Good Morning Everyone Paul Heckingbottom has been speaking to the press about our financial position: “It’s an uneven playing field. I’ve known that for a long time and it’s getting moreso with teams coming down, the parachute payment's even bigger, and we’re a club now that doesn't benefit from any of those,” he said. “I don’t know, is it half that do, in the Championship? In terms of budgets and finance, we’re way down the pecking order. “However, if you let that restrict then you’re never going to get anywhere. Teams have done it in the past. Huddersfield (Town) managed it last year, but everything else has to be better. “In recruitment, organisation, the environment, spirit, the mentality and that's not a quick fix. “That’s something that you have to, over time, build and keep making sound long-term decisions to improve things bit-by-bit and then you can compete. “I’m a big believer that you can. All of a sudden, then, it’s irrelevant how many players you’ve got, how much money you spend. “It’s what you’ve got in the building and the belief in everything and everyone that can get you up there challenging.” The Telegraph report that the clubs are planning to write to the authorities about the Portuguese agent's close links to Wolves and how far his influence extends. One of the rivals clubs have apparently written a draft letter to League chief executive Shaun Harvey, and the FA with their concerns over Mendes. Leeds United, Aston Villa and Derby County are named as three of the teams who are keen to see the Football League open up an inquiry. Mendes has several clients at Molienux including head coach Nuno Espirito Santo and star players Ruben Neves and Diogo Jota. The super agent link with Wolves started in July 2016 when the club were brought out by Chinese conglomerate Fosun International completed its £30m takeover. Clubs are now looking to increase the pressure on the governing bodies to take a look at his involvement with Wolves set to win promotion to the Premier League. According to the Telegraph, the senior club figure writes: “Given the broad interpretation of ‘agreement’ in the FA’s regulations, which can be any ‘agreement, arrangement, obligation, undertaking or understanding whether oral or written, formal or informal or otherwise’, I would invite the FA and EFL to consider whether Mr Mendes does indeed materially influence Wolves’s policies or the performance of its teams or players in matches and/or competition.” He adds: “Whilst I accept that an agent, such as Mr Mendes, may seek to influence a club such that it retains one of its clients, the greater the number of clients signed by the club, the greater the agent’s influence over it. In addition to this general principle, there exists, in this particular case, a commercial relationship between Fosun and Gestifute. “In these circumstances, I would also invite the EFL to consider whether Mr Mendes meets the definition of a ‘Relevant Person’ for the purposes of Appendix 3 to Section 7 of the EFL regulations.” Wolves insist that Mendes is only an advisor for the club and that they are complying with the rules. The Football League has stated that it remains satisfied over Mendes’s involvement. The subject is set to be discussed at Thursday’s monthly board meeting with the trio of clubs set to express their concerns to the EFL.
Morning all. Whatever wolves did in the past twelve months can we please repeat it next season #wolvesgettingpromoted
Morning all. Sign that Blackpool guys petition, unless of course we have forgiven the football league.
Morning all. Clubs have written to Shaun Harvey to express concern over Mendes' If Ken Bates passed the Football Leagues scrutiny I can't see anyone on the planet failing.
It didn't take PH long to start playing for time and making all the usual excuses.. "Uneven playing field, long term project. Need time. inherited **** payers". Unfortunately this bloke is right in all that but he is only here as a consequence of it and is not IMO capable of improving things. Hopefully he is a stop gap till the end of the season and we will get someone with a clue in. If not its more of the same for the foreseeable...
PH is stating the obvious regarding the unfair system of rewarding failure, in parachute payments. The system encourages clubs to cheat as getting promotion guarantees £120m even for coming last. All the benefits and increased gates of Premiership footy means extra millions, plus hospitality price increases and merchandise. Massive. Then relegation gets the club another £16m for 4 seasons before a ball is kicked. A sensible club would have contracts with break clauses and escalator contracts guaranteeing that wages fall back to Championship levels. These clubs and we all know them, Stoke, WBA, Swansea, Southampton, Brighton, Burnley, Newcastle are all playing the system and winning, taking them out of our reach even though we have huge gates. This season 50% of the clubs are on parachute payments with most of them capitalising except for Norwich, Hull and Sunderland. Dont rule out Norwich though and Hull are having a rebuild for next season. Cardiff, Villa, Fulham are all still benefiting from parachute payments, Derby have invested big money, along with Wolves who have broken FFP rules, We also have a wages cap so add that with what we have available for transfers we cannot compete for top players. We saw it in January when donkeys like Hugill were attracting over £10m, a league 1 player £6m, and even freebies like Grabban or Afobe we couldnt get due to high wage demands. I believe that Radz is gutted that the season has imploded because he did everything right and even spent £20m on players and thats where the problem is. The quality of some of those players has hurt us and yes they may well come good next season but Orta needs to take some blame along with Tommy. We can slag Orta but dont forget that some of the players who made us look stupid last week were Orta signings. Traore didnt start too well when he arrived but hes different class now. We may be down the bottom of the wages league but we do punch above our weight in that respect. Theres only 2 ways to get out of this league: 1) Invest heavily and gamble with spending big money and wages 2) Get a good manager with a half decent budget. We have a half decent budget but yet to be seen if we have a good manager because so far results are as bad, performance besides Brentford is just as bad. I think if PH doesnt stop the rot the fans will turn on him too by the end of the season. This is the best bunch of players he will have managed and midtable isnt good enough
Morning Glory. what I don't understand is why we cannot get the best out of our players? Take any prior who had been playing for us who then goes to another club. What about Billy Sharp? What about Steve Morrison? What about sol Bamba? Why is this?
Good morning Doc. I know that I am stating the obvious but the parachute payments have not helped Sunderland. They are making it look easy to get out of the championship
Why would a player give his best for a manager that only lasts 10 games? The club under Cellino/ GFH had no respect for the person with the most important job at any club the manager / coach. We all know deep down AR is a PR snake oil salesman with no clue and that's not exactly going to make anyone respect the club, coach or owner. Then we come to Orta and the only conclusion I can draw given his signings here and elsewhere that funny money is involved. Nobody could be this bad at scouting.
Elland its deeper than the obvious. Sunderland and Hull are going through an ownership problem, just like Cardiff did, Birmingham, Villa, Derby for example had 3 directors jailed for stealing the parachute payments. Blackburn can be included, like Wigan, Wolves. Plenty more too but its playing out just the same this season with Newcastle. Promotion means wealth for owners and directors, then relegation comes and heads roll plus some owners want to cash in and try and sell the club with mixed results. This causes problems in the dressing room. Leeds have had all the upheaval of ownership without the promotions
Oh and Elland include Norwich in that too as they invested heavily, got promoted, relegated used the parachute cash well and got oromoted again then a change of directors and owners, so building again now
In recent seasons Waford, Brighton, Bournemouth Swansea Huddersfield have all won promotion without parachute payments. Lets follow their plan if we cant follow the Wolves blueprint
Good Morning to Matt and co from a very chilly Bardsey We are between the devil and the deep blue sea do we invest £40m on the team and pray it works or do what we have been doing sell our best players and hope the ones we buy come good.So far this has not worked We need before the season starts a good goalkeeper a tall centre back a boxto box midfielder and another look at Marriot plus someone like Traore who can split defences apart and get the crowd on its toes I agree parachute payments will not work when the players are still on silly money i.e Rodwell on £70k a week and never kicks a ball Richards on £50k a week and has not played for 500 daysI would agree teams like Hull and Sunderland have owners who just want out
Theres the “Good manager” with a half decent budget and strangely in the case of Watford they have a new manager every 2 weeks but have a model at the top which never changes so a new manager/coach comes in and carries on. A bit Leeds Utd as long as our model works?
Ive always regarded Chris Houghton as a quality manager, as shafted at Newcastle. Dyche at Burnely, Howe at Bournemouth also quality and the Huddersfield one mightnt turn out too bad either