Thanks for that, good post! Managers get some things right an others wrong I guess. Looking through that list- Johnson looked a good signing at the time O'Hara/ Hammill/ Halford too. O'Hara and Johnson were Premierleague buys if memory serves me right. I don't know why clubs like us/ you/ clubs of this ilk spend ridiculous wages on players. Hull paying Jimmy Bullard 42.000 a week. This sort of stuff has to stop!
Totally agree. Clubs like ours are commiting suicide by paying these crazy salaries! Kevin Doyle was on about £40k a week which was totally over the top for a team like us in the 3rd division! It wasn't as if he was setting the division alight either! Jamie O'Hara is on similar money and rotting in our reserves! The manager says he's not fit for goodness sake, but he still gets paid! Quite why our board decided to get rid of Mick I will never understand! OK he made a few bad signings, but if you give managers money they will spend it! I think it will be a while until we are competing in the top 2 divisions again, but until we do please don't come back for Stears, because he is holding our inexperienced defence together at the moment !!
Another great post! I would love to have Stears back here as he was one of the main reasons why we stayed up last season! If you go to some of the Wolves away games then perhaps we can have a beer if you come down to Crawley!
I think Wolves will do quite alright in the championship next season providing you go up. Clubs really do need to adopt the Sunderland wages 50% cut on relegation from the Premiership. I understand ( SADLY ) how clubs can afford to pay average players ridiculous sums in the Prem - however, further down they simply cannot. Too many clubs are getting into one hell of a financial mess. Look at Bolton and Birmingham for example - it's ridiculous. Zigic on £55,000 p/w........ I bet Brum cannot wait to see the back of him come June. I would love more deals to be %%% performance related in the future. I think footballers have things about as good as they ever will at present lower down the pyramid, I can see clubs in the next 5-10 years gain more control regarding wages and contract length. Infact, this has already started. Players like Titus Bramble still without a club. Stephen Hunt taking a while to join us. What is happening with their contract negotiations? Are they being damn greedy with their demands?
A lot of out of contract footballers will have to take drastically reduced wage offers if they want to remain in the game. For many teams in the championship (the smart ones anyway) shopping for Bosmans will be the norm. If you can save on transfer fees then you will be able to offer the player better wages, helping you to secure a better standard of player without spending big on fees. Players themselves will start to realise this and many will let their contracts run down in order to become free agents. Being a free agent will probably help a lot of players get better wages for themselves than if they are involved in a transfer that includes a fee.
Again for me the main problem is that the PL is just a cash cow, meaning there is such a difference between the PL and the championship, if the money was distributed down the leagues this problem wouldn't happen!! As for Mick I think there's some pretty decent players in that list, although probably not a great deal of variation and for what they were it sounds like you paid too much money for what were decent but not outstanding players. From what I saw at his time at Wolves, he did a very good job getting a solid and team together and a very decent championship team which he then kept in the PL but then he spent a load of money and didn't really improve the quality despite spending that extra money.
When you are a team in the championship you need the type of manager and players to get you out. We have that currently in Mick and our hard working team. If you get promoted, then you have to adjust accordingly but we are not there yet. Most of us on here would probably agree that Mick may not be the best at premier league management but we would also all agree that there aren't many people out there better at getting teams there.
Oh I quite agree, his record in this division is one of the best around. I think his style is very effective for the championship but struggles beyond that. Looking at alot of teams in this division the good footballing ones often struggle to get out, the team who wins the league is rarely a really good team, they're just consistent but then in general those teams who get out of this division by being consistent don't set the PL alight whereas those who perhaps get out of the division playing good football seem to often fair better in the PL. For me if you want to aspire to be a really good team you have to try to play good posession football as getting your players to play that way means your players are going to develop far more and you will be able to cope with the better teams, for me that has to be aspiration. Why do we want our academy players to be comfortable on the ball and play good football, so they develop in to better footballers that's why, so really we should aspire to continue that into the first team.
