It could be the lack of information from the club or the headless chicken effect of blind panic, but the accusations have started to fly again. They’re doing it on the cheap! Loads of players would sign if they’d only pay the going rate! Why aren’t they spending our money?
What is the going rate? As far as I can see, the average weekly salary of a Premier League footballer is around £13,000 per week, considerably less if you remove the top players at clubs like United and Chelsea. Now Fitz Hall signed from a championship club and must be one of the cheaper of our new signings, and he runs an Aston Martin. If that isn’t some indication that we’re paying something like the going rate then I don’t know what does.
Which players would sign for us? Well it’s getting increasingly hard to find that out. There have been no reports of us having any bids accepted this window, nor any evidence of us talking to players other than the three we’ve signed. There may be a raft of players gagging to sign for the club, but we can’t get anywhere near them.
The Johnson transfer is often dismissed as us doing it on the cheap or us not being big enough. From what I’ve heard the decision to go to Everton was a last minute one and wages weren’t an issue. The fact is that British players are never really going to see us as a good prospect unless we can get some seasons under our belt at this level.
Put simply, we’re (hopefully) after good players. Clubs either don’t want to let them go, or at least not until they’ve got the replacement in (Latics being the exception to that rule). You can’t buy players if no one is going to sell them to you.
It’s easy to sit behind a PC saying “well I signed Alan Smith for £7 million and his 29 goals helped us to qualify for the champions league” when your experience of football management come via Sports Interactive. The fact is that this is the real world and things and Paul Jewell can’t just register as manager of another team to bully their players into signing for us.
Finally, whether you like it or not the money you’re asking the club to chuck at players hasn’t come from your pocket. If the chairman decides that the Sky money is there to pay wages and balance the books, well that’s his decision. It would be nice for him to tells us, but if it puts the club on a better financial footing for the future then how much complaint can we really have?
Most of us (I hope) support this club because we have some affinity with it, not because it’s in the Premier League. If that’s the case then surely our biggest concern is it’s long term future. Look at Leeds, Bradford, Sheffield Wednesday et al and tell me that spending to accumulate works.
If the players are right for the club, and that should include financially, then we should sign them. Should we be mortgaging my son’s ability to support the team that I love?
Well I think I’ve answered that one already.
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