Economics

[Stranded]

Lets not shy away from the fact that ending up in Div One would be a disaster. At present I put it at 50/50; there just does not seem to be an initiative amongst the current squad to battle it out.We all know who the four teams are battling to avoid the last relegation slot. Our team sheet is the strongest of this four; but we are trying to play ourselves out of trouble , while the other three with weaker team sheets are relying little more than blood , sweat and effort.

See so many people saying this but we don't have the players to go for a "blood, sweat and effort" approach, we have technical players (though we can argue about their quality) who have been brought in to play a passing game. If we suddenly go 4-4-2 get stuck in lads, we're down.

This team has of late shown it's battling qualities - the 2 games we've won of the last 4 were as a result of battling back after conceding a late equaliser. This team has two major faults at the moment, lack of confidence to get back from conceding first and not being able to get a 2nd to kill off a game when on top meaning we are alway likely to start dropping back as the game goes on, be open to a mistake and an equaliser. At the least the latter is not alway proving fatal now (remember we really should have still won against Rotherham with the chances we had after they scored).

[KC Royal]

I think Bod has to go whatever sadly. Like him but he’s constantly broken, and we have Novakovich back next year who must be as good an option

I've also never really been convinced that Gomes particularly rates Bod.

[Hound]

Lets not shy away from the fact that ending up in Div One would be a disaster. At present I put it at 50/50; there just does not seem to be an initiative amongst the current squad to battle it out.We all know who the four teams are battling to avoid the last relegation slot. Our team sheet is the strongest of this four; but we are trying to play ourselves out of trouble , while the other three with weaker team sheets are relying little more than blood , sweat and effort.

See so many people saying this but we don't have the players to go for a "blood, sweat and effort" approach, we have technical players (though we can argue about their quality) who have been brought in to play a passing game. If we suddenly go 4-4-2 get stuck in lads, we're down.

This team has of late shown it's battling qualities - the 2 games we've won of the last 4 were as a result of battling back after conceding a late equaliser. This team has two major faults at the moment, lack of confidence to get back from conceding first and not being able to get a 2nd to kill off a game when on top meaning we are alway likely to start dropping back as the game goes on, be open to a mistake and an equaliser. At the least the latter is not alway proving fatal now (remember we really should have still won against Rotherham with the chances we had after they scored).

spot on Stranded. The accusations of lack of fight (admittedly was very much the case at times last year) annoy me as I think we show plenty of fight, just slightly more subtly than the likes of Millwalls hoof and hope.

[Forbury Lion]

Release two or three of the higher earners. These players may have a clause whereby they don’t drop wages if we go down or can go for a reduced fee.
Bring in a number of loan signings which may keep us up but either way, these players return to their clubs in the summer and the club aren’t burdened with their wages.
Makes sense on a spreadsheet but crap for the supporters

Please explain why it is crap?

He's made the mistake of assuming the high earners are also the high performers.
This isn't always the case in football or indeed in life.

In this instance, it works well on a spreadsheet and also for the team because the loan signings are of a better quality than the players we already have, even if you only take Oliveira and Martinez into account (which does the others an injustice).

It's all about the manager/scouting - If they are capable of signing better players it will work, regardless of whether that player is on loan or permanent. If he had signed a bunch of players of the same level or lower than those we were offloading then it would have been a costly mistake.

[Notts Royal]

If we drop I reckon Novakovich would see League 1 as below his level...which would be bizarre seeing as we’ve never given him a chance!

[Notts Royal]

If we drop I reckon Novakovich would see League 1 as below his level...which would be bizarre seeing as we’ve never given him a chance!

[Hound]

If we drop I reckon Novakovich would see League 1 as below his level...which would be bizarre seeing as we’ve never given him a chance!

yep, suspect we'd sell him to a dutch club for 1.5-2m if that happened

[Maneki Neko]

Lets not shy away from the fact that ending up in Div One would be a disaster. At present I put it at 50/50; there just does not seem to be an initiative amongst the current squad to battle it out.We all know who the four teams are battling to avoid the last relegation slot. Our team sheet is the strongest of this four; but we are trying to play ourselves out of trouble , while the other three with weaker team sheets are relying little more than blood , sweat and effort.
If we do go down (and I really hope we don't )- the six or seven players on a basic of £1 mill a year plus, salaries have to go(one way or another ).
So what will next years 1st team look like ?

Walker
Yiadom (?) Blackett McIntire Richards
Rino Kelly Swift (?)
Harriot Meite Loader(McNulty)

Yiadom & Swift, maybe too expensive; but McNulty might be red hot at Div One level. Plus a number of cheaper options will be brought in.
Captain ? Perhaps Rino.

We may as well keep Gomez on rather than keep chopping and changing Manager.

looks like gomez was brought in in the knowledge that relegation could happen, so the club and manager would be ok with carrying on.
the clear out and loan strategy defo looks to me like it is set up specifically for the contingency of relegation, which would result in going for a much more academy based team next season.

[Old Man Andrews]

If we drop I reckon Novakovich would see League 1 as below his level...which would be bizarre seeing as we’ve never given him a chance!

yep, suspect we'd sell him to a dutch club for 1.5-2m if that happened

I think we will stay up comfortably in the end so hoping this won't be an issue. I would very much like him to start the 2019/20 season as first choice striker.

[Hound]

If we stayed up, would be happy enough going into next season with Oliveira, Meite, Novakovich, Loader and Baldock.

Went down - Meite, Loader, McNulty and prob find someone who is proven at that level. Though not sure we'd be able to shift Baldock

[Vision]

We’ll have to disagree !
They clearly aren’t involved on a pure business basis. You don’t make billions by thinking a second tier football club is a money making exercise. The fact that they took the club on without the potential money making REP project indicates that at the very least this is a long term project. Dai isn’t newto football, he kind of understands the economics.

that didn't seem to stop him allowing Gourlay to run the club like some sort of clown academy and losing him a fortune

Or spotting what was happening and putting an end to it !
Bear in mind Strap is convinced this is all a tax dodge so maybe they needed a year of losses to,offset something else !

Point is though , the strategy started before Gourlay was appointed.

Dai financed the signing of Illori and the loan signings of Mutch, Grabban and Reece Oxford in January '17 to give us a final push to the play-offs which we made, finishing 3rd, then a hair's breadth away from the Premier League Money Making Machine.

So clearly rather than following the club's supposed remit (as stated when Stam took over) of following the Ajax style youth development we got carried away by being so tantalisingly close and decided to try to buy our way to the next level that summer. The fact that we generally bought appallingly didn't help. The appointment of a supposed Billy Big Bollocks in Gourlay indicated their mndset.

To play Devil's advocate slightly you could see why they went in that direction but they just got the personnel they got in terribly wrong.

Aluko typified this. Stam wanted Oliveira but we baulked at Norwich's asking price. Then he wanted Hemed and the same thing happened. In the end he settled for Aluko (also by this time the fans were demanding some form of signing as a statement of intent after the aforementioned deals fell through) who wasn't in any way what we needed to fill the huge gap that Kermogant's injury left from the season before. I feel it was an ego signing by the club (you can blame one of Stam, BT, Gourlay or all 3) who couldn't be seen to have failed to secure another "major deal"

On the face of we'd lost the spine of our side from the previous season Al-Habsi, Williams, Kermogant and the odds weren't looking good on keeping Moore either at the time so the arrivals of the likes of Mannone, Bacuna, Barrow etc make some sense. Unfortunately we decided to embark on this at just the time when Championship fees and wages went through the roof. As we all know the fees paid and the wages coughed up didn't give us anywhere approaching value for our our money even considering Barrow's decent season and the fact we subsequently appeared to have made a profit on Bacuna.

This summer we had a new manager and clearly the club wanted to back him up. He wanted experience/leadership as he felt, with some justification, that we lacked that in the squad. But again the personnel simply weren't up to the task.

I just think we're very keen to point the finger of blame , be that Stam or Gourlay in the main but it's rarely the sole fault of one individual. The club, like many before it and many to come, were seduced by the Premier League circus.

Hopefully we've learned our lesson from this and are beginning to move forward with integrating youth and actually trying to build something a little more sustainable if not quite the "brick by brick" of what now seems like a bygone age.

[Hound]

Wasn't a big part of a CEO's job to ensure the club don't get seduced by the PL and massively overspend to try to reach it? Fan pressure should be irrelevant

I can forgive a manager wanting the club to over reach to get him the best players (though Stam's subsequent whingeing I'm less happy about), but I'm afraid Gourlay comes out of this very poorly

[Denver Royal]

So clearly rather than following the club's supposed remit (as stated when Stam took over) of following the Ajax style youth development we got carried away by being so tantalisingly close and decided to try to buy our way to the next level that summer. The fact that we generally bought appallingly didn't help. The appointment of a supposed Billy Big Bollocks in Gourlay indicated their mndset.

To play Devil's advocate slightly you could see why they went in that direction but they just got the personnel they got in terribly wrong.

Aluko typified this. Stam wanted Oliveira but we baulked at Norwich's asking price. Then he wanted Hemed and the same thing happened. In the end he settled for Aluko (also by this time the fans were demanding some form of signing as a statement of intent after the aforementioned deals fell through) who wasn't in any way what we needed to fill the huge gap that Kermogant's injury left from the season before. I feel it was an ego signing by the club (you can blame one of Stam, BT, Gourlay or all 3) who couldn't be seen to have failed to secure another "major deal"

This summer we had a new manager and clearly the club wanted to back him up. He wanted experience/leadership as he felt, with some justification, that we lacked that in the squad. But again the personnel simply weren't up to the task.

I just think we're very keen to point the finger of blame , be that Stam or Gourlay in the main but it's rarely the sole fault of one individual. The club, like many before it and many to come, were seduced by the Premier League circus.

Yes, always refreshing to read such insight from a classy poster who doesn't post 50 times a day. Would much rather read and learn from this, than 'He was clueless, and spunked 'X' amount on crap!', stuff, etc.
It was the highest finish in some time, before or since, and absolutely agree the club had it's head turned in that moment, and easy to sit here and say it shouldn't have been. And yes, we've been on the Oliveira trail for some time, and too bad we didn't get it across the line sooner. Anyway.

[muirinho]

Wasn't a big part of a CEO's job to ensure the club don't get seduced by the PL and massively overspend to try to reach it? Fan pressure should be irrelevant

I can forgive a manager wanting the club to over reach to get him the best players (though Stam's subsequent whingeing I'm less happy about), but I'm afraid Gourlay comes out of this very poorly

Looking at what we're currently getting with Stam's actual choice (Oliviera), compared with the performances we got from what Stam ended up (Aluko), I can understand a fair bit of whinging from him to be honest.

Let's face it, Stam was seriously inexperienced at this kind of stuff, we also had a very inexperienced DoF, so you can see why the owners wanted to bring in an experienced CEO for balance. Unfortunately, as far as I am concerned, he was by far the worst of the three.

[Hound]

Looking at what we're currently getting with Stam's actual choice (Oliviera), compared with the performances we got from what Stam ended up (Aluko), I can understand a fair bit of whinging from him to be honest.

Let's face it, Stam was seriously inexperienced at this kind of stuff, we also had a very inexperienced DoF, so you can see why the owners wanted to bring in an experienced CEO for balance. Unfortunately, as far as I am concerned, he was by far the worst of the three.

I think it’s a bit of guessing as to who Stam wanted though. You might be right, but he presumably was also more than happy to blow the budget on Aluko when Oliveira didn’t happen

But yep, Gourlay undoubtedly the villain of the piece

[Snowflake Royal]

that didn't seem to stop him allowing Gourlay to run the club like some sort of clown academy and losing him a fortune

Or spotting what was happening and putting an end to it !
Bear in mind Strap is convinced this is all a tax dodge so maybe they needed a year of losses to,offset something else !

Point is though , the strategy started before Gourlay was appointed.

Dai financed the signing of Illori and the loan signings of Mutch, Grabban and Reece Oxford in January '17 to give us a final push to the play-offs which we made, finishing 3rd, then a hair's breadth away from the Premier League Money Making Machine.

So clearly rather than following the club's supposed remit (as stated when Stam took over) of following the Ajax style youth development we got carried away by being so tantalisingly close and decided to try to buy our way to the next level that summer. The fact that we generally bought appallingly didn't help. The appointment of a supposed Billy Big Bollocks in Gourlay indicated their mndset.

To play Devil's advocate slightly you could see why they went in that direction but they just got the personnel they got in terribly wrong.

Aluko typified this. Stam wanted Oliveira but we baulked at Norwich's asking price. Then he wanted Hemed and the same thing happened. In the end he settled for Aluko (also by this time the fans were demanding some form of signing as a statement of intent after the aforementioned deals fell through) who wasn't in any way what we needed to fill the huge gap that Kermogant's injury left from the season before. I feel it was an ego signing by the club (you can blame one of Stam, BT, Gourlay or all 3) who couldn't be seen to have failed to secure another "major deal"

On the face of we'd lost the spine of our side from the previous season Al-Habsi, Williams, Kermogant and the odds weren't looking good on keeping Moore either at the time so the arrivals of the likes of Mannone, Bacuna, Barrow etc make some sense. Unfortunately we decided to embark on this at just the time when Championship fees and wages went through the roof. As we all know the fees paid and the wages coughed up didn't give us anywhere approaching value for our our money even considering Barrow's decent season and the fact we subsequently appeared to have made a profit on Bacuna.

This summer we had a new manager and clearly the club wanted to back him up. He wanted experience/leadership as he felt, with some justification, that we lacked that in the squad. But again the personnel simply weren't up to the task.

I just think we're very keen to point the finger of blame , be that Stam or Gourlay in the main but it's rarely the sole fault of one individual. The club, like many before it and many to come, were seduced by the Premier League circus.

Hopefully we've learned our lesson from this and are beginning to move forward with integrating youth and actually trying to build something a little more sustainable if not quite the "brick by brick" of what now seems like a bygone age.

As always. Spot on. Although rather forgiving of Stam and Gourlay.

[Hound]

I’m not disagreeing with the sentiment but the signings made in the Jan transfer window were 4 loans and a player with resale value. That sounds more like our current plan

The damage started in the summer with average players signed at cost on long contracts and big extensions handed out all round. Can’t remember when exactly Gourlay joined but the issues started that summer

Also don’t think Moore speculation was til the next summer window.

[Lower West]

But yep, Gourlay undoubtedly the villain of the piece

With football it's always if's. Little point in singling individuals out. Fewer injuries could have resulted in far more points gained.

[Lower West]

I’m not disagreeing with the sentiment but the signings made in the Jan transfer window were 4 loans and a player with resale value. That sounds more like our current plan

Some at no cost. RFC are shopping in the bargain basement.

Even now the club will consider selling anybody. Further to fall one suspects.