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hertfordyellow

The £15 million myth

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I have heard a number of people argue that even though we don't have a lot of money, if we had just gambled on 15-20 million this season we would have had a chance. I think people are really overestimating what that kind of money gets you, especially being a Premiership team.

If you take a look on Wikipedia at say Southampton, Brighton, Wolves, Burnley, West Ham, Bournemouth, Sheffield Utd and review their squad, you will see that they have a number of players who were bought for £10-18 million. A number of them aren't really setting the league alight. Trust me, you will be surprised at just how many there were. Once you factor in signing on bonus, wages, agent fees etc 15 million is about right for one Premiership player. The Murphy brothers have had no impact on this league at all and they were near this figure.

Things have changed over the last 5 -10 years. You aren't going to out scout other Premiership teams, if someone is good and available we would face competition meaning a bidding war. Add to the fact that teams see the Premiership as a cash cow. The richest league in the world means you have to pay premium because... you billionaires can afford it.

Truthfully, were we one quality player away from survival? No we were well short unfortunately. Also what is the impact of someone joining on 60k when everyone else is on 15k? Could it have changed how much players were asking for when we renewed their contracts last summer?

My opinion is, while it is frustrating to admit, we had to do what was right for the club long term and that was to not overstretch again at a point when we had made so much progress in recovering from past mistakes. 

 

 

 

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Well, we'll never know. But personally it seems pretty clear to me that a moderate spend wouldn't have hurt our chances of survival. Though based on the last nine games even £200m wouldn't have kept us up...

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2 minutes ago, Grando said:

Well, we'll never know. But personally it seems pretty clear to me that a moderate spend wouldn't have hurt our chances of survival. Though based on the last nine games even £200m wouldn't have kept us up...

Based on what though? You haven't addressed anything i've said. How much is moderate?

Edited by hertfordyellow
added some context

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10 minutes ago, hertfordyellow said:

I have heard a number of people argue that even though we don't have a lot of money, if we had just gambled on 15-20 million this season we would have had a chance. I think people are really overestimating what that kind of money gets you, especially being a Premiership team.

If you take a look on Wikipedia at say Southampton, Brighton, Wolves, Burnley, West Ham, Bournemouth, Sheffield Utd and review their squad, you will see that they have a number of players who were bought for £10-18 million. A number of them aren't really setting the league alight. Trust me, you will be surprised at just how many there were. Once you factor in signing on bonus, wages, agent fees etc 15 million is about right for one Premiership player. The Murphy brothers have had no impact on this league at all and they were near this figure.

Things have changed over the last 5 -10 years. You aren't going to out scout other Premiership teams, if someone is good and available we would face competition meaning a bidding war. Add to the fact that teams see the Premiership as a cash cow. The richest league in the world means you have to pay premium because... you billionaires can afford it.

Truthfully, were we one quality player away from survival? No we were well short unfortunately. Also what is the impact of someone joining on 60k when everyone else is on 15k? Could it have changed how much players were asking for when we renewed their contracts last summer?

My opinion is, while it is frustrating to admit, we had to do what was right for the club long term and that was to not overstretch again at a point when we had made so much progress in recovering from past mistakes. 

 

 

 

Just think tho, 4 successful loan signings instead of the duds we signed couldve been the difference between staying up and relegation.

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Alright, let's say we bought three £5million pound players (or two £7.5m ones) who ended up strengthening the squad – including a proper centre-half who could have covered when our awful defensive crisis struck. Obviously it's all hypothetical so we will never know - but that could have helped. And, ok, it might not have done - but I would rather we had have gone in a bit stronger than we did. That's all.

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1 minute ago, Grando said:

Alright, let's say we bought three £5million pound players (or two £7.5m ones) who ended up strengthening the squad – including a proper centre-half who could have covered when our awful defensive crisis struck. Obviously it's all hypothetical so we will never know - but that could have helped. And, ok, it might not have done - but I would rather we had have gone in a bit stronger than we did. That's all.

£5 million gets you nothing in this league, this is my point. Ben Gibson cost Burnley £15 million in fee alone, he has made a handful of starts. You are making the point that i'm refuting, 'we could have brought in a few centre backs for 5 mil each, bish, bash, bosh done'. Where are these players that can instantly play at the top level, but aren't being pursued by other richer teams, who we can afford? 

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24 minutes ago, Grando said:

Alright, let's say we bought three £5million pound players (or two £7.5m ones) who ended up strengthening the squad – including a proper centre-half who could have covered when our awful defensive crisis struck. Obviously it's all hypothetical so we will never know - but that could have helped. And, ok, it might not have done - but I would rather we had have gone in a bit stronger than we did. That's all.

What top centre half would have joined to (probably) be behind Klose, Zimmerman, Godfrey and Hanley? The problem was the ridiculous injuries to those players.

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That 'gamble' is dependent on us having the money to meet the transfer payments and the wage bill if we were relegated.

The last relegation demonstrated the dangers of that delusion.

Sadly there are those unwilling to accept our position in the grand scheme of things - hence the continual whining

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Sorry Im not having this, its far too sensible of an opinion to have. What we need is the mystery buyer who has been offering to buy Norwich from Delia for the last 15 years to finally be allowed to swoop in and spend the tune of, oh I don't know, £120 million? That sort of money would mean we could be certain of maybe getting 17th spot on Sunday, the last day of the season. Provided we win. 

 

I think we were a CB and a number 10 away from staying up. We are probably 2 seasons of development and 4 signings (CB, CDM, AM and ST) from being able to push for a 10th-15th spot.

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It's all hypothetical but what we do know is we weren't good enough as we were, because we've finished bottom.  Of course, the injuries particularly at the start of the season were pretty unprecedented.

I guess the question is how many players were there who we thought would very, very likely be a significant upgrade on what we already had, who were available for the £10-15 million price tag, who were happy to come to a club that were one of the favourites for relegation, and would therefore also be happy to take a significant wage cut should that happen? Within that, also having the right character to fit in with the rest of the group etc.

I think that's a pretty narrow pool of players.

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I'd argue that going into the season with 4 centre-halves was short-sighted. Particularly given Hanley and Klose's injury records to that point. More bodies may well have helped us in that regard, but there's no way of definitely knowing whether the OP is correct in his assertion that the "£15m spend" is a myth that would've helped us, or my hunch that it would've been a gamble worth taking. And, btw, that mythical £15m could've been used towards loan wages or wages of free transfers – I'm not saying we had to spend that on transfer fees, merely that I believe we underspent to some degree (and spent the little we did spend badly).

Edited by Grando

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43 minutes ago, hertfordyellow said:

I have heard a number of people argue that even though we don't have a lot of money, if we had just gambled on 15-20 million this season we would have had a chance. I think people are really overestimating what that kind of money gets you, especially being a Premiership team.

If you take a look on Wikipedia at say Southampton, Brighton, Wolves, Burnley, West Ham, Bournemouth, Sheffield Utd and review their squad, you will see that they have a number of players who were bought for £10-18 million. A number of them aren't really setting the league alight. Trust me, you will be surprised at just how many there were. Once you factor in signing on bonus, wages, agent fees etc 15 million is about right for one Premiership player. The Murphy brothers have had no impact on this league at all and they were near this figure.

Things have changed over the last 5 -10 years. You aren't going to out scout other Premiership teams, if someone is good and available we would face competition meaning a bidding war. Add to the fact that teams see the Premiership as a cash cow. The richest league in the world means you have to pay premium because... you billionaires can afford it.

Truthfully, were we one quality player away from survival? No we were well short unfortunately. Also what is the impact of someone joining on 60k when everyone else is on 15k? Could it have changed how much players were asking for when we renewed their contracts last summer?

My opinion is, while it is frustrating to admit, we had to do what was right for the club long term and that was to not overstretch again at a point when we had made so much progress in recovering from past mistakes. 

 

 

 

I think you are quite right that type of money would have been only a drop in the ocean. Things got off to a promising start but as soon as our already wobbly defence started getting injured, the writing was on the wall. Some of the youngsters gave a good account of themselves, most of the more experienced players were well short at this level. We were short of PL quality all over the pitch and our style of play did not help. We may have been able outscore teams in the championship but it was never going to happen in this league. Even top quality championship players cost you £20m plus and even then there is no guarantee  that they can make the jump up a level.  We finished bottom by a country mile, we may have given it a better go without the injuries at bad times but even then it was going to be a big ask to stay up. We would have needed to spend mind numbing sums give us confidence of staying up AND for  at least half the squad to make the jump up

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The club has a longer term plan, one that is certainly not a sit or bust as some numpties expect.

The idea that we take on ever greater debt to stay up..... in order to service that debt is beyond stupidity, and is a Ponzi scheme in all but name.

Unsustainable, that when it does finally collapse the club goes down with it

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3 minutes ago, Grando said:

I'd argue that going into the season with 4 centre-halves was short-sighted. Particularly given Hanley and Klose's injury records to that point. More bodies may well have helped us in that regard, but there's no way of definitely knowing whether the OP is correct in his assertion that the "£15m spend" is a myth that would've helped or my hunch that it would've been a gamble worth taking. 

Norwich had Amadou who was suppose to be emergency centre back cover beyond the 4 dedicated centre backs. Norwich had just got through a whole Championship season, which has more games and less rest periods, with 4 centre backs. Getting yet another centre back wasn't needed, without the benefit of hindsight. Especially as in any normal season a 5th centre back wouldn't get anywhere near the first team and would have spent the season being grumpy in the background and ultimately wanting to leave like Amadou.

As for whether Norwich could have improved the first team for £15m? Unquestionably they could have done - but they could have also spent £15m, still got relegated and now being carrying that legacy on into the Championship.At times this season it felt like Norwich were really close to being good enough to survive, just lacked either a little something at the back or up front. A goal scoring 10 could have dramatically changed this season - whether they could have found one for £15m is the unknown - it looks like Webber felt they couldn't.

 

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3 minutes ago, Grando said:

I'd argue that going into the season with 4 centre-halves was short-sighted. Particularly given Hanley and Klose's injury records to that point. More bodies may well have helped us in that regard, but there's no way of definitely knowing whether the OP is correct in his assertion that the "£15m spend" is a myth that would've helped or my hunch that it would've been a gamble worth taking. 

I'll try again. Were we one centre back short of staying up? It's hard to look at that squad and say yes. If thats the case then we were a number of Premiership players short of competing. So how much would a number of Premiership players cost? Sheffield broke their transfer record three times this season, nearly 45 million on three players. Even then one of them has been sent out on loan. Thats the myth i'm talking about. If we needed 50 million+ to even has a slim chance, then 15 million isn't going to make a dent. 

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Spend £20m?      If it's there use it.

-£5m Ivan Toney from Peterborough.

 

The rest on a marquee central defender and a defensive midfielder (although Sorensen might fill this spot.)

Edited by BroadstairsR

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Personally, I think you only have to look at our loanees to recognise that there’s a good chance spending £20-£30 million would probably have achieved very little. Allegedly we were very keen on Amadou when we loaned him - if we’d had the money we could well have bought him outright, which hindsight shows would have been a pretty large waste of money. If we’d spent the rest on Roberts and/or Fahrmann or Duda we would be exactly where we are now.

 

The quality of our recruitment was the biggest issue IMHO, especially when you look at who we managed to pick up before the previous season. And the calibre of our latest recruits for next season, how well they play and integrate into the team, will probably define whether the Webber/Farke period is seen as successful or not in the long-term.

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Personally I think if the shutdown had not happened we would be where Villa are now. 

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4 minutes ago, Surfer said:

Personally I think if the shutdown had not happened we would be where Villa are now. 

Going down? 🤣🤞

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3 minutes ago, Bethnal Yellow and Green said:

Norwich had Amadou who was suppose to be emergency centre back cover beyond the 4 dedicated centre backs. Norwich had just got through a whole Championship season, which has more games and less rest periods, with 4 centre backs. Getting yet another centre back wasn't needed, without the benefit of hindsight. Especially as in any normal season a 5th centre back wouldn't get anywhere near the first team and would have spent the season being grumpy in the background and ultimately wanting to leave like Amadou.

As for whether Norwich could have improved the first team for £15m? Unquestionably they could have done - but they could have also spent £15m, still got relegated and now being carrying that legacy on into the Championship.At times this season it felt like Norwich were really close to being good enough to survive, just lacked either a little something at the back or up front. A goal scoring 10 could have dramatically changed this season - whether they could have found one for £15m is the unknown - it looks like Webber felt they couldn't.

 

Unfortunately all of our loans were flops and rarely used, the loan market can have big benefits in the championship downwards with hungry young players wanting to prove a point, but i have seen very limited evidence that it works that well at PL level, often players from abroad on loans have lost form, not settled or fallen out with someone etc etc. Alas its just one of those things, at least we are in a reasonably healthy state both in terms of championship squad and finance so grounds for optimism. Also not that many players will join a newly promoted side for good money and agree to relegation clauses, you are stuffed then when you go down with a player on high wages that you may find it difficult to move on

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7 minutes ago, hertfordyellow said:

I'll try again. Were we one centre back short of staying up? It's hard to look at that squad and say yes. If thats the case then we were a number of Premiership players short of competing. So how much would a number of Premiership players cost? Sheffield broke their transfer record three times this season, nearly 45 million on three players. Even then one of them has been sent out on loan. Thats the myth i'm talking about. If we needed 50 million+ to even has a slim chance, then 15 million isn't going to make a dent. 

I'll try again - we'll never know.

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3 minutes ago, BroadstairsR said:

Spend £20m?      If it's there use it.

-£5m Ivan Toney from Peterborough.

 

The rest on a marquee central defender and a defensive midfielder (although Sorensen might fill this spot.)

OK i'll gloss over going for a player that hasn't even been tested at Championship level and expecting them to make the difference. Marquee Premiership central defender and defensive midfielder, willing to join us over other teams, meeting our wage restrictions, for a combined 15 million? You are in full Football Manager mode my friend.

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1 minute ago, Grando said:

I'll try again - we'll never know.

You just aren't answering any of the questions put to you. All you are saying is, I have a hunch 20 mil would have made the difference. Based on what? I've outlined why it is incompatible with Premiership reality, why can't you address the argument instead of just saying... 'well we'll never know'.

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4 minutes ago, Nuff Said said:

The quality of our recruitment was the biggest issue IMHO, especially when you look at who we managed to pick up before the previous season. And the calibre of our latest recruits for next season, how well they play and integrate into the team, will probably define whether the Webber/Farke period is seen as successful or not in the long-term.

Being long term that does not simply mean next season

Unfortunately the numpties have over excited themselves to the point where their stupidity actually made them think that the club's target was one of getting into the PL then running up as much debt as possible to stay there - and to hell with the consequences if and when that fails

Players now being developed are for three or fours years down the line (or more).

We need the coaching infrastructure to have a built in continuation as with the recruitment process. This is what the long term development of the club is about - being able to sustain a viable and challenging club, not a one hit wonder that like our impoverished neighbours lie dead in the water in some forgotten, back water pond

 

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1 minute ago, Bill said:

Being long term that does not simply mean next season

Unfortunately the numpties have over excited themselves to the point where their stupidity actually made them think that the club's target was one of getting into the PL then running up as much debt as possible to stay there - and to hell with the consequences if and when that fails

Players now being developed are for three or fours years down the line (or more).

We need the coaching infrastructure to have a built in continuation as with the recruitment process. This is what the long term development of the club is about - being able to sustain a viable and challenging club, not a one hit wonder that like our impoverished neighbours lie dead in the water in some forgotten, back water pond

 

I don’t disagree with what you say, but if we follow a PL season that has unfortunately set records for poor performance, following it up with a disappointing tilt at re-promotion would probably be the end of at least of one of Webber or Farke. Effectively they would have had one good season out of four.
 

Retaining them both if we don’t at least make a good effort at going back up would be a *very* brave move on the board’s part.

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Just now, hertfordyellow said:

You just aren't answering any of the questions put to you. All you are saying is, I have a hunch 20 mil would have made the difference. Based on what? I've outlined why it is incompatible with Premiership reality, why can't you address the argument instead of just saying... 'well we'll never know'.

That's because it's all hypothetical! Listen, I don't feel that strongly about it, but you ascertain that spending a sum in the £15m-£20m region would have made no difference, and that's a reasonable position. However, I think spending more than we did (in some form) would have given us a better chance. I can't prove that – and quite clearly it would've required some excellent manoeuvring in the transfer market... And I would say that your assertion holds more weight after the evidence of the last nine games, but just because you've written it here doesn't mean – in this purely hypothetical situation – that you're necessarily right and that the club went down the optimum route!

Hence my original reply – that I'm still of the opinion of – that we should've spent more than we did at that point in time. 

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24 minutes ago, hertfordyellow said:

OK i'll gloss over going for a player that hasn't even been tested at Championship level and expecting them to make the difference. Marquee Premiership central defender and defensive midfielder, willing to join us over other teams, meeting our wage restrictions, for a combined 15 million? You are in full Football Manager mode my friend.

I haven't got a clue what Football Manager is even about, and from what I know wouldn't want a clue.

I believe Dean Ashton had only played for Crewe before he came to City and Grant Holt didn't exactly have a pedigree of note.

Toney's worth a punt, at a price of course. 

The term "marquee" is of course relative.

Edited by BroadstairsR

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Dean Ashton was signed 15 years ago. Grant Holt had many games at Championship level and was one of the best players in the league. How much would one of the best Championship strikers cost us today? 15 million? 20?

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I tend to agree with Grando - the idea ought to have been to give us the best chance of staying up and to free up all our spare ££ to fund a tilt at doing so without breaking the bank.  I certainly can’t shake the feeling that the answer is that we didn’t. 

in terms of spend, we know for sure that there’s deals out there to loan and buy after a season (where relegation would nullify the purchase).  Amadou was one and didn’t work out (as much by not being fancied by his boss as by poor performances on the pitch), but a number of clubs have done that route.  Oddly, we even used the PL to PL loan option very poorly all round when you consider the links Webber is said to have within the game.

The ultimate point is that we didn’t do it, so we’ll never know what might or might not have happened, however much Hertford disagrees.

Edited by Branston Pickle
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