Summer 2022 priorities (and realistic options)

[Guest]

34 minutes ago, MadsEmil said:

We seemingly barely have money to make signings in the first place, I dont get how you come to the conclusion that us paying off about 9 players is a good idea.

We've got money to make signings, what we haven't got is room in the squad or the wage bill. Paying players off is obviously something of a nuclear option but the logic is not hard to follow.

[JimJams]

Paying off their contracts doesn't free up their wages. So... 

[An Sionnach]

I suppose the greatest indignity is having to approach other clubs to ask if they will take our players on loan. Its no wonder then that they are reluctant to cover the player's pay. The dilemma is ,when not in Europe we need a leaner squad but if we qualify we need more players. We really should look at using our young players instead of buying players that in a season's time we don't need.

[Guest]

13 minutes ago, JimJams said:

Paying off their contracts doesn't free up their wages. So... 

Could you elaborate?

[Dahnsouff]

8 minutes ago, Guest said:

Could you elaborate?

Presume he just means that by paying them off, you are effectively paying their wages for their contract duration anyway, unless you reach a settlement of course

[JimJams]

Yeah. A settlement is a different kettle of seabass.

[Guest]

6 minutes ago, Dahnsouff said:

Presume he just means that by paying them off, you are effectively paying their wages for their contract duration anyway, unless you reach a settlement of course

Well yeah, you pay them a big lump sum, equivalent to or likely greater than the value of their contract, to **** off, which...frees up their wages from the wage bill. I don't see how it doesn't.

[Dahnsouff]

Just now, Guest said:

Well yeah, you pay them a big lump sum, equivalent to or likely greater than the value of their contract, to **** off, which...frees up their wages from the wage bill. I don't see how it doesn't.

Suppose it would free up the player, say Perez for example, to go get his dream move to a Spanish club as we would indirectly be subsidings it via lump sum, therefore he could take a much reduced salary at FC Andorra

 

But we are effectively reducing squad size (good), letting 'assets' go for free (bad), but not leaving ourselves with anymore wage budget, as we spent their salary on their settlement to GThemFO

 

[sacreblueits442]

26 minutes ago, An Sionnach said:

I suppose the greatest indignity is having to approach other clubs to ask if they will take our players on loan. Its no wonder then that they are reluctant to cover the player's pay. The dilemma is ,when not in Europe we need a leaner squad but if we qualify we need more players. We really should look at using our young players instead of buying players that in a season's time we don't need.

....even in a season where European games are a factor, we would still be in the same boat!!!

It is not about getting numbers in, but it is about improving the first eleven. Getting players out on loan and paying at best 50% of their wages only to bring another player in and having to pay him as well, will only exacerbate the situation. We need to get our existing contracted players out the door permanently or with their wages paid in full on loan.

There are 10 players out of contract at the end of this upcoming season, Hamza, Perez, Amartey, Mendy, and Bertrand are top of everyone's list of players to go.

   Soyuncu, Tielemans, Vardy, Evans, and Kasper, will require a deep conversation. If we decided to pay up all their contracts we will be in one swoop adding a year's wages to our existing bill, and even if the body count has been reduced, we will need to add the new players' wages to this year's figures.

[ARM1968]

Ahh we’re screwed. Face facts. Wages out of hand. Squad full of fringe dross. Can only see one outcome. We’re gonna win the facking league innit. 

[Phenom]

Most of them are out next summer, though and could still provide some depth this year - even if they’re overpaid squad players. The only one it makes sense to do that with is Bertrand. I think we could get something for Vestergaard, even if it’s at a steep discount .

[Spiritwalker]

47 minutes ago, Guest said:

Well yeah, you pay them a big lump sum, equivalent to or likely greater than the value of their contract, to **** off, which...frees up their wages from the wage bill. I don't see how it doesn't.

Because it still counts as their wages as far as FFP is concerned. 
If the player insists on 100% of his contractual pay you don’t save anything.

[Finnegan]

56 minutes ago, Guest said:

Well yeah, you pay them a big lump sum, equivalent to or likely greater than the value of their contract, to **** off, which...frees up their wages from the wage bill. I don't see how it doesn't.

 

Not greater than. Why on earth would we spend even more money? It would be less than. You get them to surrender a portion of their promised contract in exchange for having it as a larger lump sum now, appealing to short-termist greed really. Or, I suppose, they get the opportunity to offset the loss by signing a new contract with a different club even if at a reduced rate. 

 

Either way, you don't pay someone MORE to leave, what would be the benefit for us?

 

The only way you'd ever do that would be if you specifically wanted that cost to be attributed to THIS period and to then clear up the balance sheet for the next one. Say, we gave up on this year for FFP's sakes but want to start lower next year. 

 

But that isn't really our problem. Our problem is just we're committed to paying too much to too many who aren't giving enough back on the pitch. To that end it doesn't make a difference if they're paid off in a lump sum or the payments are spread out throughout the year, it's all coming from the same "bank account" ultimately. 

 

You act like one off fees and wages are in isolation from each other and are two separate budgets but that's not really how money works in the real world. 

 

Edited 26 July 2022 by Finnegan

[An Sionnach]

27 minutes ago, sacreblueits442 said:

but it is about improving the first eleven

There is the root of the problem, we think we are improving the main squad but we are not. A players ability, temperament fitness is at best a gamble. The only players we can be pretty sure of are the players we already have. Rodgers continues to rely on players who precede him coming to the club. We sign too many players in hope rather than certainty and then we get stuck with them. How many times have I read " take a punt" on here. Our younger players are much better known to us than almost anybody in the transfer market unless you pay big money for a player with a bombproof CV.

[Guest]

6 minutes ago, Finnegan said:

 

Not greater than. Why on earth would we spend even more money? It would be less than. You get them to surrender a portion of their promised contract in exchange for having it as a larger lump sum now, appealing to short-termist greed really. Or, I suppose, they get the opportunity to offset the loss by signing a new contract with a different club even if at a reduced rate. 

 

Either way, you don't pay someone MORE to leave, what would be the benefit for us?

 

The only way you'd ever do that would be if you specifically wanted that cost to be attributed to THIS period and to then clear up the balance sheet for the next one. Say, we gave up on this year for FFP's sakes but want to start lower next year. 

 

But that isn't really our problem. Our problem is just we're committed to paying too much to too many who aren't giving enough back on the pitch. To that end it doesn't make a difference if they're paid off in a lump sum or the payments are spread out throughout the year, it's all coming from the same "bank account" ultimately. 

 

You act like one off fees and wages are in isolation from each other and are two separate budgets but that's not really how money works in the real world. 

 

Fair enough - I genuinely don't know the intricacies of how payoffs and the like work, hence why I asked for elaboration on how it wouldn't be of particular benefit to our wage budget. Always happy to be educated.

[Phenom]

11 minutes ago, Guest said:

Fair enough - I genuinely don't know the intricacies of how payoffs and the like work, hence why I asked for elaboration on how it wouldn't be of particular benefit to our wage budget. Always happy to be educated.

It doesn't make a lot of sense for us because our deawood's contracts are running out and they're valuable squad players. Bertrand being an exception to that.

[Finnegan]

1 minute ago, Guest said:

Fair enough - I genuinely don't know the intricacies of how payoffs and the like work, hence why I asked for elaboration on how it wouldn't be of particular benefit to our wage budget. Always happy to be educated.

 

Yeah I don't intend to come across as patronising and I'm certainly not an accountant, I'm abysmal with my own money! 

 

But I definitely think a lot of our fans on here get trapped in the mindset that the wage bill is somehow magically different from some big mystical treasure chest of "transfer money" that "managers" get to go off buying players with every year. It comes from the over simplification of budgets on computer games like FM and FIFA I imagine, that and how the fabled "war chest" is always portrayed in the tabloids or on sky sports news. 

 

Ultimately its far more straightforward and far more complex all in one. Some bright spark in our accountancy team is going to forecast our revenue for the year and give some projections to the board estimating how much we can afford to allocate to a "playing budget" for the season (I assume they do it by season as opposed to by calendar or financial years.)

 

Then the board, owners, CEO and the director of football are going to have to balance what we can literally afford without accruing intolerable losses as a business alongside what we're allowed to spend as per FFP (we'll have to declare specific incomes that do count towards our FFP allowance and declare them to the league in some sort of statutory return I imagine that'll tell them and us what we're allowed to spend on players without getting fines.) 

 

Once they've got that figure for the year, it's got to cover all of our playing costs and it'll all come out of that same budget one way or another. Wages, agents fees, bonuses for signing and performance, transfer fees paid now, transfer fees still being paid in installments from historic transfers, etc. 

 

I mean that's one thing that always gets forgotten. We don't actually know what we still owe for players we've already signed or what's owed to us. I mean, did United REALLY transfer us 70-80m in one go for Maguire or are they paying us incrementally? Likewise with us to St Etienne, for example, for Fofana? The whole thing becomes one big juggling act and all of these different figures are all coming in and out of this "pot" essentially that we have allocated for playing expenses. 

 

This is why loans with "obligations" to buy have been increasingly common across Europe over the last few years ago because that's a way of legitimately kicking the cost of a signing down the road for a year or two more and making it a problem for the budget in years to come. But we can't even afford to do that at the moment because we'd still have to pay the wages of players that come in on loan contracts in all likelihood, unless we were offering to pay some ungodly fee down the line to make it worth a club's while. 

[Guest]

5 minutes ago, Finnegan said:

 

Yeah I don't intend to come across as patronising and I'm certainly not an accountant, I'm abysmal with my own money! 

 

But I definitely think a lot of our fans on here get trapped in the mindset that the wage bill is somehow magically different from some big mystical treasure chest of "transfer money" that "managers" get to go off buying players with every year. It comes from the over simplification of budgets on computer games like FM and FIFA I imagine, that and how the fabled "war chest" is always portrayed in the tabloids or on sky sports news. 

 

Ultimately its far more straightforward and far more complex all in one. Some bright spark in our accountancy team is going to forecast our revenue for the year and give some projections to the board estimating how much we can afford to allocate to a "playing budget" for the season (I assume they do it by season as opposed to by calendar or financial years.)

 

Then the board, owners, CEO and the director of football are going to have to balance what we can literally afford without accruing intolerable losses as a business alongside what we're allowed to spend as per FFP (we'll have to declare specific incomes that do count towards our FFP allowance and declare them to the league in some sort of statutory return I imagine that'll tell them and us what we're allowed to spend on players without getting fines.) 

 

Once they've got that figure for the year, it's got to cover all of our playing costs and it'll all come out of that same budget one way or another. Wages, agents fees, bonuses for signing and performance, transfer fees paid now, transfer fees still being paid in installments from historic transfers, etc. 

 

I mean that's one thing that always gets forgotten. We don't actually know what we still owe for players we've already signed or what's owed to us. I mean, did United REALLY transfer us 70-80m in one go for Maguire or are they paying us incrementally? Likewise with us to St Etienne, for example, for Fofana? The whole thing becomes one big juggling act and all of these different figures are all coming in and out of this "pot" essentially that we have allocated for playing expenses. 

 

This is why loans with "obligations" to buy have been increasingly common across Europe over the last few years ago because that's a way of legitimately kicking the cost of a signing down the road for a year or two more and making it a problem for the budget in years to come. But we can't even afford to do that at the moment because we'd still have to pay the wages of players that come in on loan contracts in all likelihood, unless we were offering to pay some ungodly fee down the line to make it worth a club's while. 

No need to worry about being patronising - I'm certainly not going to be throwing too many stones from within this nice shiny glass house of mine.

 

Thank you for the explanation. I think I had taken the line from John Percy's recent article about our wage/turnover ratio being too high and then drawn a straight line from that to "well if we just paid them a big sum to piss off, then although it obviously costs us a fair whack it brings that ratio down", whereas in reality I suspect there aren't really any nice simple straight lines in football finances.

[Finnegan]

31 minutes ago, Guest said:

I think I had taken the line from John Percy's recent article about our wage/turnover ratio being too high and then drawn a straight line from that to "well if we just paid them a big sum to piss off, then although it obviously costs us a fair whack it brings that ratio down", whereas in reality I suspect there aren't really any nice simple straight lines in football finances.

 

No, so. Look at it this way:

 

The accountants do their maths and they work out that the club is going to earn X this season in income that is accepted by the leagues' governing body as income that we can offset against spend for FFP (merchandising, ticket sales, prize money, television revenue, certain types of well monitored sponsorship deals, etc.) They then do some number crunching and Top & his heavy hitters at the big table come up with a figure we'll call Y that Jon Rudkin (much more important in this context than Brendan Rodgers) can have to spend this season on playing staff.

 

Now the first thing they're going to do with Y is deduct from it everything we're already committed to spend. So we go back to the accountants and they add up everything that league thinks counts towards FFP and that we've already got committed. That's going to be basic wages for the players, any projected performance bonuses (for appearances, goals, clean sheets, trophy wins, finishing league position, you name it) the players may be due, any transfer fees that we still owe to clubs that we have to pay off this season, everything. You sum up all of that money you've essentially already spent and we'll call that Z. So you see the problem with just paying off contracts is that that money is going to be part of Z whether we spend it all now or we spend it over the course of the season but if you're talking about players that have maybe two, three, four years left then you ACTUALLY end up having to pay MORE towards Z for each of those players if you pay off their whole contract NOW which is even worse than just waiting and having to pay, say, 1/3 or 1/4 of that (depending on how many years they have left) from Z now.

 

When you subtract Z from Y, the number you have left with - we'll call that N, that's what you can essentially spend on new players. But that's not just their transfer fee as a lump sum, that's their wages for the rest of the year, their performance bonuses, their signing bonus, probably the big old bung for their agent and all of that other stuff as well, everything that we'll have to commit to spending to bring in that player for this year.

 

Our problem is that our Z is absolutely massive. It's gotten so out of control because we have so many senior players on such bloated wages and long contracts that it's grown larger than what the club want Y to be. So we need to reduce our commitment by getting rid of players or nobody is coming in because every time you bring in a player you promise to pay them for three or four years and you tie up more of your budget for even more seasons to come.

 

Edit: just as an extra caveat, FFP works in rolling windows of - I think - 3 years, so as well as having to do this for each season to work out what we can realistically spend in transfer windows, it also has to be done constantly keeping one eye on FFP. So you can spend high in one season, for example, knowing that you'll have to reign it in in subsequent years in order to be compliant. A lot of people, myself included, speculated that if we hadn't had to buy Vestergaard becaues of Fofana's injury that we'd have signed a winger, maybe Madueke, last summer instead of loaning Lookman. But this is actually just optimistic guess work and a chance to moan about Jannik some more, haha. It's actually possible we'd done spending because of FFP last year and the 15m transfer fee + whatever agent fee + whatever signing on bonus + whatever we'll pay Vestergaard in last year and this year's wages is actually money we had to pile on extra. Maybe we have to spend less this year to compensate for compliance as well as just for basic affordability? Food for thought.

 

Edited 26 July 2022 by Finnegan

[mozartfox]

3 hours ago, MadsEmil said:

We seemingly barely have money to make signings in the first place, I dont get how you come to the conclusion that us paying off about 9 players is a good idea.

Did I actually say 9 players in my post???? 1 or 2 would be a start, ahead of a very difficult period next summer.

[sacreblueits442]

Posted in error.

Edited 26 July 2022 by sacreblueits442
Update

[An Sionnach]

1 minute ago, sacreblueits442 said:

....I am not understanding this part!!!

 

You place your trust in the familiar , its a general human instinct. Taking too many unnecessary risks leaves you bankrupt and in the Championship - at best.

[Molson Canadian]

WE NEED TO GET THIS LAD IN

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joris_Chotard

[HankMarvin]

 

available on a free?

[Dahnsouff]

30 minutes ago, Molson Canadian said:

WE NEED TO GET THIS LAD IN

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joris_Chotard

I truly admire you persistence.