he has no luck here. Looked bad from his reaction when he went down. With Downes coming in and Charles looking impressive in his brief appearances thus far, it will be more difficult for him to get back in the team on his return too.
Reading the posts on this thread I think some people need a dose of reality. Relegation has left us with a ~£100m loss in income from dropping down to the Championship. The sales of JWP, Lavia, Salisu so far have been to balance the books and I suspect a few more will be needed to plug the £100m hole. Any signings we make in the next few weeks will be loans or cheap options, unless we can offload more of the high earners that have become financial liabilities in the Championship - Tall Paul being one. The signings made in January, in desperation to remain in the PL (with the exception of Charlie Alcaraz), were woeful. I suspect they were made based on judgement by Ankerson and Kraft rather than well researched data from the black box, either that or the black box is broken! How else would anyone think a tall, clumsy striker with two left feet from the Belgian league was going to score goals in the PL?? Thank goodness Jason Wilcox is here to offer guidance, but I wouldn’t expect miracles or much money being spent in the next few weeks. Loans or cheap signings will be the order of the day.
Completely disagree with this. With parachute payments as well we will be able to afford at least one or two decent money signings. We signed Charles for 12mill before we sold anyone. If we can get McCarthy's wages off the books as well as JWP's we will be in decent financial shape.
Parachute payments are ~£40m in the first year of the Championship compared to receiving ~£100m from coming last in the PL. Our commercial revenue will drop considerably in the Championship (sponsorship, marketing, match day income etc will all be less) and our wage bill from an inflated squad is going to hurt. This has to be balanced before player signings. Look at the state Leeds are in and that’s after they were taken over with fresh investment. Even Leicester haven’t spent lots after the sales of Maddison & Barnes. The reality of relegation means our cloth has to be cut accordingly.
Definitely loan deals to be had, even if we are skint as you suggest. Burnley got promoted using the loan system. Surprised at how slow we are being with incomings tbh. Expected a player or 2 in for Plymouth
If this were true then every relegated club that didn’t go straight back up would have gone out of business in short order. And it hasn’t happened As was discussed here - our sales are going to be a record for the division. No club has ever generated 100m in player sales in the first year after relegation. Only a couple have every got close. We’ve also apparently halved our wage bill which generates savings on 40-48 on the gross numbers (I assume those are higher because of NI as well?) So these sales aren’t purely to plug a hole. But are partially. There is no denying that we won’t be spending 100% (or probably even 50%) of our transfer income
A lot of players have relegation clauses in their contracts where wages are cut I believe. We still need to reduce the squad I agree but we can't wait on adding players otherwise we'll miss out entirely.
We are likely to take £150m-£250m in fees this window. So far we have spent £10/£15m on Charles. Even if we spent 30% that would be some massive signings in the coming weeks.
This is why I was baffled to see the responses to suggestions that we need to bring in Downes and one other with the departure of JWP and Lavia. We can’t go a whole season not expecting injuries and suspensions but some were saying that if we bring in more depth then it would push our existing players It’s why our central defender looks quite precarious as well
It is a long window. I would suggest we will be fairly active in the market over the next three weeks. We still have a lot of uncertainty about who will go and who will stay. But, more importantly, I feel the kind of players we want may be waiting to see which premier league teams move for them. The last week everything will kick off - and hopefully we will be happy with what we get.
