Three Year Contracts

Club policy seems to currently be to sign players on 3 year contracts. Whilst this has served our purpose remarkably well up to now, I believe a change of policy needs to be considered. I can understand the reasons for only offering 3 years to new players at a relatively small club such as ours. There is a risk in any new signing that they won’t fit into our system, or cope with the Premier league etc. Traditionally there will have been a concern about the wages being paid out for non-first team regulars. There will have also been the concern of not surviving in the premier league, although I hope there is always a contingency within contracts should the worst happen and we suffer ‘second season syndrome’ (as if).

The problem is that after 1 year, then a player that has done well with us will be at their optimum value should any ‘bigger’ club come snooping around. But surely after 1 year we should not be contemplating selling any of our top players. If we subsequently keep them for another year, we get the possible problem that Sinclair has caused us this summer. Whilst I feel we have been lucky in this case that Man city came in for him and we have ‘Sir Huw’ milking them for a decent price (although I do think that he was undervalued in the current climate – A. Johnson, £10 mill, Wallcot £12 mill, Jarvis £10 mill, Fletcher £14 mill, Allen £15 mill ), any player with 1 year left on his contract becomes vulnerable to leave at a reduced value.

Whilst I agree with the new club policy (sell and replace with a Spanish international making a profit in the meantime) that as in Sinclair’s case he had to be sold, I believe our caution is down to our recent history of losing two players on a ‘Free’, namely De Vries and Prately and the fear of relegation. My point is that surely we have moved on from this level of caution. If new players arriving were offered 4 years (providing they accepted of course), we would at least get 2 good years from them and if it suited us we could get a decent/great fee for them, i.e Allen (who I believe was on a long contract). The problem with long contracts is when players are on huge wages and clubs find it impossible to move them on. This will never happen at Swansea as we pay modest (relatively in a football sense) wages and modest transfer fees.

For example, in a 1 years’ time, do you see any problem in moving any of our new signings on if they have not worked out for us? Maybe in a worst case scenario we would lose a million or two, but wages would not be a problem for other clubs. This would be far offset by any big sale such as Allen.
This is my first ever post, sorry it is so long, but it has been on my mind for a while. What do you guys think?

Finally I apologize for the icon but I have seen it often on one of you lads posts . I think it's great and it sums up how I feel about the season to come. Cheers.

 

I refer you to the honourable Michael Laudrup, who was all cleared to sign for Liverpool in the 80's for three years, but then Liverpool changed their tune last minute and wanted 4 years instead. He then got given a 3 year deal at Juve, then went to Barca, Real etc....only to become one of the best players of his generation.

Are you saying you know better than ML who has both played at the very top and managing at the top? He must be gutted, imagine how good he'd have been had he committed to Livrpool for that extra year !!

No offence meant, but we were offering 1 yr deals not so long back. A 4 yr on a couple of lemons will kill the club. Despite the odd defection, it is loyalty that has got us here with just 1 yr deals, lets not get ahead of orselves! Softly , softly....

 

This ^^^^^

Tara.

 

Who's tara?

 

I think 3 years is a good balance.

If after a year a player becomes a key member of the team they can always offer them a new contract over a longer term

 

I imagine Huw has more to do with contract negotiations and deciding the length of them than ML. Its a good point about ML not signing for Liverpool, but in those days a contract meant more, and 4 years meant 4 years and the club could still sell the player after that. Who knows what the reason was why he eventually chose Juventus. These days, contracts are there to be broken, spit out your dummy and it's easier to force a move. I just feel 4 years offers our club a bit more protection and would increase sell on fees if after two years someone wanted to go. No offense taken 'Molby's, cheers for your thoughts.

 

Bristol City crashed out of the top tier years ago and went close to bankruptcy due to giving their stars long term contracts and then not being able to let them go. Players would not give up the contracts. So we should only change with caution.

The end of this season will be tough as I think many will be moving into the last year of their contracts. How we manage this scenario will be make or break for us.

 

This is kind of my point. Most of our first choice 11 would be relatively easy to move on if the worst case scenario happened. It is precisely because of the astute business that Huw does, small (premiership wise) transfer fees and wages with clauses presumably that I don,t think a 'Bristol City' scenario would happen to us. Don't forget the parachute payments too. The problems arise when for example a team like Portsmouth gets filled with journeymen earning 40 or 50 grand a week. Huw will not let us go down that route in my opinion.

 

I believe it was because the deal was all sorted at 3 years, then Liverpool wanted to change it to 4. ML being a honourable sort of chap decided that the "goalposts" had been moved, so opted for Juventus.

On the contracts front, as soon as a player comes down to 18 months left, he is told to decide to sign a new contract within 6 months or be moved on. This will relieve the uncertainty of running them down & leaving us with nowt.

Just my opinion, better to be prepered than leave us open a la DeVries & Pratley.

 

Three years is fine, but the club needs to be a bit more prepared than they are to renegotiate contracts mid term. It's a hard balance to strike between keeping a lid on the wages bill and keeping players happy, but it'd probably mean less situations where players get into the final year of their deals and have us over a barrel.

 

Nam. Was pissed last night and posted when I got in.

Good thread but I think three is about right, as others have said. I agree with LR that we should look to re-negotiate a bit more proactively and earlier because we've definitely slipped up in the past and HJ was rightly criticised here for it.

One thing I disagree with is your assessment of Sinclair's value. He had a very ordinary season and had less than a year left on his contract so the amount of money we got was great for us and more than what I thought he was actually worth. If he'd been doing what he'd done in the Championship I'd agree with you.

 

Fair enough. Three years it is. Cheers guys.

 

But it's not just up to the club. Maybe most players don't want to sign a contract over 3 years because they want to be free to move sooner rather than later. Contracts are a 2-way thing. In any case, if there is agreement, the contracts can be easily extend. A 3-year contract can have a year added at the end of the first season. There is no easy solution.