BigLeedsFan72 wrote:
I am not one to want players/managers/owners to win everything or get out and am happy to let the current situation unfold as it may. We are struggling and it may take longer than we want to get things going in the right direction. Scoring would be a good start or maybe hitting the target more often would be more realistic, that being said, where are the sharpshooters going to come from?...
...Throwing money around like an octopus having a fit almost cost us the club so I never want to go down that track ever again. I may be we have to wait for a lot of the current players to go off contract before we get rid of them as it seems like no other club will touch them with a 20 foot pole. I think BMD is keeping players he doesn't think will have a part in his plans well away from the first team and I for one think that is a good thing!
This approach may hurt in the short term but in the end what else is the manager to do with:
Too many below average players
No real investment until squad is culled
Fighting to keep any promising players here
I could go on all day but I think you get the gist...
All I ask is give the current set up a chance to right a few wrongs and if it means we may not see the promised land for a few more years then the wait will be well worth it. Moses was in the wilderness for 40 years and because of his pride never got to the promised land, so our 10 or so doesn't seem too bad
A sensible approach in my opinion.
According to information on other websites, Ashdown, Cairns, Nathan & Lewis Turner, Diouf, Norris, Varney, Drury, Green, Pugh, & Brown all have contracts that expire next summer. That's an awful lot of wages spent on players who are mostly not first team regulars under McDermott, which will be off our books by next summer. (I still don’t understand how Warnock was allowed to get away with giving Brown enough substitute appearances to trigger a contract extension.)
Now admittedly, these 11 will need to be replaced by better players if we are to aim for promotion. If you couple that with the maturing of some of our better young players in the next 9 months (Mowatt, Poleon, Dawson, Killock) and the likely sale of Hall, probably White and the resolution of Morison's future, there is the potential for a far better balanced and stronger squad emerging next summer.
We would be left with a nucleus of Kenny, Peltier, Byram, Lees, Wootton, Pearce, Warnock, Austin, Murphy, Tonge, McCormack, Smith and Hunt, plus the emerging youngsters. Adding 5 or 6 higher quality players to that nucleus could give us a squad of around 22/23 capable of making a serious challenge for promotion.
Combine that with the end of the Ticketus deal (I believe), our ability to pay, say, 5 or 6 incoming players good wages is likely to be substantially improved over now. Bates may be gone physically, but we will still suffer cash-wise for the rest of this season from his decisions made prior to takeover.
I suspect that GFH are currently needing to use available funds to maintain cash-flow to keep the operation running, and the timing of the Enterprise sponsorship extension may have helped our cash-flow.
I guess the financial impact of the above players out and Ticketus is in the £10Million to £15Million per annum bracket. That’s a lot of cash to add to our core nucleus squad.
For those reasons, despite the frustrating performances during September, I don't wish to judge GFH or BMcD at this time. They are in a position that they inherited, where they can’t clear out the unwanted players until the end of the season and the only ways of generating income rather than investment is through ticket sales and commercial activity (or selling our “star” players – something they seem, thankfully, reluctant to do). It’s a “catch-22” situation.
I genuinely believe that success this season for BMcD will be "making a silk purse out of a sow's ear", keeping us in the top half of the table if possible and developing the youngsters as much as he can, so that they can slot into the first team when required, by next season. Hopefully, Mowatt, Poleon and Dawson at least, will progress to become regulars. I think that most fans on this forum (not all, admittedly) would be content this season just seeing us develop an entertaining style of play without the fear of relegation appearing like last season.
What's missing from this theory is the ability to pay substantial transfer and/or signing on fees, if required, to bring in those 5 or 6 "key" players next season. The club will still need to sell enough shares to generate new investment for this. It's a challenging balancing act!