I would also almost take that Beth...Chair and Eze seemed to have difficulty playing together, so I am hoping Eze will flourish further when Chair has been sold. I believe Amos could develop into a very steady player behind Eze The deal I am looking for would be 20million plus Amos plus Clarke (assuming no health issues)
It took Freeman going for Eze to really flourish, he always looked like he knew he was second fiddle. Get the same vibes with Chair and Eze. May not be doom and gloom if Chair can kick on but big pressure.
I actually disagree with the Eze and Chair combination. Some of our best play is played in a triangle of Eze, Chair and Manning. I think both players are quick thinkers and intelligent on the ball. The deal Beth mentioned is, in my opinion, totally unrealistic. 20m plus (10m clarke) plus whatever they price Amos at. You're talking a 40m package. Levy would never ever do that!
I actually didn't think we were relegation contenders back then. In fact, I've not felt it since the premier league. But this is different, we're not losing key players amongst a squad with a decent amount of experience. We're losing our best players who themselves don't have much experience, amongst a squad with maybe lower overall experience than any other team in the championship.
It depends who we bring in. But it is why I don't want us to sell our very best players Eze or BOS, but sell some of the others like Manning, Chair, a Keeper who should raise some cash and with this and any more cash we may have within FFP, strengthen where we need to - a striker (Moore?)central midfield, centre back, (Leischner is still on our books if not a Warburton favourite) left back with some power, hight, and experience, down the middle at least.
This is fine on one hand, as long as you're happy for Eze and BOS to go on a free transfer in 12 and 24 months respectively. Most fans seem to think that would be ludicrous and therefore accept the rationale for us selling them. The uproar if we pursue that strategy and both go on a free would be deafening. It would also send out the wrong signal to any decent young player tempted to join us - instead of thinking 'they develop you and then let you progress when the time is right' those young players will think 'they develop you and then hold you back'. Sure, there is an outside bet that by holding onto Eze and BOS we sneak into the playoffs next year, but we wouldn't be able to afford to strengthen in key areas like defence or attack, so that's highly unlikely. And that kind of gamble is what got us in this mess in the first place.
Obviously if we are to keep Eze and BOS we need to offer them new contracts they will sign, especially BOS whose current contract terminates next summer. If he won't we couldn't keep him. But keeping them would be showing the sort of ambition that will attract good young players. We will be able to strengthen the team with experience and physicality by selling promising players who there must be doubt are going to make it as far as the PL, and certainly in Chairs case lack the physicality required in the Championship, at least in our team not blessed with much hight and muscle. Then we have 1 Keeper at least we could possibly get money for, maybe others. Plus the FFP situation was supposed to give us some leeway to spend this summer. That may of course have been reduced by Covid, but will also have reduced the price of players we need.
Sorry Oslo, as I know it comes from a good place of wanting us to hold onto our best and progress, but I think this is fantasy stuff. In their last accounts Palace, to pick one example, spent £119m on wages. To make the maths simple, divide that evenly by their 25 man named squad and you get £4.76m per annum or £90k per week. So even a more junior squad member at palace could easily be on £50k per week. QPR's wage bill in the last set of accounts was £24m. It will be a lot less than that now as that covers last season and we have since got high earners like Freeman, Leistner, Luongo, Smithies etc off the books and replaced them with youngsters. But let's be generous and stick with the £24m figure. That averages across a 25 man squad to £960k per year or £18.4k per week. And as I understand it our current wage cap is lower than that. The club simply can't afford to pay the sort of wages to our highest earner than Palace pays to their most junior squad member. If you were Eze, why would you sign a new deal QPR when you could get 100k a week at Palace in 18 months? I really don't like that this is the reality, but it is. And the only way we will get back to competing in the top division is through signing and developing young talent and then selling them on at the point of maximum profit.
Yes of course, but if you do this religiously with every player we will as Awjm suggested, be in serious danger of dropping into League 2. It is probably possible for our Club to keep our very best players longer, make exceptions on their earnings, and still bring through young talent and sell them on when they are close to their highest value. We need to show more ambition, we've been wallowing in the lower Championship for what 5 seasons I think now. There are a few I have mentioned we could sell now in previous posts, and others like Kakay, Shodipo, Masterson and maybe 1 or 2 who have only come off the Bench briefly so far, Bettache, Ramkilde, Gubbins, who can develop further before sale. But to get anywhere we should be keeping the very, very best and building around them.
Sorry to press the point, but when you say "make exceptions on their earnings", what do you mean? Compete with Palace and pay Eze 100k a week? Better Palace and pay him £120k a week given that he will be forgoing premier league football to play with us? Not only can we not afford that anyway, but what then happens if that player gets injured for four months? What happens to any hope of squad harmony? We saw how badly it ended for us last time when a few star players out earned the rest of the squad put together. The reality is that we lose £10m a year* before we kick a ball. Selling a third choice keeper and a winger like Shodipo who has hardly started in the championship isn't going to cover a tenth of that. This is the cold harsh financial reality we face and we really don't have much of a choice about what to do about it. *And it's taken years of hard work to get that figure so low. Obviously that would shoot up if we start paying players hundreds of thousands per week.
Forget the fantasy football idea that we have money to spend on players and wages. 20/21 will be another season where we will be working with just about the lowest budget in the league. Eze and BOS will be gone, probably Manning too and most of that money will be put towards our running costs. Warburton will be lucky to see a quarter of the income from sales, that is just the harsh reality of where we now are in the grand scheme of things. I believe Eze will go to Spurs in a 20M plus Amos deal. Warburton seems to like Amos despite what we all think. So, we will probably end up with around £7.5M to use in the transfer market. My main hope is that we dont spend that on geriatrics as we have done in the past with signings like Cameron and Wallace. I would like to see us invest in some youth from League One and Two that Warburton could seriously develop. The times I watched that football there were some very good youngsters and teams playing nice football. Clubs like Oxford United and Shrewsbury Town have some good teenagers that could develop and become very good players in the Championship and maybe beyond. My other wish is that we actually get someone decent in on loan. Wells was great but Hugill no better than ok and the others...well how many minutes did Clarke play?
No of course I wasn't talking about Palace earnings, I was talking about making an exception or 2 on our QPR earnings for Eze and BOS, and on a salary cap you mentioned. Nor was I proposing selling Shodipo now but including him in the group of young players who we can possibly develop further for future sale. We have to maintain good financial control, but also show some ambition, take chances where we can and the risk not too big. We looked to have totally failed to take an opportunity of getting into the top 6 after the restart where the likes of Cardiff and Swansea both of whom we absolutely hammered at our best, have ended up. We look to be blowing an opportunity of selling BOS at his max current level when we accept an offer from Bruges which a few PL and top Championship Clubs appear on the rumour mill to be all to happy to pay, indicating there could be a bidding war and we could get more. If we let BOS, Eze and Manning go this summer for give away fees, we will be in the sh*te next season without some seriously good rebuilding in a short summer break. The Club is supposedly talking a minimum of £20 m for Eze. As said I'd prefer we keep him longer, his value could be higher in January with still 18 months on his contract, but at least that valuation shows some bottle, unlike the give away for BOS.
Worth remembering that fees lower down the pyramid will be lower now too. If we can get the recruitment vaguely right there’s value to be had. We can start by pillaging Charlton. Lockyer has a relegation release clause and he can actually organise a defence.
But my point was that to make "an exception" that will be accepted by them we have to offer a comparable amount to what they can get elsewhere. What amount could we offer as "an exception" that would get accepted? Thankfully we agree on Eze - he needs to be going for big ££, and I suspect he will.
I dont think we know the detail of our wages let alone Palace, I dont anyway. If we can show Eze, BOS and others that we have serious ambition of getting into the PL season after this, and they are happy playing together with us, perhaps we dont have to bankrupt ourselves to keep them. As said we need to add strength, muscle to the team which can be found in the lower Leagues at not huge sums now, and we have a few saleable skilful assets without that physical presence we could sell.
I think you must be in cloud cuckoo land if you think the club aren't planning to cash in on ANY of our assets if the offer is right. It's vital for us to sell these assets, and get as a high a price as possible, to enable us to rebuild for next season. Realistically, we're a few years away from a push at promotion and we need to gradually build up our squad to be ready for the challenge when we are at that level. Selling, and then reinvesting in the squad is the only way forward, as unpalatable as it may be to the supporters.
I've given you the cold hard facts of our wage bill and the Palace one. They are in the annual accounts of both clubs. I think I've made a pretty clear and evidenced based case but won't pursue further given we'll start going round in circles.
You not reading what I wrote then Steels. Cloud cookoo land must be up above Scotland these days. I specifically mentioned in a post just yesterday selling Chair, Manning, one of our Keepers, 3 of them are probably saleable, and any others we can if the price is right. But it's been 5 years now, we need to show ambition when we can, so its not yet another 5 years. Sell and reinvest yes but not the whole f***** team and not the best if we can avoid it, and certainly not at levels we can do better on.
