The Robinson mood music since returning from Belgium seems to me very different than before he left. It feels a lot like equivocation, and very particularly he is expected to justify the departure of Lookman after Katrien Meire assured us he would stay, with the 'can't stand in the lads way/he is a target for thugs' rhetoric. Robinson has revived the youngsters being promoted angle. Aribo is a good player but Robinson is heaping pressure on him and Konsa at the moment. We don't know what will unfold this window, but I certainly get the feeling we are entering the 'you are the coach, these are the players, make it work Karl, Driesen will help you unless you are too stupid to listen to him' territory. Robinson said on more than one occasion he needs two in midfield, a number 10, a singer and a striker, this using addition to knowing what we already have here, and the injury list. Just recently he has also intimated player departures too. It feels like we are in a place we have been before, a heavenly place for agents to unload dross.
What's Robbie Williams doing these days ?
Stealing a living, so should fit in down at the Valley...
Very "interesting" times. We should have a clearer picture this window. RD is a contrary old bastard so whatever way he is extricated from our club will be painful, a death from a thousand cuts. After my visit to the Valley yesterday, it is moribund and dead and the fact that we performed well for 50 minutes and scored some good goals barely lifted the frost that hangs around our great club.
My wish for 2017 is still for this lot to be gone, by any measures.
Makes sense not to bandy about your budget as clubs will ask for higher fees. Just have to hope that a portion of the Lookman fee is spent sensibly on strengthening the squad. What that budget looks like shouldn't be public knowledge. Most clubs would put some of it aside towards covering costs too.
I said something to this effect yesterday, it makes sense to underplay your transfer budget or else all the fees for your targets go up.
Duchatelet expects his managers to work on the budgets he sets for them. In giving a severely restricted budget, Duchatelet maintains tight control. The manager is then only able to accept the bargain basement punts ./ suggestions of the Regime scouts. Youngsters have to be thrown in. Duchatelet can then pretend the manager has some say / control of the players brought into the club.
The result so far is gaps & lack of balance in the squad & the manager is under immediate pressure. The provision of a UK manager & more UK players doesn't alter the flawed assumptions at the heart of Duchatelet's strategy.
But then don't all clubs have a restricted budget? Looking at the teams above us in the table, I imagine the likes of Fleetwood and Rochdale will have budgets a fraction of ours. When we sold Lee Bowyer for £2.5m, we nearly lost Kinsella as we weren't prepared to pay £150k for him!
The biggest failing under RD hasn't been the size of the recruitment/wages budget, but the absolute dross we've wasted money on. Those expensive flops that we're we're still paying for, or have had to write off.
Again we come back to what RD's end game is. Now I very much see it as minimising his losses. To get to the promised land of the Premiership will involve him spending more money than he's willing to put in.
If he's covering a loss of £1m a month, it will be very hard to envisage pumping extra money in to get us into the Prem in 2018/19 at the earliest. And considering how much money Brighton have had to spend so far and they may just get there this year, it's a bloody long and expensive road.
We also know he's frugal. In addition I think he's the sort of boss that believes in giving you a budget and you make that work. In his head he probably thinks I gave them network players, I let them sign Holmes and Magennis, that's enough, why are they coming to me for more.
There's also been an element of him not correctly dealing with why there has been so much wastage (KM's ineptness). Then there's this perverse social club fantasy he has.
In short, I think any money we get now for player sales will cover losses. He will sell up, the only question is when he realises he has to write off a huge chunk of what he's invested. Pig headedness and pride is in the way at the moment
I think roland believes he can get us back to the Championship by making do. Sell lookman £5million covers roughly half year losses. Maybe two new players in and if we then manage play offs maybe promotion then his a very happy man
Again we come back to what RD's end game is. Now I very much see it as minimising his losses. To get to the promised land of the Premiership will involve him spending more money than he's willing to put in.
If he's covering a loss of £1m a month, it will be very hard to envisage pumping extra money in to get us into the Prem in 2018/19 at the earliest. And considering how much money Brighton have had to spend so far and they may just get there this year, it's a bloody long and expensive road.
We also know he's frugal. In addition I think he's the sort of boss that believes in giving you a budget and you make that work. In his head he probably thinks I gave them network players, I let them sign Holmes and Magennis, that's enough, why are they coming to me for more.
There's also been an element of him not correctly dealing with why there has been so much wastage (KM's ineptness). Then there's this perverse social club fantasy he has.
In short, I think any money we get now for player sales will cover losses. He will sell up, the only question is when he realises he has to write off a huge chunk of what he's invested. Pig headedness and pride is in the way at the moment
I think roland believes he can get us back to the Championship by making do. Sell lookman £5million covers roughly half year losses. Maybe two new players in and if we then manage play offs maybe promotion then his a very happy man
But even if we get into the championship he'll still be running us at a loss. He'd be very silly to rely on us turning over a Lookman or a Gomez every year. We've had a flush recently re: youngsters and it looks like Aribo could be another, but it's hit and miss whether or not we can produce these every year
Again we come back to what RD's end game is. Now I very much see it as minimising his losses. To get to the promised land of the Premiership will involve him spending more money than he's willing to put in.
If he's covering a loss of £1m a month, it will be very hard to envisage pumping extra money in to get us into the Prem in 2018/19 at the earliest. And considering how much money Brighton have had to spend so far and they may just get there this year, it's a bloody long and expensive road.
We also know he's frugal. In addition I think he's the sort of boss that believes in giving you a budget and you make that work. In his head he probably thinks I gave them network players, I let them sign Holmes and Magennis, that's enough, why are they coming to me for more.
There's also been an element of him not correctly dealing with why there has been so much wastage (KM's ineptness). Then there's this perverse social club fantasy he has.
In short, I think any money we get now for player sales will cover losses. He will sell up, the only question is when he realises he has to write off a huge chunk of what he's invested. Pig headedness and pride is in the way at the moment
As I understand it, and I may need to refresh my memory, whereas in the Championship RD could simply increase his loans, at this level he can only inject money in exchange for equity. If we don't get promoted this year I can't see him hanging around, but anyway if my memory serves me well there it was always likely Lookman would go in January when we could in theory get peak value for him.
As I (and it seems the Football League) understand it, that is not the case. Here's an extract of what I posted on some other thread:
"...it's called the Salary Cost Management Protocol. Specifically, and from the EFL web site: These rules require League 1 clubs to limit their spending on players’ wages to 60% of turnover plus 100% of Football Fortune income (e.g. financial donations, transfer income, revenue from cup matches), with a club relegated from the Championship being able to operate at 75% of turnover for a transitional period of one season. (My emphasis)
So, in short, if we got a random £10mn from a player sale, we could spend the lot of it on players wages (if we so wished). I'm not even sure whether any transfer fees out would come into the equation."
So, basically, it's up to the silly old sod to decide how much he wants to spend in the January sales.
Again we come back to what RD's end game is. Now I very much see it as minimising his losses. To get to the promised land of the Premiership will involve him spending more money than he's willing to put in.
If he's covering a loss of £1m a month, it will be very hard to envisage pumping extra money in to get us into the Prem in 2018/19 at the earliest. And considering how much money Brighton have had to spend so far and they may just get there this year, it's a bloody long and expensive road.
We also know he's frugal. In addition I think he's the sort of boss that believes in giving you a budget and you make that work. In his head he probably thinks I gave them network players, I let them sign Holmes and Magennis, that's enough, why are they coming to me for more.
There's also been an element of him not correctly dealing with why there has been so much wastage (KM's ineptness). Then there's this perverse social club fantasy he has.
In short, I think any money we get now for player sales will cover losses. He will sell up, the only question is when he realises he has to write off a huge chunk of what he's invested. Pig headedness and pride is in the way at the moment
As I understand it, and I may need to refresh my memory, whereas in the Championship RD could simply increase his loans, at this level he can only inject money in exchange for equity. If we don't get promoted this year I can't see him hanging around, but anyway if my memory serves me well there it was always likely Lookman would go in January when we could in theory get peak value for him.
As I (and it seems the Football League) understand it, that is not the case. Here's an extract of what I posted on some other thread:
"...it's called the Salary Cost Management Protocol. Specifically, and from the EFL web site: These rules require League 1 clubs to limit their spending on players’ wages to 60% of turnover plus 100% of Football Fortune income (e.g. financial donations, transfer income, revenue from cup matches), with a club relegated from the Championship being able to operate at 75% of turnover for a transitional period of one season. (My emphasis)
So, in short, if we got a random £10mn from a player sale, we could spend the lot of it on players wages (if we so wished). I'm not even sure whether any transfer fees out would come into the equation."
So, basically, it's up to the silly old sod to decide how much he wants to spend in the January sales.
I've done a bit more reading. The constraint is that loans cannot be used to fund the playing squad under FFP rules. In theory Duchatelet could continue to loan against capital projects such as the training ground, but as well as being restricted in salary outlay he is constrained to equity injection or donations only.
From an FFP perspective the playing squad focus covers both the opex element (wages) and the capital asset bit (transfer value). I'd imagine losses arise primarily from the cost of the playing squad, i,e wages, and Duchatelet can't increase debt to cover it. This is surely why Lookman is going, a business focus rather than the altruistic generosity some seem to want to attribute to him.
(Not saying it's reasonable for anyone to demand his generosity to be clear, just making an observation about the 'millions he's put into the club' as some would have you believe).
EDIT: To be entirely clear, I don't think there's anything stopping directors from making loans towards the playing squad per se provided that the FFP parameters are met. So if wages were 50% of turnover, I guess there's some freedom. With TV money and gate money so significantly down, however, it would be some challenge to maintain wages at anything like that level and still have a top six playing budget. Players are amortised and their trading isn't, as I understand it, considered part of turnover.
Again we come back to what RD's end game is. Now I very much see it as minimising his losses. To get to the promised land of the Premiership will involve him spending more money than he's willing to put in.
If he's covering a loss of £1m a month, it will be very hard to envisage pumping extra money in to get us into the Prem in 2018/19 at the earliest. And considering how much money Brighton have had to spend so far and they may just get there this year, it's a bloody long and expensive road.
We also know he's frugal. In addition I think he's the sort of boss that believes in giving you a budget and you make that work. In his head he probably thinks I gave them network players, I let them sign Holmes and Magennis, that's enough, why are they coming to me for more.
There's also been an element of him not correctly dealing with why there has been so much wastage (KM's ineptness). Then there's this perverse social club fantasy he has.
In short, I think any money we get now for player sales will cover losses. He will sell up, the only question is when he realises he has to write off a huge chunk of what he's invested. Pig headedness and pride is in the way at the moment
I think roland believes he can get us back to the Championship by making do. Sell lookman £5million covers roughly half year losses. Maybe two new players in and if we then manage play offs maybe promotion then his a very happy man
But even if we get into the championship he'll still be running us at a loss. He'd be very silly to rely on us turning over a Lookman or a Gomez every year. We've had a flush recently re: youngsters and it looks like Aribo could be another, but it's hit and miss whether or not we can produce these every year
But that's what I think he's trying to do. We're just a little experiment for him. If we make play offs this year with all that's happened Roland's happy. If we go up is his experiment working?
Again we come back to what RD's end game is. Now I very much see it as minimising his losses. To get to the promised land of the Premiership will involve him spending more money than he's willing to put in.
If he's covering a loss of £1m a month, it will be very hard to envisage pumping extra money in to get us into the Prem in 2018/19 at the earliest. And considering how much money Brighton have had to spend so far and they may just get there this year, it's a bloody long and expensive road.
We also know he's frugal. In addition I think he's the sort of boss that believes in giving you a budget and you make that work. In his head he probably thinks I gave them network players, I let them sign Holmes and Magennis, that's enough, why are they coming to me for more.
There's also been an element of him not correctly dealing with why there has been so much wastage (KM's ineptness). Then there's this perverse social club fantasy he has.
In short, I think any money we get now for player sales will cover losses. He will sell up, the only question is when he realises he has to write off a huge chunk of what he's invested. Pig headedness and pride is in the way at the moment
As I understand it, and I may need to refresh my memory, whereas in the Championship RD could simply increase his loans, at this level he can only inject money in exchange for equity. If we don't get promoted this year I can't see him hanging around, but anyway if my memory serves me well there it was always likely Lookman would go in January when we could in theory get peak value for him.
As I (and it seems the Football League) understand it, that is not the case. Here's an extract of what I posted on some other thread:
"...it's called the Salary Cost Management Protocol. Specifically, and from the EFL web site: These rules require League 1 clubs to limit their spending on players’ wages to 60% of turnover plus 100% of Football Fortune income (e.g. financial donations, transfer income, revenue from cup matches), with a club relegated from the Championship being able to operate at 75% of turnover for a transitional period of one season. (My emphasis)
So, in short, if we got a random £10mn from a player sale, we could spend the lot of it on players wages (if we so wished). I'm not even sure whether any transfer fees out would come into the equation."
So, basically, it's up to the silly old sod to decide how much he wants to spend in the January sales.
I've done a bit more reading. The constraint is that loans cannot be used to fund the playing squad under FFP rules. In theory Duchatelet could continue to loan against capital projects such as the training ground, but as well as being restricted in salary outlay he is constrained to equity injection or donations only.
From an FFP perspective the playing squad focus covers both the opex element (wages) and the capital asset bit (transfer value). I'd imagine losses arise primarily from the cost of the playing squad, i,e wages, and Duchatelet can't increase debt to cover it. This is surely why Lookman is going, a business focus rather than the altruistic generosity some seem to want to attribute to him.
(Not saying it's reasonable for anyone to demand his generosity to be clear, just making an observation about the 'millions he's put into the club' as some would have you believe).
EDIT: To be entirely clear, I don't think there's anything stopping directors from making loans towards the playing squad per se provided that the FFP parameters are met. So if wages were 50% of turnover, I guess there's some freedom. With TV money and gate money so significantly down, however, it would be some challenge to maintain wages at anything like that level and still have a top six playing budget. Players are amortised and their trading isn't, as I understand it, considered part of turnover.
It's all quite contrived and complex isn't it? There's some interesting snippets like "The Individual Player Salary Costs of a Professional Under 21 Player are excluded from the Club’s total Player Related Expenditure for the purposes of assessing whether that Club has complied with the SCMP Requirement".
So the costs associated with the likes of Lookman, Konsa and Jay Dasilva, the new loanee from Chelsea, are freebies for the purpose of the rules.
There are other wheezes that can be employed as well. Making Jackson and Solly player/coaches would take half their salaries out of the calculation, for example.
Again we come back to what RD's end game is. Now I very much see it as minimising his losses. To get to the promised land of the Premiership will involve him spending more money than he's willing to put in.
If he's covering a loss of £1m a month, it will be very hard to envisage pumping extra money in to get us into the Prem in 2018/19 at the earliest. And considering how much money Brighton have had to spend so far and they may just get there this year, it's a bloody long and expensive road.
We also know he's frugal. In addition I think he's the sort of boss that believes in giving you a budget and you make that work. In his head he probably thinks I gave them network players, I let them sign Holmes and Magennis, that's enough, why are they coming to me for more.
There's also been an element of him not correctly dealing with why there has been so much wastage (KM's ineptness). Then there's this perverse social club fantasy he has.
In short, I think any money we get now for player sales will cover losses. He will sell up, the only question is when he realises he has to write off a huge chunk of what he's invested. Pig headedness and pride is in the way at the moment
As I understand it, and I may need to refresh my memory, whereas in the Championship RD could simply increase his loans, at this level he can only inject money in exchange for equity. If we don't get promoted this year I can't see him hanging around, but anyway if my memory serves me well there it was always likely Lookman would go in January when we could in theory get peak value for him.
As I (and it seems the Football League) understand it, that is not the case. Here's an extract of what I posted on some other thread:
"...it's called the Salary Cost Management Protocol. Specifically, and from the EFL web site: These rules require League 1 clubs to limit their spending on players’ wages to 60% of turnover plus 100% of Football Fortune income (e.g. financial donations, transfer income, revenue from cup matches), with a club relegated from the Championship being able to operate at 75% of turnover for a transitional period of one season. (My emphasis)
So, in short, if we got a random £10mn from a player sale, we could spend the lot of it on players wages (if we so wished). I'm not even sure whether any transfer fees out would come into the equation."
So, basically, it's up to the silly old sod to decide how much he wants to spend in the January sales.
I've done a bit more reading. The constraint is that loans cannot be used to fund the playing squad under FFP rules. In theory Duchatelet could continue to loan against capital projects such as the training ground, but as well as being restricted in salary outlay he is constrained to equity injection or donations only.
From an FFP perspective the playing squad focus covers both the opex element (wages) and the capital asset bit (transfer value). I'd imagine losses arise primarily from the cost of the playing squad, i,e wages, and Duchatelet can't increase debt to cover it. This is surely why Lookman is going, a business focus rather than the altruistic generosity some seem to want to attribute to him.
(Not saying it's reasonable for anyone to demand his generosity to be clear, just making an observation about the 'millions he's put into the club' as some would have you believe).
EDIT: To be entirely clear, I don't think there's anything stopping directors from making loans towards the playing squad per se provided that the FFP parameters are met. So if wages were 50% of turnover, I guess there's some freedom. With TV money and gate money so significantly down, however, it would be some challenge to maintain wages at anything like that level and still have a top six playing budget. Players are amortised and their trading isn't, as I understand it, considered part of turnover.
There are other wheezes that can be employed as well. Making Jackson and Solly player/coaches would take half their salaries out of the calculation, for example.
Perhaps Ba and Johnson can be classified as groundsmen then...
With £3.75m from Gudmonsson and Cousins and somewhere up to £11m for Lookman + Fox, Roly is MORE than covered this season, so he should be spending some money as he can sell Konsa and Aribo next year!
Comments
Very "interesting" times. We should have a clearer picture this window. RD is a contrary old bastard so whatever way he is extricated from our club will be painful, a death from a thousand cuts. After my visit to the Valley yesterday, it is moribund and dead and the fact that we performed well for 50 minutes and scored some good goals barely lifted the frost that hangs around our great club.
My wish for 2017 is still for this lot to be gone, by any measures.
The biggest failing under RD hasn't been the size of the recruitment/wages budget, but the absolute dross we've wasted money on. Those expensive flops that we're we're still paying for, or have had to write off.
This didn't come from anyone at the club but someone with good contacts.
I made the 5% calculation for comparison. I doubt it is the way RD calculated it but who knows.
I imagine selling Fox will make no difference to the budget but don't know if that is even happening. Lookman hasn't happened, yet, either.
Sell lookman £5million covers roughly half year losses.
Maybe two new players in and if we then manage play offs maybe promotion then his a very happy man
"...it's called the Salary Cost Management Protocol. Specifically, and from the EFL web site: These rules require League 1 clubs to limit their spending on players’ wages to 60% of turnover plus 100% of Football Fortune income (e.g. financial donations, transfer income, revenue from cup matches), with a club relegated from the Championship being able to operate at 75% of turnover for a transitional period of one season. (My emphasis)
So, in short, if we got a random £10mn from a player sale, we could spend the lot of it on players wages (if we so wished). I'm not even sure whether any transfer fees out would come into the equation."
So, basically, it's up to the silly old sod to decide how much he wants to spend in the January sales.
Just as you don't reveal your sources I don't reveal mine but more substantial than that and also three difference sources on the £8m rising to £10m.
Doesn't make it true but more substantial that you overly dismissive comment warranted.
From an FFP perspective the playing squad focus covers both the opex element (wages) and the capital asset bit (transfer value). I'd imagine losses arise primarily from the cost of the playing squad, i,e wages, and Duchatelet can't increase debt to cover it. This is surely why Lookman is going, a business focus rather than the altruistic generosity some seem to want to attribute to him.
(Not saying it's reasonable for anyone to demand his generosity to be clear, just making an observation about the 'millions he's put into the club' as some would have you believe).
EDIT: To be entirely clear, I don't think there's anything stopping directors from making loans towards the playing squad per se provided that the FFP parameters are met. So if wages were 50% of turnover, I guess there's some freedom. With TV money and gate money so significantly down, however, it would be some challenge to maintain wages at anything like that level and still have a top six playing budget. Players are amortised and their trading isn't, as I understand it, considered part of turnover.
We're just a little experiment for him.
If we make play offs this year with all that's happened Roland's happy.
If we go up is his experiment working?
Considering the figures branded about for Lookman, it tells a story in it's own.
So the costs associated with the likes of Lookman, Konsa and Jay Dasilva, the new loanee from Chelsea, are freebies for the purpose of the rules.
There are other wheezes that can be employed as well. Making Jackson and Solly player/coaches would take half their salaries out of the calculation, for example.
And Katrien gets the other couple of million to spend on unwanted, overrated network signings? Is that how it works?
(Based on absolutely nothing, bar my hope)
Do you believe this shower can persuade Everton to put £8m on the table for Lookman, when they could only get 1.5m for Gudmunsson.?
Half of that, I reckon