FatCat
Well-known member
Are you on the board ? How do you know what they can and can’t afford?
Buy Gyokeres for any price?
- Thread starter lostinyorkshire
- Start date
Whilst we all would love Gyokeres here, I think it's maybe a bit much to say we can definitely afford him whatever the price is. I think 15M is tops (which is a hell of a lot of money for us, with no parachute payments and coming out of covid losses on top of our already massive debt). I think it is a calculated gamble at that price worth doing as this is the year to go up. I doubt we will have three worse teams going down than this year and automatic places are open for any half decent team. However to suggest we can pay whatever Cov. want and still have room to buy/loan a couple of other players is stretching it a bit!
indeedido
Well-known member
Exactly the same could be said of people who are saying we can't afford it, or shouldn't risk it.
It's a message board, where people post opinions.
Anton_Berg
Well-known member
There is a time for bold spending but not now. The side isn't a jigsaw with the one piece missing.
lostinyorkshire
Well-known member
If we dont do it this season we may have a bigger problem next.
Fry and jones may well go.
Howson will be another year older.
Giles on loan gone
keeper on loan gone
Yet another season of loans and projects?
parmoboy
Well-known member
And even more crucially, the manager potentially gone.
I've said it in a few thread recently, but this is why we need to bulk the squad out with young lower leagues players this season.
Fry - Michal Helik from Barnsley - Championship team of the year last season (alongside Lenihan).
There's also Ronnie Edwards from Peterborough. 18 year old, played almost every game in the championship last season.
Jones - Callum Lang at Wigan, only 23 years old. More of a RW but he's played over 150 games in L1/L2 and scored 60+ career goals.
There's also Tom Hamer (22) at Burton and Luca Hoole (20) at Bristol Rovers,
Howson - Max Bird from Derby. 21 years old with over 100 championship games.
There's also Jason Knight (21) and Louie Sibley (20), both also from Derby. More CM than CDM but we need cover there too...
Callum Styles (22) from Barnsley is another good choice at CM.
Giles - Leif Davis from Ipswich. 22 year old, they signed him for £1m from Leeds. Played for Leeds in the championship and has a couple of PL appearances.
Bruce
Well-known member
Your FFP explanations have been really good. As someone who runs a business I'm familiar with depreciation, amortisation and the difference between P&L, cashflow and capital expenditure.
Assuming 15m and a 5 year contract then the figures are doable. That relies on Gyokeres being willing to sign up for 5 years and Coventry settling for 15m. It also doesn't account for signing on fees, agent fees and all the rest of that which can easily add £1m up front costs on a £15m deal.
If Gyokeres moves to us (which he shows no interest in doing) he'll only do so for Premier league wages; bottom end is likely to be around £40k/week (Balogun) and bonuses. He would also want a non-promotion release clause and a "big club" release clause but that isn't really important for the calculation.
So, the best case, as you say, is 15m and a 5 year contract. That's 3 million depreciation in year 1, £1m in up front fees and around £2.5m/year in wages. Over 3 years that's 17.5m. Tav and Spence were both on low wages so their wage saving is pretty inconsequential.
If we end up doing 15m plus 5m in bonuses over 4 years then that's 23.5m over 3 years.
Obviously we have room in FFP over and above the income from Spence and Tav but we're talking about a total spend of 17.5 to 23.5 million over three years and however you cut it, that's all of the Spence and some (maybe most) of the Tav money.
Clearly there's a lot of assumptions but the simple summary is that he is costing us more than we paid for Spence, he is likely to be on 40K per week (Spence and Tav combined were on under 15k I believe) and there are upfront fees as well. (There'll also be selling fees for Spence that are paid up front.) However you cut it, he costs us a Spence and some or most of a Tav.
indeedido
Well-known member
Why, so we can be well equipped to play there soon?
We have some very good players, we need some more and we will go up.
We have a huge windfall now at a time this league is weakest.
Accelerate now, don't freewheel.
indeedido
Well-known member
Cheers.
I left wages out, as we have cut a mass out in the players who have left.
I agree Gyokeres would want £40k per week for a 5 year deal, but am absolutely confident he would be delighted with that. He has no PL option right now and will earn a quarter of that at best at Coventry. He would walk here.
We would only pay add ons/bonuses if he and we had made the PL. They would then be a drop in the ocean of PL revenue and become a FFP write off/irelevance anyway. An element of those bonuses would be crossed by some of the add ons in the Spence/Tav deals.
The amortisation would be £9m across 3 years of FFP, would be £15m across the five year period. If he signed a contract extension at any stage then his outstanding book value would then be amortised over the full contract extension length reducing the annual amortisation charge thereafter.
If we sold him as a successful striker and in the PL, we would make a huge profit above book value.
Of course there are agent fees, but there are these fees for all transfers and loans - whoever we recruit.
You say it would take all the Spence and much of the Tavernier money to get him. I agree it will take two thirds of it, but I have consistently said that I would have been more than happy after Preston last May to swap Spence and Tavernier for Gyokeres. At £15m, we would do much better than that.
BoroMart
Well-known member
Yes there is a lot of risk putting it in one player. It's doable, but if it doesn't work out, injuries, loss of form etc, and we can't sell we would be in big FFP trouble.
If we spend that amount on 3 players, chances are we can at least sell one of them to offset costs if things go south.
indeedido
Well-known member
Not if they are ****
BoroMart
Well-known member
Here's a thought, Boro, stop buying **** strikers
I'm not saying fill our first team with low league journeymen. I'm saying add some of THE BEST, YOUNG low league players to our SQUAD.
Burnley just signed Scott Twine, 22 from MK Dons, and Luke McNally, 22 from Oxford.
Huddersfield just signed Jack Rudoni, 21 from Wimbledon,
There's loads of other championship clubs doing it too.
We do have a huge windfall, but too many of our fans want to potentially blow it spending £15m on Gyokores, and they'll be the same fans complaining if he turns into a flop saying it was a mistake...
It's probably the first time in years we have the opportunity to stick £5-6 million into league 1 and find some good young players.
Worst case scenario they're not good enough, and we loan them out or sell them for a slight loss... If Gyokores flops he'd lose £5+ mill from his value before the end of the season.
indeedido
Well-known member
The only time this club in history has been bold was under Gibson’s early years. I hope he can remember that.
Abel Tasman
Well-known member
What would you describe paying £12m for Alves then as that was pretty bold wasn’t it? - and in the end not a good one,
I mean there is investment and there is gambling. It’s a fine line.
Funky_Chicken
Well-known member
indeedido
Well-known member
There is risk in any investment.
ANY.
Totally agree, but my solution of bringing young players in from L1/2 is gambling with money you can afford to lose.
Andy_W
Well-known member
It's not if the probability of success is lower. Most of them will have come from academies much lower standard than our own. We've probably got about 10 academy players who could play in L1/L2, maybe one of them may make it to be good enough for a top championship side.
If you punt £2m each on 5 no L1/L2 players you might get 1 who pays off, and by paying off I mean getting 15 goals and 5 assists. Effectively you're buying 15 goals for £10m, assuming the rest go in the bin.
If you punt £15m on someone who is practically guaranteed to get 15 goals (got 17 last year with no pens, in a poor Cov team), and who could get 20 in our side, and maybe even 25, then you're getting circa 13 goals for £10m (which is worse), but you get another 7 for £5m. That extra 5 goals could be 3-10 more points.
Then factor that the better player has a higher chance of more resale value, higher chance of assists, and clearly looks to have better ability then overall it works out a better investment/ purchase.
The biggest factor though is risk, if you've got a good side like we have then we might see this year as a massive opportunity, and thus cannot afford to take a risk on a L1/L2 striker who in all likelihood could get 15 goals at best. Even if they do get that it probably won't be enough to go up.
Buying young and cheap makes sense if you have a poor side, if you have time and if you're not expecting anything of them (as in promotion this year), but isn't an immediate solution when you need a practical guarantee.
Last year, if we looked at our squad at the beginning of the season we probably wouldn't have thought that even having a 20 goal striker would have got us up and the same before Wilder came in. Different ball game this year though, now that we know we can rely and Jones and Giles, and are stronger at the back and in goal. We still need a centre mid mind, we won't go up without another, not unless McGree really steps up and if McNair or someone else provides good cover.