3 more players

Good summary, and one I tend to agree. Longer term it makes sense to own assets, increase value and sell.

It's why I've wondered all pre-season if those posters expecting top 2 (or even top 6) are perhaps expecting too much.

The model has changed, and the quality of the playing staff (probably) has too.

I've said before, we need to think of last season as a free hit - I'm sure Carrick's objective for last season was to actually keep the team up, and start measuring from this season.

I'm not saying we'll have a poor season or the players aren't good enough but I think we should largely be focused on comparing next season to this, rather than this to last (if that makes sense?!)
 
BoroMart said:
The big problem that hasn’t been explored in this thread is, is that we have 175 appearances to loan players last year, 108 the year before, 94 the year before that.

So that’s 377 appearances in 3 years, 377 opportunities to develop our own players lost to allow other clubs to build up their assets value. That can’t be understated.

If we are serious about building our assets and selling at profit, we have to give them game time and we can’t do that with 5 loanees.
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There are 736 appearances possible in a Championship league season. So less than 25% of the appearances were on loan.
Your stats seem to merely point out that our loan players were of a higher quality than in previous years and we finished higher in the league.

2022-23
Burnley won the league with 131 appearances from their 6 loan players, despite signing 15 players on permanent contracts for a lot of money.
Sheff U went up 2nd gave 108 to their 4 loan players. Coventry 123 to their 6.

2021-22
Forest won play offs and gave 161 appearances to their 6 loan players.

2020-21
Norwich won the league and gave 97 appearances to 4 loan players.

2019-20
Leeds won the league with 166 appearances from 7 on loan players.
WBA went up 2nd with 128 appearances from 5 loan players.
Fulham won the play offs with 180 appearances from 6 loan players.

I'd far rather borrow players of the calibre of Archer and Ramsey, or Doyle, McAtee, Maatsen and Tella for that matter, than speculate on the likes of Hoppe, Barlaser.

There is no right or wrong mix in terms of numbers of loans. It is all about quality, budget and getting it right to go up up as soon as you can.
3 of the last 4 champions have done it. 2 of the runners up and 2 play off winners too.
 
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If we don't get any loans in, this squad will finish bottom half in my opinion. Certainly nowhere near promotion. It's not a million miles away but it certainly needs 3 quality players to give us that extra strength if we want to challenge. Maybe in 2 or 3 seasons these players, along with a few more we pick up in the meantime, will be ready for a promotion push.

If we (as a club and a fanbase) are willing to play that long game then fair enough. Don't get the loans. Play the lads we've got but don't whinge when when we struggle for the next 2 or seasons while we develop the players we've got and build a squad over the next 4-6 transfer windows.

I don't think we are a club or a fanbase that will accept that. Read this board. Listen to the people around you at the match. Read social media. There's an expectation there. There's an expectation that we should be aiming to mount a promotion challenge every season. Carrick/Scott etc. would be hounded out before then.
 
One thing I have noticed this transfer window is that hardly any players from the championship have signed for premier league clubs. I can only think of Scott from Bristol City. Two standouts have gone overseas - Akpom and Gyokores. All the others have signed for the promoted teams. Does that mean the talent in the championship is now considered not good enough for established prem teams. Usually you would find some good players in the championship that you would take a punt on.
As an aside, think it is better going with the approach of having our own players. We got stung with too many loans the last couple of years (cost us in loan fees and wages).
 
MVBoro said:
One thing I have noticed this transfer window is that hardly any players from the championship have signed for premier league clubs. I can only think of Scott from Bristol City. Two standouts have gone overseas - Akpom and Gyokores. All the others have signed for the promoted teams. Does that mean the talent in the championship is now considered not good enough for established prem teams. Usually you would find some good players in the championship that you would take a punt on.
As an aside, think it is better going with the approach of having our own players. We got stung with too many loans the last couple of years (cost us in loan fees and wages).
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Even the bottom Premier league clubs can afford to buy top level players with European and international experience from top clubs in other leagues so less need to take a risk on lower level players (that tend to be expensive as well).
 
Nano said:
Even the bottom Premier league clubs can afford to buy top level players with European and international experience from top clubs in other leagues so less need to take a risk on lower level players (that tend to be expensive as well).
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Exactly. The gap between the Championship and Premier League is widening each season. In both standard of football and financially.
 
MVBoro said:
As an aside, think it is better going with the approach of having our own players. We got stung with too many loans the last couple of years (cost us in loan fees and wages).
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McGree, Forss, Hoppe, Clarke, Barlaser, Boyd Munce is c£12.5m before wages.
Do you think we would get our money back on these 6 combined?
That's without Payero £6m who was probably before Scott to be fair.

Speculating on buying players can also be expensive mistakes too.
Borrowing Giles, Archer and Ramsey was very good. Connolly, Siliki, Muniz were very bad.

Quality of recruitment is what matters. Buying or Loaning. I'd rather buy, but we can't afford to buy all we need.
Not hiring it in if it is available is daft.
 
When I looked at our squad on transfermarkt the past 2 close seasons we were down to 16 contracted players which included 3 goalkeepers and Steven Walker amongst others. Players would also be going out of contract the following year. Whilst @indeedido is correct about the quality our squad size has had no resilience for a couple of seasons. There has obviously been a decision to address this this season with a more long term approach. After the clubs loan players positive impact last year they will know the benefit they bring but it seems as if our resources are going into permanents this season. We will be more than lucky to reach anywhere near the play offs as it stands today but I think it will set the club up with a solid core where the odd loan will be the icing on the cake next season. If we are in with a shout in January we will probably look then to get some top loans from the prem.
 
I think some fans underestimate just how much a good young player from the premiersip actually costs

There is a loan fee and wages on top, the loans players last year cost us millions in fees and wages and all that investment has gone, it is not a sustainable model
 
indeedido said:
Quality of recruitment is what matters. Buying or Loaning. I'd rather buy, but we can't afford to buy all we need.
Not hiring it in if it is available is daft
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I still think this might be the line they will go down. They stated the preference was for permanent signings last January but I think the opportunity to take Archer and Ramsey was too good to turn down.
 
indeedido said:
McGree, Forss, Hoppe, Clarke, Barlaser, Boyd Munce is c£12.5m before wages.
Do you think we would get our money back on these 6 combined?
That's without Payero £6m who was probably before Scott to be fair.

Speculating on buying players can also be expensive mistakes too.
Borrowing Giles, Archer and Ramsey was very good. Connolly, Siliki, Muniz were very bad.

Quality of recruitment is what matters. Buying or Loaning. I'd rather buy, but we can't afford to buy all we need.
Not hiring it in if it is available is daft.
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It's not fair comparing those players though. Of course Archer, Ramsey and Giles are better than the permanents for that one season but the permanents can last us 4 years so you should really be comparing them against all the players we have had on loan over that time period because the cost isn't 1 season of permanent vs 1 season of loans. Over the last 4 years we have had:

Nmecha, Moukoudi, Roberts & Morrison
Bolasie, Roberts, Bettinelli & Kebano
Hernandez, Sporar, Siliki, Connolly & Balogun
Steffen, Giles, Mowatt, Muniz, Archer & Ramsey

How much has that cost us? There will have been fees and big wages for the majority of them. Combined they are probably costing us £10m per season, at least.

So maybe the reason we are buying players like Barlaser, Hoppe and Forss is because we have spent too much on loan players already. If we didn't buy the loan players and instead we bought two £4m players a year, or 5 £1m players we might have had more chance of signing some permanent players that we will make our money back on. It's also not a fair comparison to only include the players that haven't done so well and leave out the profits we have made on players like Akpom and Spence (which I know are pre-Scott but they still show the benefit of permanent signings). There are also the free transfers for players like Lenihan and Smith missing.

Mainly though, this argument would have been far harder to make at the back end of last season after the disastrous loan signings we had made that year. Looking back at our loans over the years last year was a massive exception rather than the rule and the chances of us signing loan players and them being the standard of last year seems less likely than us wasting our time with other team's unwanted dross again.
 
Nano said:
It's not fair comparing those players though. Of course Archer, Ramsey and Giles are better than the permanents for that one season but the permanents can last us 4 years so you should really be comparing them against all the players we have had on loan over that time period because the cost isn't 1 season of permanent vs 1 season of loans. Over the last 4 years we have had:

Nmecha, Moukoudi, Roberts & Morrison
Bolasie, Roberts, Bettinelli & Kebano
Hernandez, Sporar, Siliki, Connolly & Balogun
Steffen, Giles, Mowatt, Muniz, Archer & Ramsey

How much has that cost us? There will have been fees and big wages for the majority of them. Combined they are probably costing us £10m per season, at least.
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We've had bad and good signings and loans over the last decade. Many people would argue we've had more bad than good in both. I could throw a load of bad signing into the mix but I'm not really sure what that proves. The type of loan signing last season changed though and hopefully the loans we would bring it this season would be a similar ilk.

Your argument seems to be centred around a financial business model and not a footballing performance one. We can loan players in that we can't afford to sign. We can sttract players for loan that we couldn't attract to sign. Would Archer have wanted to sign for a Championship club when he's got a decent contract at Villa? We couldn't afford to sign the likes of Giles, Archer and Ramsey. I have no idea what the loans cost us last season and they may well have been expensive but there is clearly budget there to bring those loans in.

They are more risk averse. If they turn out to be crap you haven't spunked £10mil on a transfer fee and tied yourself into a 4 or 5 year contract on big wages. Ashley Fletcher is a prime example of someone we signed who was of the same sort of profile as some of our loans and look how that turned out or Payero. If you make 3 or 4 signings for £5mil+ and they turn out to be not good enough then you can set yourself back years. Like the Monk era did.

Nano said:
Mainly though, this argument would have been far harder to make at the back end of last season after the disastrous loan signings we had made that year. Looking back at our loans over the years last year was a massive exception rather than the rule and the chances of us signing loan players and them being the standard of last year seems less likely than us wasting our time with other team's unwanted dross again.
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The same could be said the opposite way round. Imagine if we had signed Connolly or Sporar for 4 or 5 mil each and on 4 or 5 year contracts. They didn't really work out but at least they went back to their parent clubs. People are making this argument against loans because they are disappointed we have lost 3 quality players back to their parent clubs and think we should have signed them last summer but the reality is we couldn't afford to sign those players.
 
B_G said:
We've had bad and good signings and loans over the last decade. Many people would argue we've had more bad than good in both. I could throw a load of bad signing into the mix but I'm not really sure what that proves. The type of loan signing last season changed though and hopefully the loans we would bring it this season would be a similar ilk.
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No evidence to suggest that we got better at recruiting and not just lucky. Some work, some don't. The chances of getting the ones that work are lower than the ones that don't.

B_G said:
Your argument seems to be centred around a financial business model and not a footballing performance one. We can loan players in that we can't afford to sign. We can sttract players for loan that we couldn't attract to sign. Would Archer have wanted to sign for a Championship club when he's got a decent contract at Villa? We couldn't afford to sign the likes of Giles, Archer and Ramsey. I have no idea what the loans cost us last season and they may well have been expensive but there is clearly budget there to bring those loans in.
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My argument is about finances and football but I'm talking about a long term strategy instead of always reacting. Yes, we can attract players on loan and I'm not saying we shouldn't. I'm arguing against the wisdom that loan players are better so it's a better decision. The only way to get a return on the investment of a loan player is to get promoted. We have had 6 seasons of not being promoted which means every loan player was a waste of money. With permanent signing there is at least the potential to maintain the club's financial future via player sales. Recruiting well is as important, if not more, for the finances as it is for the football.

B_G said:
They are more risk averse. If they turn out to be crap you haven't spunked £10mil on a transfer fee and tied yourself into a 4 or 5 year contract on big wages. Ashley Fletcher is a prime example of someone we signed who was of the same sort of profile as some of our loans and look how that turned out or Payero. If you make 3 or 4 signings for £5mil+ and they turn out to be not good enough then you can set yourself back years. Like the Monk era did.
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Bad recruitment is bad recruitment. I would suggest spending more on improving the recruitment team than wasting money on loaning bench warmers. The Monk era was a disaster and I would never advocate giving control over recruitment to an individual these days. Players like Payero are a disaster because he was signed at a time when our recruitment policy was not aligned with our manager's way of working. Warnock, or Wilder, were the wrong people for developing players.

B_G said:
The same could be said the opposite way round. Imagine if we had signed Connolly or Sporar for 4 or 5 mil each and on 4 or 5 year contracts. They didn't really work out but at least they went back to their parent clubs. People are making this argument against loans because they are disappointed we have lost 3 quality players back to their parent clubs and think we should have signed them last summer but the reality is we couldn't afford to sign those players.
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I made the same argument last season that filling the squad with loan players was a bad idea and we'd be back to square one this summer and I was correct. You are right though in that not every permanent signing would work out but the Sporar loan (and Siliki) nearly bit us hard because they had obligation to buy clauses. Sporar would have cost us £6m if he'd scored 15 goals, or we'd been promoted. Buying more players instead of loaning them increases the likelihood of getting some hits rather than just misses.

There is no right or wrong answer though. It requires a balance. If we get promoted because we filled our side with loan players then that's great. But as is more likely and we don't then it isn't great. Even if we do get promoted we'd be losing our best players and would have to replace them anyway so it might not be the greatest strategy even when it is successful. The best opportunity for having multiple years of challenging for promotion has to be to have a core of permanent players and fill in the weaknesses with loans instead of having your weak players being the ones you own and having to fill the team with star loans or it's failure and start all over again.
 
I just want to start with I think we've both got valid points and just disagree on a strategy. I think the loan system should be used. You don't, or at least should be limited. But let's debate a bit further anyway.

Nano said:
No evidence to suggest that we got better at recruiting and not just lucky. Some work, some don't. The chances of getting the ones that work are lower than the ones that don't.
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Agree with this. But bad signings will cost the club a lot more than bad loans

Nano said:
Buying more players instead of loaning them increases the likelihood of getting some hits rather than just misses.
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Does it? We can attract a higher standard of youngster on loan than we can to sign.

Signings last season. My ratings out of 10

Hoppe - 2
Forss - 7
Clarke - 3 (been unlucky but still paying wages for a player that's injured. Another risk offset when you loan players)
Barlaser - 4
Lenihan - 7
Smith - 6
Roberts - 5 (back up keeper. How else do you rate him. But obviously he was judged to be behind our loan keeper in terms of quality)

Loans

Muniz - 2
Giles - 8
Archer - 9
Ramsey - 7 (would have scores higher if been fitter)
Mowatt - 6

Nano said:
With permanent signing there is at least the potential to maintain the club's financial future via player sales. Recruiting well is as important, if not more, for the finances as it is for the football.
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The only way to make money on signings is to sell your best players and you are in the same situation as you are when loan players return. The only players we've made money on in the last 10 years are Traore, Spence, Tav and Akpom and all have left a big hole when they've left. The same as a loan player returning.
 
B_G said:
I just want to start with I think we've both got valid points and just disagree on a strategy. I think the loan system should be used. You don't, or at least should be limited. But let's debate a bit further anyway.



Agree with this. But bad signings will cost the club a lot more than bad loans


Does it? We can attract a higher standard of youngster on loan than we can to sign.

Signings last season. My ratings out of 10

Hoppe - 2
Forss - 7
Clarke - 3 (been unlucky but still paying wages for a player that's injured. Another risk offset when you loan players)
Barlaser - 4
Lenihan - 7
Smith - 6
Roberts - 5 (back up keeper. How else do you rate him. But obviously he was judged to be behind our loan keeper in terms of quality)

Loans

Muniz - 2
Giles - 8
Archer - 9
Ramsey - 7 (would have scores higher if been fitter)
Mowatt - 6


The only way to make money on signings is to sell your best players and you are in the same situation as you are when loan players return. The only players we've made money on in the last 10 years are Traore, Spence, Tav and Akpom and all have left a big hole when they've left. The same as a loan player returning.
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Mowatt wasn't a 6. He was supposed to be a first teamer and he never was. No better than Barlaser in terms of impact. Ramsey wasn't a 7 because he barely played. He was a very good player but he wasn't there when we needed him so he doesn't deserve a 7 Forss was better over the course of the season and we would make a profit if we sold him. He should have a higher score than Ramsey despite Ramsey being a better player. You've also missed Steffen who was good with his feet but less so as an actual keeper. I'd give him a 7. Giles and Archer were both very good and I won't argue anything against them.

We also made profits on Gibson, Bamford, De Roon, Ramirez, Forshaw, Watmore etc.

Also, you have to think about players that we don't make profits on but who are great value for money. We made no money when Clayton, Friend, Leadbitter, Dimi etc left but they were still very good value signings. We have players in our squad now like Howson, McNair, Dijksteel, Crooks etc that have been good value and we'll either get our money back on them or they'll leave at the end of their contract after providing good service. It's easy to pick the ones that haven't worked out but squads have to be built around a permanent core of players. In the long run we will be better off for this season's permanent recruits than we were for last season's loans.
 
Mowatt was better than Barlaser hence why Barlaser couldn't get in the team in front of him at the end of the season. Mowatt started poor but had a good end to the season.

Yes forgot Steffan. Probably a 7 or 8. Strengthened the argument for loans.

Without our loans last season we would have struggled and we will struggle this season without them. Look at the start we've made.
 
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