Transfers, 2023-24 season

[PaddockLad 14528]

47 minutes ago, The Fish said:

I 100% believe that he thought that. But honestly, I think that a well financed, well staffed academy is a production line of saleable assets. Sure, few of them are going to go for tens of millions of pounds, but plenty will go for north of a hundred grand. 

 

If you can sell 2-3 young lads to Championship clubs for a total of around £1m you've surely covered the running costs of the club, plus lads who go for sub £100k to lower leagues and Scotland. You'll occasionally get some who'll go for millions and rarely one or two that'll either be good enough to make part of the team going forward, or sell for tens of millions to an elite club. 

 

 

Brentford ditched their academy precisely because theyd develop players and not be properly compensated when they left (usually to Chelsea I imagine 😆) 

https://theathletic.com/4067209/2023/01/08/romeo-beckham-brentford-inter-miami-loan/?source=user_shared_article

 

Edited January 10, 2023 by PaddockLad

[Ayatollah Hermione 12737]

Even the Mackems made £45 million off two prospects in Henderson and Pickford. That alone is enough to keep investment and improvements going throughout the academy, your scouting network, youth coaching, Foundation schemes and even training ground upgrades and so on and so forth. Man City basically paid for this summer’s window by only flogging Academy players who barely kicked a ball for the first time. It’s maddening how little Ashley even put thought into it 

[Tom 13814]

 

 

 

[Tom 13814]

6 minutes ago, Ayatollah Hermione said:

It’s maddening how little Ashley even put thought into it 

Especially as he had a massive £35m hint in the shape of Carroll. 
 

 

[The Fish 8950]

27 minutes ago, PaddockLad said:

Brentford ditched their academy precisely because theyd develop players and not be properly compensated when they left (usually to Chelsea I imagine 😆) 

https://theathletic.com/4067209/2023/01/08/romeo-beckham-brentford-inter-miami-loan/?source=user_shared_article

 

 

That sounds like a BP, not a NP.

[PaddockLad 14528]

11 minutes ago, The Fish said:

 

That sounds like a BP, not a NP.

No. No idea  🤷🏻‍♂️ 

 

bonus point / negative point? 🤔

[The Fish 8950]

7 minutes ago, PaddockLad said:

No. No idea  🤷🏻‍♂️ 

 

bonus point / negative point? 🤔

Brentford Problem, not a Newcastle Problem. 

[ewerk 26192]

I assume that Brentford face much more competition for their prospects due to their geographic location, isn't there some rule about how far U-16s can travel for training? Where we're at I'd imagine there's two clubs at most who we would be competing with and if we put the money and time into proper development then it's a no-brainer as to who they're going to chose (obviously the millions of MLFs won't even consider us).

 

Didn't we get £6m from Everton for some young lad who I don't think ever ended up making a first team appearance for them?

[PaddockLad 14528]

1 minute ago, The Fish said:

Brentford Problem, not a Newcastle Problem. 

Aah ok,  yeah it was just to illustrate that there’s more than one way to come at this. London is obviously hugely different to the NE but Brentford is a brilliantly well run club. London , especially south London is teaming with young talent in a way that am fairly sure the NE no longer is. Elliot Anderson isn’t ready to contribute at 21… if he was, he would be . There’s time for him but where are the others?… I completely agree with the criticism of Ashley re youth development but perhaps it doesn’t make sense to invest when the raw material is scarce. South London provides more premier league players than anywhere else in the country and the competition to attract them is intense. Looks like Brentford have let others incur all  the initial expense then just cherry pick those who didn’t quite make it and saved millions. They may well still make good profits on B team players.
 

Just a personal opinion, but I think the diminishing returns re outstanding young talent coming from traditional Northern industrial “hotbed” areas ie NE, Liverpool/Manchester, Yorkshire coal field, and to me most obviously and sickeningly Scotland . The communities that produced hundreds of great players in the 20th century no longer exist, so the players aren’t coming through. What have we had in the last 20 years? Taylor, Ramage, Carroll, Longy? In the 80s Newcastle had a player of the year award and a Geordie player of the year.   Not much need for the latter recently… 

[Ayatollah Hermione 12737]

3 minutes ago, ewerk said:

I assume that Brentford face much more competition for their prospects due to their geographic location, isn't there some rule about how far U-16s can travel for training? Where we're at I'd imagine there's two clubs at most who we would be competing with and if we put the money and time into proper development then it's a no-brainer as to who they're going to chose (obviously the millions of MLFs won't even consider us).

 

Didn't we get £6m from Everton for some young lad who I don't think ever ended up making a first team appearance for them?

Aye, Twitter had a meltdown over it and he’s now playing for Bristol Rovers after playing all of 5 games for Sheff Wed last season

[Kitman 2188]

In my opinion Ashley never intended to be with us for the long haul. I think he bought us intending to asset strip and quickly sell on at a big profit, saddling us with long term commercial deals with sports direct in the process like he did at rangers. It explains the lack of due diligence as he was confident he could make money in the short term.
 

In that light every decision he made makes more sense, as it was to make do and mend till he could find a sucker to palm us off onto. So no surprise he wasnt interested in spending on the academy which could take years to see a return.  The same goes for long term commercial partnerships.
 

The only flaw in his plan was he wanted too much money for the club, which got more of a problem as he hollowed us out and ran down the squad and facilities.

[The Fish 8950]

16 hours ago, PaddockLad said:

Aah ok,  yeah it was just to illustrate that there’s more than one way to come at this. London is obviously hugely different to the NE but Brentford is a brilliantly well run club. London , especially south London is teaming with young talent in a way that am fairly sure the NE no longer is. Elliot Anderson isn’t ready to contribute at 21… if he was, he would be . There’s time for him but where are the others?… I completely agree with the criticism of Ashley re youth development but perhaps it doesn’t make sense to invest when the raw material is scarce. South London provides more premier league players than anywhere else in the country and the competition to attract them is intense. Looks like Brentford have let others incur all  the initial expense then just cherry pick those who didn’t quite make it and saved millions. They may well still make good profits on B team players.
 

Just a personal opinion, but I think the diminishing returns re outstanding young talent coming from traditional Northern industrial “hotbed” areas ie NE, Liverpool/Manchester, Yorkshire coal field, and to me most obviously and sickeningly Scotland . The communities that produced hundreds of great players in the 20th century no longer exist, so the players aren’t coming through. What have we had in the last 20 years? Taylor, Ramage, Carroll, Longy? In the 80s Newcastle had a player of the year award and a Geordie player of the year.   Not much need for the latter recently… 

 

Even before the takeover we were in a position (if we had an elite academy setup) to attract players from Edinburgh down to Hull, and all the way across to the west coast. We could have been attracting talent who weren't taken up by the North West clubs. You mention those 4, but if you include Adam Armstrong, Matty Longstaff, Sammy Ameobi, Dan Barlaser, Callum Roberts, these are all local talents who we had at the academy who've gone on to have a professional career in the Football League. And that's without investment. Imagine what we could have done if the club was better run on that front. They don't all have to be PL quality, they just have to show promise and be moved on for actual money. 

 

I also think it's important to have local lads playing for your team, fill a club with those from afar and they're less likely to 'get' the club. Have a few Longstaff's, Burns and Dummetts and that culture gets carried onto the pitch. 

[The Fish 8950]

10 hours ago, Kitman said:

In my opinion Ashley never intended to be with us for the long haul. I think he bought us intending to asset strip and quickly sell on at a big profit, saddling us with long term commercial deals with sports direct in the process like he did at rangers. It explains the lack of due diligence as he was confident he could make money in the short term.
 

In that light every decision he made makes more sense, as it was to make do and mend till he could find a sucker to palm us off onto. So no surprise he wasnt interested in spending on the academy which could take years to see a return.  The same goes for long term commercial partnerships.
 

The only flaw in his plan was he wanted too much money for the club, which got more of a problem as he hollowed us out and ran down the squad and facilities.

He definitely wanted a quick sale, but a working, fit-for-purpose academy, training ground, facilities are part of the club you're trying to sell. And the academy, unlike the other two, is a revenue stream. A businessman of his success should have seen that.

[Alex 30255]

He’s a clueless cunt when it comes to football but I think his original intentions may have been to have a bit of fun. There was the drinking in town and then appointing Keegan. Then he lost a large amount of money spread betting, in effect, on the stock market iirc. Then that was compounded by the financial crash. After that it went sour with Mort being replaced by the casino cunt and Wise being brought in to oversee transfers etc. I think it was a lot more difficult than he envisaged (again demonstrating his cluelessness). Certainly from at least that point it was an investment he thought he could sell at any point so rejected the notion of any long term strategy. 

[Alex 30255]

18 minutes ago, The Fish said:

He definitely wanted a quick sale, but a working, fit-for-purpose academy, training ground, facilities are part of the club you're trying to sell. And the academy, unlike the other two, is a revenue stream. A businessman of his success should have seen that.

The idea of investing in something which might’ve benefited someone else 5 years down the line would’ve put him off that idea. I don’t think he ever thought he’d be here as long as he was. I totally agree with you, just saying it went against his blinkered mindset

Edited January 11, 2023 by Alex

[The Fish 8950]

1 minute ago, Alex said:

The idea of investing in something which might’ve benefited someone else 5 years down the line would’ve put him off that idea. I don’t think he ever thought he’d be here as long as he was. I totally agree with you, just saying it went against his blinkered mindset

 

Sister in Law (yes I'm married, didn't I mention that?) had a survey done before a move late summer 2022. Response was that the roof needed doing. Vendor wouldn't either pay for the work themselves, or knock the cost (or a significant portion of it) off the asking price. 

 

The house is still For Sale now.

 

 

[Howay 12447]

 

[wykikitoon 16500]

I noticed last night how small Ashworth is.

[Holden McGroin 4821]

He is Dec sized.

[Alex 30255]

He’s too wee 

[trophyshy 6432]

5 hours ago, The Fish said:

 

Sister in Law (yes I'm married, didn't I mention that?) had a survey done before a move late summer 2022. Response was that the roof needed doing. Vendor wouldn't either pay for the work themselves, or knock the cost (or a significant portion of it) off the asking price. 

 

The house is still For Sale now.

 

 

 

 

[LondonBlue 540]

On 10/01/2023 at 10:01, ewerk said:

You have to imagine we that FFP is an issue. In 20/21 we had a loss of £13.6m. Since then we've spent about £200m on transfers and added about £33m per year to the wage bill (both fag packet calculations). Given that FFP only allows us to lose £53m over a three year period and we've yet to add any major commercial deals I'd say we don't have a huge amount to blow in a tough January window.

 

Now that £200m will be amortised over the duration of the player contracts so it doesn't immediately hit FFP and the Saudis have put in an additional £74m in equity so there will be some wiggle room but I get the feeling that any signings made this window will be out of necessity (i.e. injuries) or because the deal represents good value (which are difficult to find in January).

 

Wish i had a link but i thought that there was some ffp relief for new owners for a while. The context was how come Chelsea can spend so much.

 

not something that hit us that hard as we spent heavily before ffp came into effect.

 

[Kitman 2188]

11 hours ago, The Fish said:

He definitely wanted a quick sale, but a working, fit-for-purpose academy, training ground, facilities are part of the club you're trying to sell. And the academy, unlike the other two, is a revenue stream. A businessman of his success should have seen that.

Yes I agree. I don’t think he understood football, and didn’t trust football people to run his business. Understandable perhaps after the turbo bullshit he was peddled by Dennis Wise  and Joe Kinnear, who both strike me as thick cunts and utter chancers….but he turned over the club to Llambias (a casino operator and also a massive cunt), who I think set the template the zombie club that we became.
 

Some of the things they did, like not running a proper academy or doing proper commercial deals, never made sense to me from a business pov.  Thats why it seems to me like he intended to pass through, but he wouldnt or couldnt sell. Probably because he’s a cunt.

 

tldr: I agree. Ashley was a cunt who surrounded himself with cunts and ran the club like a stupid cunt.

[Dr Gloom 19743]

6 minutes ago, Kitman said:

Yes I agree. I don’t think he understood football, and didn’t trust football people to run his business. Understandable perhaps after the turbo bullshit he was peddled by Dennis Wise  and Joe Kinnear, who both strike me as thick cunts and utter chancers….but he turned over the club to Llambias (a casino operator and also a massive cunt), who I think set the template the zombie club that we became.
 

Some of the things they did, like not running a proper academy or doing proper commercial deals, never made sense to me from a business pov.  Thats why it seems to me like he intended to pass through, but he wouldnt or couldnt sell. Probably because he’s a cunt.

 

tldr: I agree. Ashley was a cunt who surrounded himself with cunts and ran the club like a stupid cunt.

agreed. I think he genuinely wanted to have some fun with be me club at first and he appointed Chris mort, who seemed competent enough, before it all went sour. Obviously we all know how it turned out after he gave up caring 

[aimaad22 3419]

ManUtd signing Weghorst. Didn't Burnley sign him to replace Wood