B******t from the boardroom?

[Sarge]

pre-season at the AGM both the slippery chairman and his director henchmen claimed they were increasing ST prices and matchday ticket prices , quote " to increase the budget for players'

I think slippery and his advisors have been well and truly found out , if there was any doubt, that they are very similar to the the toilets at the breeze block

full of s**t

 

[Victor1986]

Well let's just wait & see how much gets spent in the transfer window - & that will hinge on players wanting to come & play for Pete Clot.

 

[Maurice Earp]

Added to the money that was incoming for player(s) that were sold?

 

[MarkG]

who pissed on your mincepies?

 

[MarkG]

so anyway, do you know what last year's budget was? (with a squad of newly promoted players from L2?) versus this year's squad budget?

and the money for players sold probably helped cover the huge losses incurred under the first two years under Eales.

Except of course Eales is only allowed to put money into the club when 'investing' in players, and never take it back out again when there is a profit on the sale.

 

[Robie]

If the manager wants to budget 900,000 Euros on an agreed price for Gino I'm not sure you can accuse DE of being tightfisted.

 

[Yellows1]

so anyway, do you know what last year's budget was? (with a squad of newly promoted players from L2?) versus this year's squad budget?

and the money for players sold probably helped cover the huge losses incurred under the first two years under Eales.

Except of course Eales is only allowed to put money into the club when 'investing' in players, and never take it back out again when there is a profit on the sale.

Hello Mr Eales, have you sold the club yet as we’ve taking 8 steps back in case you hadn’t noticed ???

 

[Manorlounger]

If the manager wants to budget 900,000 Euros on an agreed price for Gino I'm not sure you can accuse DE of being tightfisted.

Does anybody actually think we would pay that amount? He is here on loan. End of loan he goes back.

 

[sonofivan]

Does anybody actually think we would pay that amount? He is here on loan. End of loan he goes back.

My thoughts exactly. And so far it is not looking like *ahem* a brilliant deal.

 

[Gary Baldi]

The manager did say that he didn't think there was value for money in the transfer market in the last window, hence the lack of transfer fees that the club paid. Funds were made available by the Chairman and he publically stated so.

Other than spending money for the sake of it (and get moaned about for increasing the debt), I'm not sure what more the club could do.

 

[Craig]

Does anybody actually think we would pay that amount? He is here on loan. End of loan he goes back.

It always seemed unlikely, I admit. But if we had just unearthed a gem, I’m sure Darryl would have paid that amount if he thought he could double his money. I would, wouldn’t you? Especially as we don’t have a tremendous amount in terms of sellable assets at the moment.

 

[Millman]

The manager did say that he didn't think there was value for money in the transfer market in the last window, hence the lack of transfer fees that the club paid. Funds were made available by the Chairman and he publically stated so.

Other than spending money for the sake of it (and get moaned about for increasing the debt), I'm not sure what more the club could do.

There is always some value to be had even if that value is that it provides us with a good player that enhances the team for now but with no likelihood of making anything for them in the future (a good cup run or the play offs would have bought money in another way). I really do not buy into this we have a good budget we have money to spend but there was no one out there we could afford that was worth it. If that is truly the case we weren't looking hard enough and we need a better manager or scouting set up to do so.

It is a different matter if you say that we couldn't persuade anyone decent to join us as that would indicate that there is something pretty wrong behind the scenes we do not know about (something I am beginning to think may be true ever since MApp and our head scout left in the summer).

What could the club have done differently? Well not sold all of the silver when you are unable to replace it. Or how about sticking with the policy that has worked so well for the past few seasons (No, I call BS on the statement that is was now impossible to find that sort of player any more). Lastly we could have looked for established players from League 1 that were available, and good players from lower leagues. Instead we decided to buy in some untried players from all over, and some old players looking for a final pay day. This is without addressing the glaring lack of pace, cover in certain areas which had the most injury prone players (could have predicated Ribero and Hall), and lack of tactical options.

Looking at the players we did bring in few if any any seem worth even their wages so even without spending money we have managed to waste it.

 

[Robie]

Think ur right, it is quite possible that the market was to expensive to buy the type of players like roofe or lego that we were. But I still think it just raises the stakes if u do ur reasearch properly. U pay a bit more, but get to sell for a bit more if they do well as we’re now at a higher level. Then as u said there were players at this level who commanded no transfer fee. Not to mention several very decent ones we already had like maguire, dunkley, Edwards, McAleny. Ok we might have had to offer a little more than we were offering but again we’re in a higher league.

You're right. With players like Maguire and Edwards we could be where Bury are or even McAleny at Fleetwood. Dunkley's wages were doubled to go to Wigan. Maybe keeping Appleton would have kept these players but we didn't have a chance to keep him, or did we, who knows.

Rather than keep reminiscing about how things were we need to look forward at improving our squad in the January transfer window and in my opinion it is unfair to criticise the chairman for a lack of spending.

 

[Arthur]

I haven’t criticised him for lack of spending, I agreed there were ways around the spending on transfer fees. I think we will spend in this window, but who spends it, and from who’s pocket is a different matter.

Is that you Dave?

 

[Deleted member 462]

Is that you Dave?

Not the best pseudonym I know.

 

[ZeroTheHero]

Rather than keep reminiscing about how things were we need to look forward at improving our squad in the January transfer window and in my opinion it is unfair to criticise the chairman for a lack of spending.

I don't see it as 'reminiscing'. I see it as 'comparing' - if (as a club) we want to be progressing then we have to replace players with better players. If we are happy to be in mid League 1 for a while (and I don't mind that) then we have to replace like for like, quality-wise - or at least with players who are capable of improving up to and hopefully beyond that level. Trying to massively change the squad in January is a fool's game. If you think decent players are expensive in the summer, you watch the January prices that are achieved for anyone worth having (to the extent that they can make a marked difference to your season).

Of course, at the moment we ARE mid-table! The problem is that given our recent performances (not just the Wigan debacle), I can see a very difficult next few months. Hopefully (and probably) we will avoid trouble at the nether end of the table. And then we come to the summer. Because we have brought in older players on short contracts, there will be a massive turnover of players again. The loanees?Payne will go back to Huddersfield to be loaned out elsewhere, Mowett won't be here next year either. Williamson, Ricardinho, Mousinho, Tiendalli, Henry will be another year older and (even) slower. You wouldn't bet on Aaron Martin being retained. If we pay 800,000 for GVK then the world has gone mad. Would you bet on Xemi improving enough to be a regular first team player? And that's despite any of the younger, fitter players (Rothwell, Ledson, Ruffels) we sell to try to balance the books. Eales won't get away with another large ST increase - we won't fall for it twice.

So, the problems with the Chairman spending his money the way he has (on wages rather than transfer fees presumably) - and it is of course up to him - are that not only do we have a squad that is IMO weaker than last year, also we have many fewer assets worth anything than we did at this time last year. Which, whatever happens for the rest of this season, has guaranteed that we will have a turbulent and - if we want to compete - more expensive summer.

 

[Gary Baldi]

There is always some value to be had even if that value is that it provides us with a good player that enhances the team for now but with no likelihood of making anything for them in the future (a good cup run or the play offs would have bought money in another way). I really do not buy into this we have a good budget we have money to spend but there was no one out there we could afford that was worth it. If that is truly the case we weren't looking hard enough and we need a better manager or scouting set up to do so.

It is a different matter if you say that we couldn't persuade anyone decent to join us as that would indicate that there is something pretty wrong behind the scenes we do not know about (something I am beginning to think may be true ever since MApp and our head scout left in the summer).

What could the club have done differently? Well not sold all of the silver when you are unable to replace it. Or how about sticking with the policy that has worked so well for the past few seasons (No, I call BS on the statement that is was now impossible to find that sort of player any more). Lastly we could have looked for established players from League 1 that were available, and good players from lower leagues. Instead we decided to buy in some untried players from all over, and some old players looking for a final pay day. This is without addressing the glaring lack of pace, cover in certain areas which had the most injury prone players (could have predicated Ribero and Hall), and lack of tactical options.

Looking at the players we did bring in few if any any seem worth even their wages so even without spending money we have managed to waste it.

The first paragraph is caveat central. The manager could have spent the money and I wouldn't surprised in that alternate reality if he did that, that fans were complaining that player x or player y was no better than what we have and they'd wish he'd waited to spend on better players.

Let's face it. Lundstram wanted to leave. Johnson wanted to leave. We could have said no, but what would that have done to team spirit? Pretty much shat all over it. It was bad enough with Johnson's transfer okey cokey. That for 4 months... Unbearable for all. At our level, you can't keep 2 players in the squad that want out, and the players know that. Saints could afford to leave Van Dijk training with the U23s and on the bench. And they got 25 million more from doing that. Not enough credit goes to the club for extracting what they did for a player like Johnson that everyone in football knew was off.

It's worth keeping in mind we had a transfer plan in place and then MAPP decided to b****r off at probably the worst time of the year. Targets move on at the prime buying time while we are looking for a new manager and the new manager wants different things in the squad. Too many fans don't appreciate how MAPP screwed over that transfer window for OUFC. It's Pep's fault, DEs fault, etc, etc.

One can argue that a player like Tiendalli is a short term band aid signing that does not commit us to anything past the end of the year, meaning we aren't locked in on an ok player like Aaron Martin for multiple years.

The coming transfer window is where Clotet really needs to target the right sort of player, as when we signed MacDonald in League 2. He has to get this right, and I am sure Clotet is aware of that.

 

[Borntobeyellow]

New angle on this. was told last night. Pep didn't want some of the players thy came in. Notably Payne, Henry and Mowatt. They were Eales / Faz signings. Make of that what you will.

 

[Deleted member 222]

If he didn’t want Payne then why build the way you play around him?
If he didn’t want Henry then why play Hall on his weaker side to fit him in?

 

[uptheus]

When I asked Pep privately after the fans forum about there being funds available to bring players in, he responded by saying "if there are funds available I haven't seen them or put it this way I'd like to see them"