bluestevon
Player Valuation: £80m
The players we are after, high profile across Europe, not quite superstars but established internationals with CL credentials have multiple options. Our strategy to date has been to out bid competing clubs in terms of the transfer fee and to be competitive (ie in line with market rates with a moderate premium) on wages. Wages are our biggest issue because of STCC. Now the clubs are attracted to selling to us because we are offering more than others. The players on the other hand know (or their agents know to be more accurate) that as the window closure approaches it becomes a sellers market - ie is loaded in favour of the players.
That's the market we are operating in. Until the club becomes attractive in its own right by winning trophies and qualifying for the CL on a regular basis that's going to be an issue. It is perhaps one of the reasons Walsh has been brought in to work his magic in lesser known markets. However for this window this is where we are. We were slightly unlucky in that Witsel so very nearly joined before introducing different demands, and in the case of one other target, the selling club changing its mind.
This is the rub of it though mate.
Our strategy seems fundamentally flawed and seems to rely upon believeing the selling club has the power rather than the player, when everything points to the opposite in football presently
The selling club will ALWAYS sell to the highest bidder, it takes no brains to realsie this, so you offer 5-10% more then you get accepted others get rejected etc.
But the key area to buying a player - unless they are of the mindset that they will go wherever (rarer as the player quality gets better) then it is all about convincing that player to come to yuor team, the easiest and maybe only way we can do that is by offering them a financial package FAR exceeding what they can get at another 'superior' profile team, a small premium on top of what they could earn elsewhere.
If we are selling Stones to allow us to massively increase wages and that is being factored in when we are biddibng on players - then why are we only offering these small premiums?
Stones being sold for a net STCC 40m profit - will allow us to roughly increase the wages by 50m a year, factor in a sale of any of mccarthy, Cleverley or a player who would net a STCC profit of around 5-6m (very easy to do), then your looking at us being able to raise wages this season by around 1.1m per week
New contracts for players will be covered by the wages already freed up with players released and any further sales (stoens and 1 other) and the loan of some younger players and people like Niasse, McGeady etc and still give a surplus of around 150k pw, so in total we could raise the squad wage by 1.2-1.3m this season.
And as the stated aim is to bridge this gap with spurs the quickest way possible - hence selling stomnes, then it is min our interest to ensure that we use the full ammount allowed in raisign these wages.
So how exactly are we going to even come close to hitting that 1.2 (low estimate) figure of rasing wages, and if we aren't then why are we going to be selling stones for, and on top of all that, why are we willing to pay a premium to beat out clubs on the buying price and then jeopordising the entire deal by not offering wage packages that will get the agents snapping our hands off as they know that they will far exceed what they will earn by waiting for other teams?
1.25m is three squad players arriving to full spots on 50k per week (players of thre ilk of Gueye etc)
and would be 7 signings in addition to the three above (bargain buys) on the following- 3 signings of 200k pw, 2 of 150k pw and 2 of 100k pw.
when you break down the actual figures - i honestly believe the club has zero intention of pushing the wages up to the figure we will be allowed to by the sale of stones, the numbers just don't make any sense when you break them down, on top of the fact we are effectively not convincing players due to not offering them deals too good to refuse.
200k pw would convince all but a very small group of players int he world to sign onto the 'project' and i inculde players bove the quality and reputation of Witsel, carvalho, Mata etc in that as well