? We just don't know.

Surely most successful Championship clubs have a sprinkling of quality loanees.
It’s just about the only way of making playing budgets stretch to a promotion chasing squad.

[Sabricadabra]

I doubt we’d be able to make a push for the top six without a few quality loan signings. For instance, a player like Garner would be beyond our reach as a permanent signing, but I’d snatch your hand off if we could get him on loan next season.

[Tricky]

Ok. I have taken both Sabricadabra's and TPL's points on board and went onto Transfermrkt to investigate.

I have looked at the top 7 of the league and below are the findings.......

Norwich have 4 loans
Watford did have 2 but we have them both now. Currently 0
Reading 3 loans
Swansea 5 loans
Brentford 1 loan
Bournemouth 1 loan

Forest 6 loans.

Do challenging sides NEED loan signings? Not necessarily. It depends on the strength of the squad in each position and how successful a manager has been in the transfer market. Loans should only be considered if a position has been weakened by injury or a player wasn't found in covering that position.

By all means, if a player of Garners quality were to be offered to us by a PL side, then it would be madness to turn him down. However, we are guilty of bringing in far too many players who are just not good enough and bring nothing to the table.

But the problem with loans players is that they are not our players and have to go back to their parent clubs if, there is a clause in the contract permitting that, the players value can increase, putting the possibility of a permanent signing less feasible or the end of the season arrives and that player is kept on by his parent club. Additionally, if we became reliant on a loan player because of his ability, then it is going to be a harder to find a replacement that isn't going to unbalance a potentially stable side.

The positives of loan signings are, we can see if a player is up to scratch before purchasing. They help fill a gap if one arises. They can be sent back to the parent club if they are not good enough.

I am not a fan of loan signings, unless there is an absolute need to bring one in. I would sooner see a squad full of our own players, including lads from the academy, making up our 25. Not do the work for another club and paying them for the privilege also.