From what I can interpret from all the various quotes etc , The contracts for the "star" players were not negotiated at the time , as the club had the choice of spending all the remaining money renewing contracts (at higher prices) or keeping some of the budget back to purchase loans if required. I think this paid off e.g. do you think we would have got to the promised land without the help of Borini? I am sure Dai and Phil will not agree , and think that we should have spent the remaining budget renewing contracts. Thus we would have been able to sell assets in the future rather than letting them go for free. this would have made us a few million at least - BUT would we have attained the 90 million windfall?? Anyway - bored of this now so will not comment anymore on players who do not play for us anymore. Lets concentrate on SWANSEA CITY for the 2011/12 season and keep the reflections of past issues for when we want to be nostalgic.
It's not a case of having a go Rhysj. it's just a case of being objective, on the issue of our contract policy, if your happy with it, then fine, but I am not, we seem to be rather inept at times, and it's my view we need to tighten things up. I've made my point in previous posts clear, and I'm not repeating myself, but it does seem with some on here, that the club can do no wrong, and that approach is flawed, you can't learn from mistakes, if you deceive yourself into thinking there are none, time for our contract policy to be smarter, and not let these players run down they're contracts, and go to other clubs on a free, and while I accept, what Hacker had said was a probable reason, the board should have realised that Pratley was a key player, and should have sorted the issues out, we can't afford to lose players like this. just my view of course, we are allowed to have one, aren't we Rhysj?............. please log in to view this image
Exactly, I've tried that discussion with Dai before, he just flatly refuses to believe HJ doesnt have £10m stashed in a mattress somewhere.
There probably isn't a soul around who knows " Our Contract policy " , outside the offices , but a lot of people want it fixed . Contract talks are different with every contract so unless someone knows the absolute " Sauce " on a certain contract , it means little as they know little IMO
I think that is pure supposition, are we saying that we froze new contracts because of lack of funds for one or two loan signings, can't believe that? If that was the case why wasn't that explained to Pratley, yet we were still able to offer him a great deal this season, and sign Borini and the boy from Ipswich so that blows that argument out of the water!........ please log in to view this image
It's not supposition, it's reality. We just about broke even financially last season, had we paid more on wages to current players we would have had to have made a loss to sign the loanees. And I'm sure it was explained in full to Pratley, after all why would we not give him every good reason? The deal offered to him was back in September, the loanees didnt come in until January (i.e. after the deal was withdrawn, hence one or the other). Any other things you need pointing out?
Can't believe we're spending this much time typing about one of last season's bench players .... but can't resist the urge ... Perhaps it was all explained to Pratley or maybe to his agent who spun it differently to DP. It makes no difference ... by his own admission it's all about him and by his own admission a "fantastic" contract was presented to him a year ago. He chose not to sign. WTF. What else do we have to do - put the little prima donna at the head of every other club priority, perhaps he was so self-absorbed he was oblivious to the fact that we were yet again about to start a season without a manager, or perhaps the word fantastic has changed its definition in the last year or so and we just badly came up short on contract value. Last season he was a bench player. Bolton have chosen to sign, as their first signing of the close season, a player who was a bench player in the Championship, whilst our club is in Barcelona trying to sign last season's top scorer in La Liga's second tier from the number one club in the World ... and as of this morning we're still not done with Senna who clearly isn't happy with whatever was in Villarreal's latest offer. Much has been said about challenge and "big club" bs from both DP and DDV. Wolves ... the "big club" in the "big city", can't even find the cash to pony up for Bertrand's loan fee. Bolton sign a bench player - now there's ambition for you. And we're all typing about a bench player that got his balls in a twist over timing and priority.
yankee, you mention bolton signing a bench player and us going for a boy from barcelona, as if we're some sort of super club, we failed to attract soriano because we would'nt pay his demands, same as senna,de vries and pratley, we're offering less money than blackpool were last season. there's no way a player like that is going to come here for 10-15 grand a week for one year.
I for one am glad we are not willing to pay inflated wages. I want to ensure my club is here in 10 years time. Some people have short memories.
As reported (http://www.skysports.com/story/0,19528,12876_7021183,00.html, http://www.thisissouthwales.co.uk/Swans-Barca-man-doubt/story-12883019-detail/story.html), we did not conclude a deal with Soriano because the agent's fees were not acceptable; but it appears that this deal is not dead yet. Same with Senna, apparently he has still not accepted a new contract with his old club, so I am presuming that whatever our offer was has some value to it - again that deal is not dead yet. And I am not claiming that we are "some sort of super club", but actions do speak and while we are clearly hunting and gathering to improve our squad and build towards staying in the Prem through the addition of proven quality and talent, we're being put down by those that leave us for, and I am paraphrasing, lacking ambition, blah, blah, blah. It's absurd. I don't think there have been any firm quotes in any media report that state the weekly wage that was being offered to DDV or DP or Senna or anybody else for that matter.
i'm not saying we're not ambtious because we're going for some tidy player's, but it's a bit pointless going for tidy player's if then you won't pay what they want, it's just wasting eveyone's time, take that soriano deal, broke down because swansea would'nt pay the agent fees, how much were his fees??? i'd be very surprised if it was more than a couple of hundred grand at most, this is how football works and the sooner jenkins and co realise this the better, look what happened the other day with ipswich, i wonder sometimes if our board got a f****** clue what they doing.
So you say Hacker, care to provide any statements from Jenkins to that effect? Because if he has stated as much then that's something I've missed, not seen anything of the sort! Regarding the issue of wages, just maybe we would be able to fund some of these demands, if we didn't give away our best players so often! Just a thought............. please log in to view this image
doctor love, paying players what they WANT is the quickest way I know of running this club into bankruptcy. Thank God Huw has got more sense than that. If we can't meet player's/agent's demands, so be it. What do they care if we go bust? They'll just trundle off to the next big contract and won't give a damn about the grief and heartache of we supporters who will be left to survey the devastation of our club. NO PLAYER ON EARTH IS WORTH THAT! Agreed this might mean we come straight down. If we do, we will still be in a far better position than we have ever been in financial terms and, for a change, we would be one of the big-hitters in the Championship instead of competing on a shoe-string budget. We might well even go straight back up again. Yo-yo club? Better that than no club at all. Also, don't forget the new regulations coming into effect regarding the wages to income ratio etc. We have to make sure that we will be able to comply with these. Many clubs will struggle, perhaps some fatally, so we may as well cut our cloth accordingly here and now. I believe that the time is coming when these ridiculously inflated wages will come to an end - the game and the supporters just cannot sustain these levels for much longer. People are becoming more and more resentful about having to pay through the nose just to line the pockets of average players, many of whom make more in one week than some supporters can earn in a year of hard, honest toil. As far as I'm concerned, I think we should pay the maximum that we can AFFORD. If that's not enough to sustain even a lowly place in the Premiership, tough. I would rather have a club to support for years to come than go bust paying stupid wages. Rock on, Huw and the Board, what you are doing makes sense.
If Huw and co meet enough players, there will be one or two out there genuinely up for the challenge of keeping the Swans in the Premiership for the sake of the achievement. If they excel, they're simply going to move on to bigger and better things, and good on them if they do, but the board are absolutely right in their approach. Soriano, for example, has probably never heard of Swansea the place or Swansea the football club. He probably thought "new Premiership team, loads of money surely" but Huw would have laid that to rest swiftly. The players are there, I'm sure, it's just a case of sifting through all the money grabbers to find them.
Hacker I stand corrected, I've only just read the press statement on Orlandi, and can see where your coming from now, think this statement from Huw clarifies things as far as I'm concerned: "Improving and extending certain players' contracts well in advance is something we can now look into thanks to our Premier League status," insisted Jenkins. "Over the last few years we have been asked by supporters why the club did not do it, but the simple explanation is that we were not in a financial position to do so. "The budget was set to compete in the Championship, so any further money spent on securing certain players' contracts earlier would have jeopardised certain signings along the way. "An example of that is Fabio Borini. We budgeted well and that allowed us to add a quality player like Fabio to the team for the final push. - Huw Jenkins That's good enough for me, and let's hope we can now continue to protect our greatest assests on the field, with our new found financial status, because it has been painful to see us lose these quality players we develop, let's hope that is now at an end!............... please log in to view this image
Phil very well said, at least you are man enough to look at both sides of it, then come to a conclusion of the reality of doing business as a football club. I am nort always backing the club, though it does seem like it sometimes, I just think that we have got to take it on board that they really know what they are doing in the liberty.
Thank you. To be honest it's not just us, lots of clubs are finding themselves in the same position now regarding contracts and it's only going to get more common when clubs start operating under the various fair play systems they seem to be adopting. Hopefully players will realise this and adjust their demands somewhat (most demand decent raises for resigning early whether they deserve them or not) but I wouldn't hold my breath on that.
There's no point in us learning from "mistakes" made at the club as we don't run it. I think it's the boards job to worry about that not us. All we can do is speculate.
