It was inevitable

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I'm worried about MP saying he put his own money into not selling players for £500k. Now he's had to pay off MM too, I'm not sure where the money is coming from for next year. IIRC MP specifically said they couldn't keep doing this themselves as they're not wealthy enough.

So, more Indonesian money? Selling any decent assets remaining and rebuilding? I can't see the former happening again as they gave us money last season for the January window and it was a shambles.

New investors?

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dave-p
I'm worried about MP saying he put his own money into not selling players for £500k. Now he's had to pay off MM too, I'm not sure where the money is coming from for next year. IIRC MP specifically said they couldn't keep doing this themselves as they're not wealthy enough.
So, more Indonesian money? Selling any decent assets remaining and rebuilding? I can't see the former happening again as they gave us money last season for the January window and it was a shambles.

New investors?

If we keep Dawes for the rest of the season, then the spend for this season is exactly the same, regardless of if MM stayed or was sacked. People don't get "paid off" necessarily. They're just paid their wage until the end of the original contract (unless we agree a settlement at a lower amount, unlikely as MM would just take it monthly).

Will be interesting to see the next move from MP. Although they can't afford to bank roll us in the traditional sense, saying no to really decent sized transfers a few months back doesn't sound like someone about to jump ship. Surely he would have cashed in? Either way, huge rebuild needed. Hopefully be able to get rid of some of the terrible players still in contract for low fees or mutually agreeing to let them go!

Im not entirely sure why the owners would have to fund not selling a player, perhaps a comment made more to re-assure or re-affirm with rumblings of them not backing Mellon and some of the comments he made as I suspect he got away with saying more than he would have had he not had 2 promotions

He said it on their latest thing on YouTube (the 500k thing, and them financing it).

I only think MM payoff would be a problem if he was on a rolling one year contract.

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dave-p
He said it on their latest thing on YouTube (the 500k thing, and them financing it).
I only think MM payoff would be a problem if he was on a rolling one year contract.

MP said we’d keep the players we want to keep in January. That was with an eye on strengthening for a promotion push. The £500k of bids we turned down will surely not reduce in value in a matter of months and, with the summer window much more active, may even increase, so he’d have factored all that into his decision too.

MP has never shied away from sacking someone when he feels it’s in the club’s best interests. Certainly it’d a massive failure of any corporate recovery specialist to leave themselves in a situation where they’re unable to sack someone because they can’t afford the severance pay! I wouldn’t worry on that score at all.

Again correct me if im wrong but if said players had a stinker this season and were not attracting bids where would the money have come from anyway?

I got the impression that the bids were for players who are subsequently going to be out of contract in the summer? Eg. Cogley. Basically meaning that it was then or never to cash in

He said profits from players sales were, and will continue to be, reinvested into the playing budget. So, if they don’t bring in any fees, the playing budget will presumably remain as originally set.

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EnochsMassiveSock
I got the impression that the bids were for players who are subsequently going to be out of contract in the summer? Eg. Cogley. Basically meaning that it was then or never to cash in

He didn’t name them. But Cogley’s the only one who’s out of contract in summer who you might think would attract a bid, and even then it’d likely only be peanuts with a few months left on his contract.

Bristow and Hawkes were subject of rumours from some of the more credible outlets in the January window.

With our need for a striker selling for 500k would have been very good business. Worth more than the whole current squad

Didn't Palios say that bids added up to 500K?

Now, there are many different ways to interpret that statement. For example, let's say three clubs offered 20K for Cogley, then upped it to 30K, then upped it to 50K. Technically, we would have turned down offers adding up to 300K.

I'm not saying that's exactly how it happened, but I can't remotely see that 500K coming from only 2 or 3 bids for different players.

I very much doubt he'd be adding up bids from different clubs for the same player

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dave-p
I very much doubt he'd be adding up bids from different clubs for the same player

You might be right, but I very much doubt that we had bids totalling 500K that were exclusively for different players.

To put it another way, if we did, Palios made a huge mistake in turning them all down.

I'm assuming that with the January strengthening (haha) he thought it could help us push to League One, making it a good deal financially. Bids for Hawkes, Bristow and Cogley could have hit that figure.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2023:03:21:10:57:48 by dave-p.

Quote:

dave-p
I'm assuming that with the January strengthening (haha) he thought it could help us push to League One, making it a good deal financially. Bids for Hawkes, Bristow and Cogley could have hit that figure.
Hindsight is a wonderful thing.

I can understand that, but even so.

Let's just say that any club were to be generous enough to bid 100K for Cogley, 200K for Bristow or 200K for Hawkes. We should have snapped their hands off as none of them are that influential.

Palios mentioned turning down some bids for Norwood a few years ago which makes sense because he was scoring almost 50% of our goals. None of our current players are exactly irreplaceable.

And to look at it mathematically, Palios may have thought we had a 50% chance of making the play offs after our recruitment. But any side that makes the play offs only has a 25% of promotion. So, turning down 500K based on a 12.5% chance of promotion isn't great business. Especially as the whole point of having a young squad is surely that we can sometimes sell them on at a profit.

Yup. But he did get £95k for some players in January. It was a gamble that didn't pay off.

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dave-p
Yup. But he did get £95k for some players in January. It was a gamble that didn't pay off.

I think he said £75k and that it went back into the playing budget. Presumably on wages for the likes of Chalmers and Hendry.

Whatever, it was a relative pittance. And part of the point is that he mentioned he was paying the overall shortfall himself this year (which he seemed to link to the £500k) but it was more or less a one-off. I may have misunderstood, but that was the impression I got. So, quite a gamble with his own money, and we got worse.

Hardly a gamble for the sake of a few months.
Their new development strategy is never going to work if they have a fire sale at the first opportunity.
A surplus of £75k from offloading mediocrity isn’t a bad start, especially in a January window.
They’ve been underwriting the club’s losses since day 1, so nothing new there!

It was definitely a gamble. They don't have the cash to be doing that every transfer window. Not quite sh*t or bust, but potentially a bit of a drain if Cogley was wanted for a decent fee and will walk in the summer.

I'll need to check their YouTube video again to get an idea of how much of their own money they put in (and whether I'm imagining him saying they can't do it again). But it's a bit long to look for 30s of talk about it.

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Aldosmuzzy
Hardly a gamble for the sake of a few months.
Their new development strategy is never going to work if they have a fire sale at the first opportunity.
A surplus of £75k from offloading mediocrity isn’t a bad start, especially in a January window.
They’ve been underwriting the club’s losses since day 1, so nothing new there!

I guess that depends on which players received bids and on whether we receive any higher bids in the future.

If we received any reasonable big for Cogley and we lose him on a free in a few months, for example, then that has to be seen as a gamble that didn't pay off.

I take it from Palios's comments that the £75k was used to pay some of the wages of Chalmers, Hendry, Saunders and Walker.

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dave-p
It was definitely a gamble. They don't have the cash to be doing that every transfer window. Not quite sh*t or bust, but potentially a bit of a drain if Cogley was wanted for a decent fee and will walk in the summer.
I'll need to check their YouTube video again to get an idea of how much of their own money they put in (and whether I'm imagining him saying they can't do it again). But it's a bit long to look for 30s of talk about it.

Yeah, I think you are quoting him accurately.

Ta

Nobody’s going to be offering a big fee for a L2 full back with a few months left on his contract. And a decent L2 full back with a few months left on his contract might well prefer to wind his contract down anyway, knowing he’ll have decent offers to consider in the summer.

Palios doesn’t need personal financial advice. And the club certainly isn’t skint, as some are always willing to claim without any basis in fact.

The shareholders received the latest audited financials at the AGM last week. Presumably they had the opportunity to ask questions about the financial performance, both for that financial year and subsequently. Anyone do so?

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Nicko1234

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Aldosmuzzy
Hardly a gamble for the sake of a few months.
Their new development strategy is never going to work if they have a fire sale at the first opportunity.
A surplus of £75k from offloading mediocrity isn’t a bad start, especially in a January window.
They’ve been underwriting the club’s losses since day 1, so nothing new there!

I guess that depends on which players received bids and on whether we receive any higher bids in the future.

If we received any reasonable big for Cogley and we lose him on a free in a few months, for example, then that has to be seen as a gamble that didn't pay off.

I take it from Palios's comments that the £75k was used to pay some of the wages of Chalmers, Hendry, Saunders and Walker.

With the exception of Hendry a complete waste of that £75K !

Im not sure the funding of a £500k striker is an issue even without sales as ultimately they would fo onto the books as a net asset at probably £750k. I would think the issue is more in funding the wages of a £500k signing same if it was a £200k signing, going to want a 3 year deal, a high basic, a signing on fee, a goal bonus. Then theres the agent fees, the selling club ls fees, Rovers legal fees , insurances etc etc.

What I will say is that if the 500K was spread across a whole stack of players (eg. 50K for Hemmings, 75K for Morris, 50K for O'Connor etc.), I would find that more understandable.

The one thing that the transfer window has confirmed for me - both in terms of the playees we bought and sold - is that clubs get desperate in January and do some strange things.

Yes the £500k is surely across a number of players. Bristow likely to be the most significant imho.

I fail to see any desperation or strangeness in our January window. That’s not to say there wasn’t an urgency around the need to address the ‘unbalanced squad’ that Palios himself admitted we had, nor that we ended the window with a balanced squad of the required quality. We obviously didn’t.

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Aldosmuzzy

The shareholders received the latest audited financials at the AGM last week. Presumably they had the opportunity to ask questions about the financial performance, both for that financial year and subsequently. Anyone do so?

No, I listened to him talking. It's on YouTube. I'm a bit worried, what with Nicola leaving Twitter and them potentially not finding more funds. It's a natural reaction, even if you don't share it.

Well, rather than give you any more words to twist, I’ll leave you to your worrying,



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 2023:03:21:12:54:18 by Aldosmuzzy.

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Aldosmuzzy
Yes the £500k is surely across a number of players. Bristow likely to be the most significant imho.
I fail to see any desperation or strangeness in our January window. That’s not to say there wasn’t an urgency around the need to address the ‘unbalanced squad’ that Palios himself admitted we had, nor that we ended the window with a balanced squad of the required quality. We obviously didn’t.

Well, you could argue that none of the 5 signings fit into the overall plan that the owners have talked about.

We gambled on promotion and threw a significant amount of money away.

That's not to say that I'm completely writing Walker and Saunders off, as hopefully they can play some part next season.

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Aldosmuzzy
Well, rather than give you any more words to twist, I’ll leave you to your worrying,

Huh? What words am I twisting? It's all right to disagree without flinging muck.

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Nicko1234
Well, you could argue that none of the 5 signings fit into the overall plan that the owners have talked about.

Equally, you could argue they all do. That’s not to say they’ll all end up being of the required quality - I doubt they will - but they at least fit the profile. It’s not about having a squad built only on kids with development potential.

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Nicko1234
We gambled on promotion and threw a significant amount of money away.

We haven’t gambled on promotion. We just didn’t sell off our prized assets at the first opportunity - if we had, or if we’d had to, I’d probably be sitting in the worry chair alongside Dave!

Whether we’ve ended up with the best value for our money is a different matter. I’d argue that’s been an issue with our recruitment for most of the Palios era.

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Aldosmuzzy

Equally, you could argue they all do. That’s not to say they’ll all end up being of the required quality - I doubt they will - but they at least fit the profile. It’s not about having a squad built only on kids with development potential.

I don't think anybody could really argue that, or that they all fit the profile. Far from it.

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Aldosmuzzy
We haven’t gambled on promotion. We just didn’t sell off our prized assets at the first opportunity - if we had, or if we’d had to, I’d probably be sitting in the worry chair alongside Dave!

Whether we’ve ended up with the best value for our money is a different matter. I’d argue that’s been an issue with our recruitment for most of the Palios era.

Yes, we gambled on promotion. Not to the extent that it endangers the club's future or anything like that, but MP was pretty clear in his comments. The decisions made in the transfer window were made based on trying to go for promotion this season. They failed dismally and will have been very costly.

From what I can see we gambled on mid table mediocrity.

I’m which case you’re arguing that any club that aims for promotion is gambling on it.

Does anyone seriously believe the club and its owners should’ve thrown in the towel by January?

We signed five players. Two from L1 at a good age and with resale potential, which firmly fits the plan. Three loanees, two of which may or may not be with a view to a permanent move in the summer if it suits everyone, both a good age and one from L1 - fits the plan. The other, a kid on loan from the EPL, is always a punt.

Whether any prove to be of the required quality is a different conversation. Although two of the five are arguably proven already, albeit elsewhere.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2023:03:21:13:46:36 by Aldosmuzzy.

It's the owners taking the hit personally on the payroll that is the gamble, not the actual January activity.

Yet MP seemed remarkably relaxed about it. Go figure.

How do you know that?

Considering Tranmere have around 26 players on permanent deals currently including loaned out players, the comment about the squad being with £500,000 is a bit off beam or the 26 players would have to have an average value of around £19,000 and frankly the best players in NLS / NLN could sell for way more than that.

I would expect the squad to have roughly a value of £2,600,000 right now.

Then I ate his Liver.......... with some baked beans and a can of coke.

The five hundred thousand quid thing was mentioned by Palios as something he's paying himself. It's not the overall budget.

Oh I know that but Devon Exile seemed to suggest the whole squad was worth that.

Then I ate his Liver.......... with some baked beans and a can of coke.

The £500k it has been suggested included add ons... The upfront cash would have been a lot lower.
Palios had said he put in some money to pay wages one month. May simply be a timing issue in advance of an EFL payment,ifollow payment etc...