Probably the same "we" you talked about when saying "we" didn't think Davis, JWP, Long, etc were good enough. Bloody typical that. Ok for you to use that in a debate, but not someone else.
Pleased with this news - we have few options in terms of game-changers and the statistics show the worth of having Tadic at Saints. Hopefully under CP he will blossom into an even better player.
It was! Look again where you quoted me 20 minutes after I posted. You must have been on the home brew early
Nope. Because I happen to know it's the some of the same people in this thread that are happy about extending Tadic. Why wouldn't they be? They want more attacking options/a greater threat, therefore it does no good to lose a decent attacking player. Except we wouldn't actually lose Tadic. I don't want Tadic et al. off the team, I just don't think we need to extend them. The fact is, if we bring in an additional attacking piece, plus the youngsters from the academy we want to integrate into the first team, plus the goal of bringing in 1-2 additional young players, then some players are going to have to move out. We are signing veterans at the same time we are going for a youth movement. It seems a bit contradictory. If we're having a competition for first team spots, then IMO we should wait to see who steps up and offer that guy the big contract. All of the things people are talking about as far as stability, etc. I agree that those are good things. But there's a flip side as well, in that you are committing a lot of future money. If Tadic's salary is now 350k a week, would anyone consider it a "victory" that we kept him? Or that he's a loyal player when in fact he's just taking advantage of a ridiculous offer? But people aren't even asking about the money. It's like the more extensions the better, which is silly. If all of these extensions are modest, and we're being given a hometeam discount then that's fantastic business. But somehow I doubt that. Given the club's general fiscal constraint I doubt we are spending ourselves into financial trouble, but we may end up with a weaker side than we'd like in a year or two. On an individual basis, there isn't a whole lot to criticize about these deals without knowing the extension terms. And I agree we need stability, and that our current pay structure was too low, and that with the money coming in from TV we should be handing some of it out to players. I'm not arguing "never hand out extensions ever" or "Tadic doesn't deserve an extension." I'm just saying 8 in one season is a lot. We don't have the resources that other teams have. If we are going to pay our players the same as they pay theirs, we can't compete. We have to be tight with our money.
You don't know that. It's perfectly reasonable to expect that a player with two years left on his contract could agitate for a move if his current club is unwilling to offer him better terms. Tadić himself said there were other possibilities.
If you extend the contract for a player that you like, you may keep him longer or sell him for a higher price. Win, win. The only way you lose is if he is useless or becomes useless...a small risk with a decent player.
We aren't paying them the same that top clubs are, but we aren't exactly minnows, either. Let's say that each of the eight players extended has received a 20k p/w raise...that's a grand total of 8.3m in extra spending per year, setting aside the one-off fees and bonuses. Meanwhile, our revenues this year will be up by 40-50m. We can afford it and then some.
I would add that these things can snowball if you aren't careful. Our midfield looked much better when Hojbjerg came on. So if that continues, than Hojbjerg will look at how much he is making vs the guy he displaced in midfield, and that the fact that that guy got an extension when he looks for an improved contract. Also, the fact that we can afford is not the same as it being the best move. We pissed away a lot of money on say, Ramirez and Osvaldo and it didn't drive us to bankruptcy or get us relegated. But, if we could have that money back, I think we'd take it. And finally, I think that the amount could well be greater than what you posted. I suspect that these contracts involve both a pay hike AND an extension. Paying Tadic an extra 20k this year and next is that big a deal, compared to possibly paying Tadic 50k a year to ride the pine in the two years following. I also don't expect perfection. Some players will pan out, and some won't. Not every deal has to work out in our favor. Every club carries some bad contracts, you just want the good ones to outweigh the bad. But I will give you a ton of credit here for at least throwing out some figures and evincing the understanding that we shouldn't automatically be of a mindset of "Hey, the more extensions the better! Loyalty! Showing up the big clubs! Stability!" All those things have a positive value, but if the cost is greater than the expected value for us, it's still a bad deal. I postulated a preposterous 500k/week extension to Caulker for a reason. If you want to raise the point that hey, probably most of these extensions were fairly modest and worth it, that's reasonable. But I have a problem with the "brook no dissent" club. Tell me how much we are paying Tadic, VVD, Davis, Long, etc. and I'll tell you whether I think it was worth it, and maybe we agree to disagree.
They are both extensions and raises. But just as we're probably talking about probably ~10m a year in new spending (averaging the bonuses/fees over the length of the deals), we're also looking at that 40-50m in extra revenue each and every year. And the size of the raises, if kept rational (and we're still mid-pack-at-best in wages, I'd wager) also can pay for themselves pretty easily. Signing Wanyama to an extension early probably would have increased his eventual transfer fee by quite a bit more than the increased spend would have cost. Signing Mane to a longer deal likely would have allowed us to hang on to him deeper into the summer and get a better return. As for Hojbjerg...if he looks at their contracts in a year or two and wants to get an extra 1m-1.5m a year and is willing to sign a VVD-style six-year deal? Perfect. Gives us a much better chance of keeping him for more than a couple seasons. We are not the Little Sisters of the Poor here. We're probably one of the 30 richest clubs in the world. We have no fears concerning FFP, we have a fairly small squad, and we aren't free spenders on transfers. To combine those things with nickle-and-diming our best players would leave us with a constant churn of selling out of necessity as contracts wind down, and sooner or later we'd fail. Penny wise, pound foolish.
Fair enough, but just to be clear my concern has never been not spending, but spending efficiently. We have money, and we should spend it on players. I'm in agreement with you there. But if we were to take let's say the 8.3m you postulate, that might get us 2-3 decent young players who in 2018 might be better, or at least a better value than Davis. Most likely those young players will be worse in 2016, and if we fall back in the table then it becomes difficult to attract or keep those young players. So I get that there is a trade-off. But still, even in our meltdown summer we didn't lose 8 first teamers. And we bounced back to be even better. Moreover many of the players we did lose were on new deals with time left in their contracts so it didn't help us much in terms of keeping them (though we did probably get more money for them allowing us to restock). I mean, we definitely don't want to do that every year but I think the margin for safety is greater than people seem to think.
If you're talking about spending efficiently, then maths matters. If a player is worth £20m with three or more years left on his contract, £15m with two years and, say, £8m with one year, then extending a contract by two years with an increase of £20K a week (£1m a year) is a no-brainer. You're paying out far less in increase than you'd lose if his value declined. It would be madness not to extend. It would be ludicrous to suggest that it was bad business. (You may well disagree with my valuations but you'd have to get to some seriously tragic valuations for the maths not to stack up) Vin
That doesn't really make sense. First of all, I assume it is an extension AND a salary increase. So unless the guy is playing for free, then the additional cost during the extra years is not 20k, but the full price of 20k plus what they are making now. Second, it's foolish to assume that player transfer value is only contingent upon their remaining salary years. That's much less of a factor than level of production/wage. Let's take a simple case. For the sake of argument let's assume that Davis is washed up at the age of 33. Not saying it will happen, but I think we could agree it is certainly within the realm of possibility. His value in the transfer market at that point would be 0. If you are paying him 40k a week that year, then you lost 2m that year. Another one: What if Jay Rodriguez's knee is crocked and because of that he keeps suffering various injuries, can't stay on the pitch, and is not effective when he plays. So again let's call him close to 0m in the transfer market and 0m worth of production. When we signed him to an extension, it was to fend off supposed interest from Tottenham. So let's say we could have transferred him for 7m, and obviously we'd have been free of his wages as he was no longer our player. Instead, we signed him for say, 40k a year for 4 years. So receiving 7m, we are paying 8m. That's a -15m swing. So yes it is easily possible to lose money on an extension. It happens all the time.
You will lose on some who get crocked, but I'm willing to assume that the club are astute and are doing these extensions because they see it as financially sound. Of course they are only professionals who are actually running a football club............
The most efficient thing to do, then, would be to only sign players to one-year deals who are available on frees. If they're good, sell them in January. If they aren't or get injured, let them walk at the end of the year.
This seems like a rather unfair twist of my argument. I'm only pointing out that there are bad extensions, and they are not uncommon. That hardly implies that ALL extensions are bad. I feel like I've been willing to acknowledge that there are good and bad extensions, that every extension had pluses and minuses. In the face of a lot of opposition that refuses to entertain that an extension can ever be bad, and the more you sign the better off you are. I'm not even demanding that every extension we make is a good one. I'm not particularly mad about Rodriguez getting one. It was worth the shot due to his upside. And we don't know now if his knee is crocked or not. He could go out and score 12 goals this season. All I'm saying is 7 (and apparently we are going for 8) is a lot. That's for me past the point where Saints just get carte blanche. Maybe they are all fine. I don't know. But I'm not automatically "YES! ANOTHER EXTENSION!" Yeah, the board are professionals. And yes, they've done a fantastic job overall. But it's a sports forum, so we discuss things. Otherwise seeing as how none of us are on the board or Premier League soccer players we should all shut up, and this board doesn't need to exist.
