Limited Financial Budget

[canarychris 0]

I know i will be accused of simplifing things but i can''t understand how we cannot compete with Derby to sign a centre forward (regardless if he was the right player for us).

Last August we bid 1.5m for Clinton Morrisson to partner Ashton, of that money all we spent was £500k on Etuhu. We then sold Ashton and after various sell on clauses etc where met we cleared in the region of £5.5m of which we invested £3.5m in Earnie all of which means we should have a budget, without this years parachute payment of somewhere in the region of £3m. I don''t buy the fact that this was spent on loan signings as the wages fro Johansson replaced what was paid to Marney (his loan was cancelled in Jan) and the Rehman wages are less i would guess than we would have been paying Morrission.

The club then sells another 20,000 season tickets launches 2 new kits and will sell in the region of 12,000 of those, so there is certainly no need to cut back on what is being spent on the playing side of the business.

Like i say this is very simplistic, but seems to point to a large hole from where the club is losing money.....or do they just not want to spend it? Have they decided that the Charlton model of which they talked so much is beyond our capabilities and they are happy with us being a top 10 Championship side? The signing of Earnie would suggest not, but was this just to appease the fans and Earnie will go the same way as Deano in January? Only time will tell, but if we do not spend money on decent players now we may have half the first team squad wanting out come January!!!  

[Cloughie 0]

I totally agree.  Whilst I am more than happy not to have wasted the money on Howard, I do think it is fair to query where the money goes.  The squad is not large so either there is a big black hole down which money goes or else the wages paid are disproportionate to the abilities of players, management and executive of the club.  Why are all clubs so reluctant to publish salaries?  I think we know the answer to that one.  Jimmy Hill on his show on Sky said, when talking about professional referees, that who would want to do a job for only £50,000 a year:- sadly that shows how out of touch these guys are with the real world.

Perhaps Mr Worthington may decide that he will have to play football on the ground now that he has been thwarted on his giant up front.  Perhaps Plan C might even be to pass the ball on the ground, an alien concept perhaps, but it just might work.  Perhaps, and this may be a step too far, we might see young players given a chance, I know that I am being fanciful but didn''t Ryan Jarvis play well on those occasions when given a chance, wasn''t Rossi Jarvis the only one in midfield to shape up against Wolves and Michael Spillane looked good when he played full back.

And please if there is some loot available  spend it one good player rather than a plethora of journeyman pros who are no better than the players we have, restrict the progress of the younger players and sap away the lifeblood of the club with those huge, unwarranted and unpublicised wages.

[Faded Jaded Semi Plastic SOB 1,024]

The ironic thing for me is that the whole point of academies for cash strapped clubs such as ourselves is to "grow" talent, thus saving having to splash out on expensive signings.