I'd like to start a discussion on the Financial impact of relegation, and what this will mean for the playing squad next year. Pro or anti regime is irrelevant for this discussion, as whoever is in charge they will be bound by the same rules and I've not seen anywhere outline that this could have a serious impact on our playing squad next season. I'm no expert but the financial fair play rules are different in League 1 to those in the Championship and they certainly seem to have more bite.
There is an excellent website on Financial Fair play
financialfairplay.co.uk/ which gives details of the rules we will need to abide by next year, known as the Salary Cost and Management Protocol (SCMP)
SCMP states that a club cannot spend more than 60% of its turnover on wages. The club has to submit monthly forecasts with a transfer embargo on anyone going over. There are transitional arrangements for relegated clubs, which allow you to exclude the wages of players signed prior to the September of the relegation season, but only if they were on contracts of 3 years or more.
Our 2014 accounts showed the following figures for Turnover, Wages and losses. If anyone has the 2015 version please post them up.
Turnover £12.7m
Wages £10.4m
Loss 5.7m
I'd be interested if anyone can ferret out the difference in TV money between Championship and League 1, as this will impact turnover. Obviously non renewal of sponsorship and season tickets will also impact the number.
On 2014 figures we would need to cut £2.8m from the wage bill before you even account for the drop in turnover. If this is say £3m that means another 1.8m will need to be cut. Potentially we could go into next season having to halve our wage bill, in order to be able to sign players.
Its easy to see that there is potentially going to be a fire sale in order to get wage costs down. Players will be moved on for financial not footballing reasons and if we fail in this we could end up being unable to plug gaps in an unbalanced squad. This where we were with the Pardew/Parkinson/Zabeel fiasco the last time we were relegated from the Championship. If that happens its easy to see that a double relegation is a distinct possibility. In my view thoughts of bouncing straight back up with the backbone of the current squad are well wide of the mark.
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As was mentioned in another thread, there's also the issue that the squad we leave the transfer windows with next season cannot be strengthened with emergency loans next season either.
In essence that means one of the best strategies would be a fire sale - completely gutting the squad - and rebuilding with lower league players who have experience at that level and have wage expectations appropriate for that level. Unfortunately, I think the player recruitment next year could be something which is very easy to underestimate and misjudge, and based on recent situations I must admit I see this as a distinct possibility.
Misjudging the recruitment during our first season back in League One, having difficulties keeping the budget down and being unable to rely upon the emergency loan market would be - as far as I'm concerned - relegation circumstances. Which is frustrating with the likes of Tex and Johnson coming in during Jan/Feb on long contracts.
PWR at the moment but will come back to this as it's something that interests me greatly, particularly the MASSIVE gap between L1 and relegated Prem sides.
You have already provided more information than they would ever learn alone!
http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/football/football-league/league-one-play-off-final-yeovil-and-brentford-chase-31m-cash-injection-8621839.html
Nick Pope 2018
Patrick Bauer 2019
Naby Sarr 2020
Harry Lennon 2018
Morgan Fox 2018
Tareiq Holmes-Dennis 2018
Jóhann Berg Guðmundsson 2019
Jordan Cousins 2019
Ahmed Kashi 2018
El-Hadji Ba 2018
Cristian Ceballos 2018
Zakarya Bergdich 2019
Igor Vetokele 2019
Mikhail Kennedy 2018
Short term this could be good news but it could also lead to a reluctance to renew contracts as this will put them into the "current" pot.
As for the players under contract, a lot depends of what wages they're on. JBG and Cousins were given new deals to stay, as they only had 1 year left on their contracts, I imagine these would be quite good contracts, similarly the likes of Igor, Watt, Kashi and Tex who were all established first team players when we signed them. Possible also Sarr, seeing that we bought him from Lisbon and Bergdych...
The likes of Ba and Ceballos would probably be on smaller wages, seeing that they weren't established players when we signed them
I don't want to be negative and take your thread in a direction you didn't intend it to go, but I can see very little positive. The below is purely my own conjecture, but interested in any differing viewpoints.
Lets just assume that Roland now currently wants to sell, but 3-4 months down the line has come no closer to negotiating a sale because what he wants in return remains poles apart to what anyone is prepared to offer.
His approach in knowing that this is not going to remain a long-term project for him will be to a. slash his costs by as much as possible, or b. try and reduce losses by recouping as much from the valued sale of players currently under contract. Or a mix of 1 and 2. At Liege, they had a number of high profile sales before he offloaded the club.
Either way, I can't foresee a squad for next season that has anything other than even greater bolstered than this season in academy products, supplemented with cheap overseas imports to a lesser quality than the ones we have now.
Unless the quality of rookie youngsters breaking through takes everyone by surprise (having seen the U21s last week I doubt that), I don't see how we will have a squad for next season anywhere near good enough to compete, particularly if injuries kick in, and with a wage bill more than 50% of its current level, if Roland cannot agree a sale.
I expect all our top players to be "passed" to them.
They will do what Roland wants.
They wont do anything Roland wants because its called a legal Contract, if he tries to get a player to do something they dont want to do and its not in there, then there is sod all he can do about it.
Its like any employment Contract, if yours says that you work for X Company from London (etc.) then thats where you work, if your boss says to you one day, I want you to be based from Edinburgh then there is nothing they can do if you say no.
Do I see players leaving us to join STVV in the summer... Yes
Do I see our top players leaving us to join STVV in the summer ... No
Do I see fringe players we cant get off our books joining STVV in the summer (Bergdich etc.) ... Quite possibly
Clearly relegation should be avoided at all costs, however unfortunately this is almost certainly going to happen this season.
The last time the club were in league one a comprehensive plan was put in place to ensure the club would return to the championship, the plan was devised and implemented by Peter Varney and Steve Kavanagh, who had a very competent senior management team in place across both the football and non football activities at the club.
I hope that a similar plan is already in place for next season, although I fear that this may not be the case with this regime.
Henderson ... Championship | Dmitrovic ... Europe | Bauer ... Germany / Portugal | Teixeira ... United States | Motta ... Italy | Johnson ... Who cares | Sarr ... Greece / Network / France | Gudmundsson ... Championship / Europe | Diarra ... France / Retire | Kashi ... France | Ceballos ... Network | Bergdich ... Network | Watt ... Championship | Tucudean ... Free Transfer | Vetokele ... Belgium