The Earnshaw conundrum

[Canary02 0]

It''s May. Reading or Fulham or someone bid £3m for Earnie. What do the club do?

On the one hand, your initial reaction is to call it a paltry sum which will possibly see us make a loss on him and tell them to get lost.

On the other hand, can you afford to turn down a) an opportunity to remove the biggest wage-earner at the club just as we cease receiving parachute payments and b) a transfer kitty that could help greatly in Grant''s continued rebuilding program.

If you take the money you''ve lost the best goalscorer outside the Premiership and a guaranteed 25 goals a season which is notoriously difficult to replace, plus you open up the old "this board has no ambition" debate.

If you don''t take the money, your wage commitments are compromised making it more difficult for Grant to add to the squad (particularly if Dion and Hucks are also on good wages as is likely). You have a quality striker, but do you have a team capable of supporting him and winning games? However, if he returns and scores goals, his value could increase by Xmas/end of season.

 

My preference would be to keep him and hope that Grant can bring in a couple of cheap reinforcements at the back to shore things up. However, it''s a risk as the squad still needs some fairly major surgery and we''d be gambling on any signings paying off quickly. What does everybody else think?

[nutty nigel 7,534]

At present we have: Brown, Dublin, Earnshaw, Huckerby, Jarvis, Martin, McVeigh and Thorne.

It looks increasingly likely that Thorne and McVeigh will be gone. That would leave six options to play up front and could be enough to go into next season. Selling Earnshaw would be crazy for me. Unless we want to weaken our squad it would probably cost more to replace him. Or we could gamble on untried players at this level.

We can have no realistic ambitions of getting out of this league if we sell our only 20 goal a season striker. While Earnie wants to play for us I don''t think we should consider selling him.

If we have to get rid of players to reduce wages it''s a very brave person that would argue to keep a 38 year old in front of Earnshaw. I would like to keep both.

 

 

[Broken_hearted_canary 0]

Frankly the board would have to be stupid to sell earnie for such a small sum, im sure it wouldnt encourage financial prudence to sell your biggest asset at a loss.

wages wise we''ll soon be rid of MJL, Thorne, McV, and hopefully gally (to be replaced with Marshall :-) .

however good people think martin is he''s not going to be a 20 goal striker in his first season. Maybe jarvis will come back from orient with a new lease of life or even hendo (if played in his proper position).

Mid & Def are the crucial areas we tend to go missing from in games so we shud make these priority, how much money there is is questionable it depends if the boiler will need fixing again.

Hopefully west ham + Watford will go down and Ashton/Green/Francis will go for good prices

   -ashton to newcastle £10m we get £1.5m (is it a 15% sell on fee we have?)

   -   Francis (assume we have a 15-20% sell on fee so another few hundred thousand

   - Green (are we not due money anyway from west ham + we must have a sell on fee)

[Canary02 0]

[quote user="Broken_hearted_canary"]

Frankly the board would have to be stupid to sell earnie for such a small sum, im sure it wouldnt encourage financial prudence to sell your biggest asset at a loss.

wages wise we''ll soon be rid of MJL, Thorne, McV, and hopefully gally (to be replaced with Marshall :-) .

however good people think martin is he''s not going to be a 20 goal striker in his first season. Maybe jarvis will come back from orient with a new lease of life or even hendo (if played in his proper position).

Mid & Def are the crucial areas we tend to go missing from in games so we shud make these priority, how much money there is is questionable it depends if the boiler will need fixing again.

Hopefully west ham + Watford will go down and Ashton/Green/Francis will go for good prices

   -ashton to newcastle £10m we get £1.5m (is it a 15% sell on fee we have?)

   -   Francis (assume we have a 15-20% sell on fee so another few hundred thousand

   - Green (are we not due money anyway from west ham + we must have a sell on fee)

[/quote]

I think Ashton is 15% and Green does have a sell-on clause but I don''t know for how much. Francis won''t raise a penny because we flogged him to Wigan and got our last cash from him when they sold to Watford.

 

[Canary02 0]

[quote user="Broken_hearted_canary"]

Frankly the board would have to be stupid to sell earnie for such a small sum, im sure it wouldnt encourage financial prudence to sell your biggest asset at a loss.

wages wise we''ll soon be rid of MJL, Thorne, McV, and hopefully gally (to be replaced with Marshall :-) .

however good people think martin is he''s not going to be a 20 goal striker in his first season. Maybe jarvis will come back from orient with a new lease of life or even hendo (if played in his proper position).

Mid & Def are the crucial areas we tend to go missing from in games so we shud make these priority, how much money there is is questionable it depends if the boiler will need fixing again.

Hopefully west ham + Watford will go down and Ashton/Green/Francis will go for good prices

   -ashton to newcastle £10m we get £1.5m (is it a 15% sell on fee we have?)

   -   Francis (assume we have a 15-20% sell on fee so another few hundred thousand

   - Green (are we not due money anyway from west ham + we must have a sell on fee)

[/quote]

I think Ashton is 15% and Green does have a sell-on clause but I don''t know for how much. Francis won''t raise a penny because we flogged him to Wigan and got our last cash from him when they sold to Watford.

 

[Alex Harvey-Jones 0]

£3million isn''t enough - end of story as far as I''m concerned. If they offer £4+ million then you have to consider it but selling him for less would be very poor business!

[dickyst220 0]

We should only sell if we can get a profit on him......

However, if he really wants to go it will be difficult to keep hold of him.

[Skippy 0]

[quote user="Canary02"][quote user="Broken_hearted_canary"]

Frankly the board would have to be stupid to sell earnie for such a small sum, im sure it wouldnt encourage financial prudence to sell your biggest asset at a loss.

wages wise we''ll soon be rid of MJL, Thorne, McV, and hopefully gally (to be replaced with Marshall :-) .

however good people think martin is he''s not going to be a 20 goal striker in his first season. Maybe jarvis will come back from orient with a new lease of life or even hendo (if played in his proper position).

Mid & Def are the crucial areas we tend to go missing from in games so we shud make these priority, how much money there is is questionable it depends if the boiler will need fixing again.

Hopefully west ham + Watford will go down and Ashton/Green/Francis will go for good prices

   -ashton to newcastle £10m we get £1.5m (is it a 15% sell on fee we have?)

   -   Francis (assume we have a 15-20% sell on fee so another few hundred thousand

   - Green (are we not due money anyway from west ham + we must have a sell on fee)

[/quote]

I think Ashton is 15% and Green does have a sell-on clause but I don''t know for how much. Francis won''t raise a penny because we flogged him to Wigan and got our last cash from him when they sold to Watford.

 

[/quote]

With Ashton we only get 15% of any profit - not the total sale price sadly

[Tumbleweed 106]

Selling a proven goalscorer would be folly in my book. To get back to the Prem we need two or three exceptional players and he is one of ours with Huckerby if his legs hold out and........errrrrrrrm well nobody really. Martin has started well but cannot be relied upon and Safri could be but is often injured and gives too many duff performances still. Apart from that we are struggling. So a sale would be a big big mistake as any replacement could be a complete disaster and we would have cashed in our only real playing asset.

[Broken_hearted_canary 0]

15% of ashton profit, thats going to be naff all.

Does anyone know what the term were with crewe and how much we gave them when we sold ashton to west ham?

[Canary02 0]

I think it was 20-25%. They did well out of the deal.

15% of £10m for Ashton would still be 1.5m which isn''t bad.

[EadiesRight Foot 0]

Regardless of how much we get from the sale, it comes down to two things. A) How much Grant will actually GET to spend (i.e. the transfer fee, and wages as part of the package as Doncaster loves explaining), and B) how WELL he actually spends it.

So far for me, the jury is out on Grants judgement on players. I dont think we can say that any of the new signings have been an undeniable amazing success. Marshall was good for me, but the rest havent really got me excited. (Except for Lappins free kick at Luton which was the precursor of us going bonkers at the back of the stand!)