EFL Statement

[Guest LondonOwl313]

11 minutes ago, Mycroft said:

 

My simplistic take on it 

 

DC probably wanted to go up in two or three seasons but when the opportunity presented in the his first season he had to take the gamble and go for it.  Probably paying to much in wages, then in the second season he gambled again on Rhodes etc.

 

If he hadn't gone for it then the fans would be saying he's not prepared to invest in quality players.

 

Since then he's had to deal with FFP and now things have come to ahead with selling the club (why didn't the league warn him off about doing that?) which has signed off by the Accounts Company.  

 

He's got here by wanting to get the club promoted, the first chairman in years who wanted success for the club. 

 

Yes he's made mistakes (name a chairman who hasn't) but they are well intentioned ones.  I would have liked an experienced hand next to him, Howard Wilkinson type for instance to guide and advise him.

 

I know Im blowing in the wind but we need to look to the future not to the past.

The first season he didn’t do an awful lot wrong from what I can see. At that point, we had a clean slate to start from as far as FFP goes, and given it’s over 3 years he probably figured he had 2-3 years to resolve any issue which is plenty of time. Time where you can sell players or the stadium or whatever to bring it in to line with FFP, or indeed you can just get promoted and avoid the whole thing.

 

We did some very astute business in that first year, and let’s remember despite us having a very good defensive core of Westwood, Loovens, Lees, Hutch and Lee already in place, the more attacking players we had prior to him coming here were very much bottom half of the league.. which is why we were mid table with a strong defence and not much else under Gray. Then he buys Forestieri and Hooper for £3m each, Joao and Matias for another couple of million each, Wallace on a free, Bannan for a nominal fee, Jack Hunt for £2m then Pudil and Lopez on loan. Out of that lot nearly every one of them was a good buy for the money with the exception of maybe Matias. Plus there were a few who didn’t work out for various reasons like McGugan, Buckley, McManaman and probably a few others who I’m forgetting about. But the point is, bulk of the money was spent well and the ones that didn’t work weren’t big buys generally.

 

We then play really well most of the season, everyone is happy, finally we’re moving forward after 16 years in the wilderness where having no money has really held us back. We make the play off final and deservedly lose to Hull.. but it’s no big deal, we’ve had a good season and only need to add 3-4 players to what we have and then we’ll be favourites to go up the season after. 
 

Summer 2016 is where it all went wrong. We signed Fletcher, breaking the wage structure to do so. He’s a good player but £35-40k a week is too much at this level. I’d imagine that also triggered rises for some others like Hooper who was probably the highest earner before. And then there was the FF incident where he got a new contract probably to match his wages with Fletcher. Then we sign experienced players for big money like Abdi and Jones, both on big wages too. Then Reach comes in for a big fee, and we spend more on bringing Pudil back. I’ve no idea what the wage bill increased by between 2015-16 and 2016-17 but that’s the issue. This time around most of the signings were bad value for money. Fletcher and Reach have been good players for us but wages and fee was more than we can afford.. doubt other championship teams would have matched that so why pay it. The other signings were car crash. Then we get to January 2017 and in comes Winnall followed by Rhodes, and that’s another £3m a year in wages plus a big fee on Rhodes. At least these two are proven scorers and will get us over the line.. except when they play for us they can’t hit a barn door. Goes to show you can’t spend big on players with minimal scope to increase in value and expect to do well out of it financially. Then we balls up the play offs again and we’re stuck with all of these high earning players.

 

Instead of then cutting our cloth accordingly and selling some of them, we then sign Boyd and Van Aken in summer 2017 which makes it even worse and they’re both rubbish. Then the team starts losing, Carlos goes and the Dutch idiot comes in, the whole teams out injured or dropped. Promotion is back to being a pipe dream then and we’re stuck paying the wages. 
 

Since Jos went, I don’t think the club has put a foot wrong. Hired two decent managers and got compo, sold a player for a big fee, brought in players that represent good value for money in Iorfa, Harris, Borner etc.

 

All of the issues were basically June 2016 to August 2017. Its mad that this much mess can be caused in 12 months

[SiJ]

8 minutes ago, LondonOwl313 said:

The first season he didn’t do an awful lot wrong from what I can see. At that point, we had a clean slate to start from as far as FFP goes, and given it’s over 3 years he probably figured he had 2-3 years to resolve any issue which is plenty of time. Time where you can sell players or the stadium or whatever to bring it in to line with FFP, or indeed you can just get promoted and avoid the whole thing.

 

We did some very astute business in that first year, and let’s remember despite us having a very good defensive core of Westwood, Loovens, Lees, Hutch and Lee already in place, the more attacking players we had prior to him coming here were very much bottom half of the league.. which is why we were mid table with a strong defence and not much else under Gray. Then he buys Forestieri and Hooper for £3m each, Joao and Matias for another couple of million each, Wallace on a free, Bannan for a nominal fee, Jack Hunt for £2m then Pudil and Lopez on loan. Out of that lot nearly every one of them was a good buy for the money with the exception of maybe Matias. Plus there were a few who didn’t work out for various reasons like McGugan, Buckley, McManaman and probably a few others who I’m forgetting about. But the point is, bulk of the money was spent well and the ones that didn’t work weren’t big buys generally.

 

We then play really well most of the season, everyone is happy, finally we’re moving forward after 16 years in the wilderness where having no money has really held us back. We make the play off final and deservedly lose to Hull.. but it’s no big deal, we’ve had a good season and only need to add 3-4 players to what we have and then we’ll be favourites to go up the season after. 
 

Summer 2016 is where it all went wrong. We signed Fletcher, breaking the wage structure to do so. He’s a good player but £35-40k a week is too much at this level. I’d imagine that also triggered rises for some others like Hooper who was probably the highest earner before. And then there was the FF incident where he got a new contract probably to match his wages with Fletcher. Then we sign experienced players for big money like Abdi and Jones, both on big wages too. Then Reach comes in for a big fee, and we spend more on bringing Pudil back. I’ve no idea what the wage bill increased by between 2015-16 and 2016-17 but that’s the issue. This time around most of the signings were bad value for money. Fletcher and Reach have been good players for us but wages and fee was more than we can afford.. doubt other championship teams would have matched that so why pay it. The other signings were car crash. Then we get to January 2017 and in comes Winnall followed by Rhodes, and that’s another £3m a year in wages plus a big fee on Rhodes. At least these two are proven scorers and will get us over the line.. except when they play for us they can’t hit a barn door. Goes to show you can’t spend big on players with minimal scope to increase in value and expect to do well out of it financially. Then we balls up the play offs again and we’re stuck with all of these high earning players.

 

Instead of then cutting our cloth accordingly and selling some of them, we then sign Boyd and Van Aken in summer 2017 which makes it even worse and they’re both rubbish. Then the team starts losing, Carlos goes and the Dutch idiot comes in, the whole teams out injured or dropped. Promotion is back to being a pipe dream then and we’re stuck paying the wages. 
 

Since Jos went, I don’t think the club has put a foot wrong. Hired two decent managers and got compo, sold a player for a big fee, brought in players that represent good value for money in Iorfa, Harris, Borner etc.

 

All of the issues were basically June 2016 to August 2017. Its mad that this much mess can be caused in 12 months

Largely agree with this. 

 

To think that we are still paying a heavy price for the 2016/2017 season. 

 

Three or four quality players in the right areas and I think we'd have got up that season. Instead, we opted to buy more of the same and saddle ourselves with lengthy, long term contracts. 

 

Has to be also mentioned that we have been very poor in keeping the squad fresh; knowing when to sell/buy. 

 

 

[Sergeant Tibbs]

50 minutes ago, Mycroft said:

 

My simplistic take on it 

 

DC probably wanted to go up in two or three seasons but when the opportunity presented in the his first season he had to take the gamble and go for it.  Probably paying to much in wages, then in the second season he gambled again on Rhodes etc.

 

If he hadn't gone for it then the fans would be saying he's not prepared to invest in quality players.

 

Since then he's had to deal with FFP and now things have come to ahead with selling the club (why didn't the league warn him off about doing that?) which has signed off by the Accounts Company.  

 

He's got here by wanting to get the club promoted, the first chairman in years who wanted success for the club. 

 

Yes he's made mistakes (name a chairman who hasn't) but they are well intentioned ones.  I would have liked an experienced hand next to him, Howard Wilkinson type for instance to guide and advise him.

 

I know Im blowing in the wind but we need to look to the future not to the past.

Agree with all of that but the future  somewhat hinges on the chairman taking a step back and letting a fit and proper person run the club.

No doubting the intention, but I don't see (yet) that he's learnt from his mistakes or prepared to admit that he needs help.

[Dick_Turpin]

 

34 minutes ago, Mycroft said:

 

My simplistic take on it 

 

DC probably wanted to go up in two or three seasons but when the opportunity presented in the his first season he had to take the gamble and go for it.  Probably paying to much in wages, then in the second season he gambled again on Rhodes etc.

 

If he hadn't gone for it then the fans would be saying he's not prepared to invest in quality players.

 

The fans were happy enough - Rhodes was a bolt from the blue we didn't need.

 

34 minutes ago, Mycroft said:

 

Since then he's had to deal with FFP and now things have come to ahead with selling the club (why didn't the league warn him off about doing that?) which has signed off by the Accounts Company.  

 

I assume you mean selling the ground. The league didn't need to warn him off because it wasn't breaking the rules. It's how much and when that's at issue presumably. He may have done nothing wrong but the mere fact we had to do it at all was sign of massive failure. 

.

34 minutes ago, Mycroft said:

 

He's got here by wanting to get the club promoted, the first chairman in years who wanted success for the club. 

 

Yes he's made mistakes (name a chairman who hasn't) but they are well intentioned ones.  I would have liked an experienced hand next to him, Howard Wilkinson type for instance to guide and advise him.

 

Well intentioned is not a get out of jail free card for me. He's supposed to be a top businessman who should know better. From my point of view his pricing strategy, his flipping around with the stripes and his toying round with radio rights - amongst other things - means I have little sympathy for him as a bloke. My sympathy is for the fans who've had to pay stupid prices - if they could afford or justify it. He's been hard-nosed and made his own bed. I can see why people think differently though. I hope, however, for all our sakes he ends up being successful.

 

34 minutes ago, Mycroft said:

 

I know Im blowing in the wind but we need to look to the future not to the past.

 

We do but at the moment until this pickle is resolved it's impossible to know what that future is. 

 

[SallyCinnamon]

4 minutes ago, SiJ said:

Largely agree with this. 

 

To think that we are still paying a heavy price for the 2016/2017 season. 

 

Three or four quality players in the right areas and I think we'd have got up that season. Instead, we opted to buy more of the same and saddle ourselves with lengthy, long term contracts. 

 

Has to be also mentioned that we have been very poor in keeping the squad fresh; knowing when to sell/buy. 

 

 

We also extended deals for Westwood, Hutch, Lee, Lees, Forestieri during 2016/17. These were all probably wage increases too I imagine given how well they performed the year before. But since then have any of these extensions paid off? All of them have spent significant time sidelined or not playing. And you can’t say any of their performance levels have improved from the play off season. 

[Guest]

1 minute ago, SallyCinnamon said:

We also extended deals for Westwood, Hutch, Lee, Lees, Forestieri during 2016/17. These were all probably wage increases too I imagine given how well they performed the year before. But since then have any of these extensions paid off? All of them have spent significant time sidelined or not playing. And you can’t say any of their performance levels have improved from the play off season. 

you also can’t say you wouldn’t have given them extensions at the time ?

[SiJ]

1 minute ago, SallyCinnamon said:

We also extended deals for Westwood, Hutch, Lee, Lees, Forestieri during 2016/17. These were all probably wage increases too I imagine given how well they performed the year before. But since then have any of these extensions paid off? All of them have spent significant time sidelined or not playing. And you can’t say any of their performance levels have improved from the play off season. 

Tbf, I thought Westwood, Hutch and Lee were very good in 2016/2017. 

 

Lees was decent...Nando had his issues, but still scored 12 goals? 

 

It is difficult though and there is a massive dollop of hindsight. After all, had we not offered these key players new deals at the time and then they'd have moved on, then everyone would have been slating the club. 

 

It is a fine balance. 

 

Still - it is 2019/2020 and we are still reliant over reliant on the same core of players. That is pretty damming of our recruitment/moving players on. 

[Inspector Lestrade]

1 minute ago, rickygoo said:

 

 

The fans were happy enough - Rhodes was a bolt from the blue we didn't need.

 

 

I assume you mean selling the ground. The league didn't need to warn him off because it wasn't breaking the rules. It's how much and when that's at issue presumably. He may have done nothing wrong but the mere fact we had to do it at all was sign of massive failure. 

.

 

Well intentioned is not a get out of jail free card for me. He's supposed to be a top businessman who should know better. From my point of view his pricing strategy, his flipping around with the stripes and his toying round with radio rights - amongst other things - means I have little sympathy for him as a bloke. My sympathy is for the fans who've had to pay stupid prices - if they could afford or justify it. He's been hard-nosed and made his own bed. I can see why people think differently though. I hope, however, for all our sakes he ends up being successful.

 

 

We do but at the moment until this pickle is resolved it's impossible to know what that future is. 

 

 

This is exactly what I mean we keep going over the same old ground.  You make valiant points but it gets us no nearer to moving on.  In another five pages all the same points will be made yet again.  

 

[Blue and white]

2 minutes ago, SiJ said:

Tbf, I thought Westwood, Hutch and Lee were very good in 2016/2017. 

 

Lees was decent...Nando had his issues, but still scored 12 goals? 

 

It is difficult though and there is a massive dollop of hindsight. After all, had we not offered these key players new deals at the time and then they'd have moved on, then everyone would have been slating the club. 

 

It is a fine balance. 

 

Still - it is 2019/2020 and we are still reliant over reliant on the same core of players. That is pretty damming of our recruitment/moving players on. 

You talk a lot of sense.

[Animis]

1 minute ago, SiJ said:

Tbf, I thought Westwood, Hutch and Lee were very good in 2016/2017. 

 

Lees was decent...Nando had his issues, but still scored 12 goals? 

 

It is difficult though and there is a massive dollop of hindsight. After all, had we not offered these key players new deals at the time and then they'd have moved on, then everyone would have been slating the club. 

 

It is a fine balance. 

 

Still - it is 2019/2020 and we are still reliant over reliant on the same core of players. That is pretty damming of our recruitment/moving players on. 

 

I think it's partly down to DC's loyalty moral compass.

 

He appears to be intensely loyal to who he does business with. It's refreshingly honest on one hand, but in this cut-throat world of business, perhaps widely misguided. 

[Beany71]

From a personal point of view I'm not bothered what they do. If they dock us points and relegate us so be it. I've watched us from the late seventies, when we've been good and when we've been awful regardless of who the owner is or the players are. Yes it will be crap but we go again as we have in the past and we will no doubt in the future. It's the club I love, owners, players come and go it's football. But regardless of what league we're in I'll still be there.

Bring it on EFL, you won't keep us down for long we are Sheffield Wednesday!

[SiJ]

14 minutes ago, Animis said:

 

I think it's partly down to DC's loyalty moral compass.

 

He appears to be intensely loyal to who he does business with. It's refreshingly honest on one hand, but in this cut-throat world of business, perhaps widely misguided. 

There might be something to that. 

 

Heard about him viewing it as a "family"...

 

Nice sentiment, but football is a ruthless business and there can be little room for sentiment. 

 

Part of the reason why he stuck with Carlos, Jos far longer than he should have done. 

 

Thing is when you are like that, people in football will take advantage. 

 

You leave yourself open to all the parasites that are in the game. 

Edited November 17, 2019 by SiJ

[Ronnie Starling]

16 minutes ago, Beany71 said:

From a personal point of view I'm not bothered what they do. If they dock us points and relegate us so be it. I've watched us from the late seventies, when we've been good and when we've been awful regardless of who the owner is or the players are. Yes it will be crap but we go again as we have in the past and we will no doubt in the future. It's the club I love, owners, players come and go it's football. But regardless of what league we're in I'll still be there.

Bring it on EFL, you won't keep us down for long we are Sheffield Wednesday!

My sentiments too.

[Dick_Turpin]

32 minutes ago, Mycroft said:

 

This is exactly what I mean we keep going over the same old ground.  You make valiant points but it gets us no nearer to moving on.  In another five pages all the same points will be made yet again.  

 

Because until Chansiri changes tack my objections will remain. And don't forget we hear the same old stuff from the Chansiri fans as well. Sticking up for him regardless of what he exposes the club to. But this is a safe place to vent for us all. Rather here than Hillsborough. 

 

What will change things is the EFL verdict.  

[McRightSide]

14 minutes ago, TINKERBELL said:

Is worst case scenario 12pt deduction. 

 

It should be a fine as it's the paying fans who suffer too

 

The EFL don't give a fk and killed bury and they'll probably do it again to a club 

-12 is likely.

 

But from a points deduction perspective I believe it can be up to -21

[sage owl]

4 minutes ago, TINKERBELL said:

He might want to sell us on the outcome of that.

He might have to give us away. 

[Mobley]

1 hour ago, LondonOwl313 said:

The first season he didn’t do an awful lot wrong from what I can see. At that point, we had a clean slate to start from as far as FFP goes, and given it’s over 3 years he probably figured he had 2-3 years to resolve any issue which is plenty of time. Time where you can sell players or the stadium or whatever to bring it in to line with FFP, or indeed you can just get promoted and avoid the whole thing.

 

We did some very astute business in that first year, and let’s remember despite us having a very good defensive core of Westwood, Loovens, Lees, Hutch and Lee already in place, the more attacking players we had prior to him coming here were very much bottom half of the league.. which is why we were mid table with a strong defence and not much else under Gray. Then he buys Forestieri and Hooper for £3m each, Joao and Matias for another couple of million each, Wallace on a free, Bannan for a nominal fee, Jack Hunt for £2m then Pudil and Lopez on loan. Out of that lot nearly every one of them was a good buy for the money with the exception of maybe Matias. Plus there were a few who didn’t work out for various reasons like McGugan, Buckley, McManaman and probably a few others who I’m forgetting about. But the point is, bulk of the money was spent well and the ones that didn’t work weren’t big buys generally.

 

We then play really well most of the season, everyone is happy, finally we’re moving forward after 16 years in the wilderness where having no money has really held us back. We make the play off final and deservedly lose to Hull.. but it’s no big deal, we’ve had a good season and only need to add 3-4 players to what we have and then we’ll be favourites to go up the season after. 
 

Summer 2016 is where it all went wrong. We signed Fletcher, breaking the wage structure to do so. He’s a good player but £35-40k a week is too much at this level. I’d imagine that also triggered rises for some others like Hooper who was probably the highest earner before. And then there was the FF incident where he got a new contract probably to match his wages with Fletcher. Then we sign experienced players for big money like Abdi and Jones, both on big wages too. Then Reach comes in for a big fee, and we spend more on bringing Pudil back. I’ve no idea what the wage bill increased by between 2015-16 and 2016-17 but that’s the issue. This time around most of the signings were bad value for money. Fletcher and Reach have been good players for us but wages and fee was more than we can afford.. doubt other championship teams would have matched that so why pay it. The other signings were car crash. Then we get to January 2017 and in comes Winnall followed by Rhodes, and that’s another £3m a year in wages plus a big fee on Rhodes. At least these two are proven scorers and will get us over the line.. except when they play for us they can’t hit a barn door. Goes to show you can’t spend big on players with minimal scope to increase in value and expect to do well out of it financially. Then we balls up the play offs again and we’re stuck with all of these high earning players.

 

Instead of then cutting our cloth accordingly and selling some of them, we then sign Boyd and Van Aken in summer 2017 which makes it even worse and they’re both rubbish. Then the team starts losing, Carlos goes and the Dutch idiot comes in, the whole teams out injured or dropped. Promotion is back to being a pipe dream then and we’re stuck paying the wages. 
 

Since Jos went, I don’t think the club has put a foot wrong. Hired two decent managers and got compo, sold a player for a big fee, brought in players that represent good value for money in Iorfa, Harris, Borner etc.

 

All of the issues were basically June 2016 to August 2017. Its mad that this much mess can be caused in 12 months

 

[peacock1961]

2 hours ago, The Dukeries Owl said:

 

When you have to walk all the way round to avoid coming into contact with all eighteen Shrewsbury fans   

That's actually quite funny. 

[sonofbert2]

I want to write an essay but I really can’t be arsed.

 

Fuckoff Wednesday!!

[Guest ka58]

1 hour ago, SiJ said:

There might be something to that. 

 

Heard about him viewing it as a "family"...

 

Nice sentiment, but football is a ruthless business and there can be little room for sentiment. 

 

Part of the reason why he stuck with Carlos, Jos far longer than he should have done. 

 

Thing is when you are like that, people in football will take advantage. 

 

You leave yourself open to all the parasites that are in the game. 

luhukay was a terrible decision that knocked us back two years. 
 

the latest Ownership regime - save for a valiant attempt to get up in the first season - has for me - been a disaster.

 

we still aren’t good enough to go up - but are saddled with expensive tickets, a lack of a coherent strategy to develop the club on and off the field, sanctions from the football league, transfer embargoes, highly paid players sat in the stands, a lack of commercial nous with issues even being able to sell a kit to fans, no real investment in the stadium which now has a reduced capacity. A stream of probably expensive appointments and sackings of people brought in to seemingly fix the above problems.

 

its a mess.

 

fortunately on the pitch, after a catastrophic managerial appointment in luhukay which sent us hurtling backwards, we have steadied it with two decent managerial appointments. It’s  only really got us back to a position where we were when we sacked Carlos tho.

 

I think the club is a mess. 

 

Edited November 17, 2019 by ka58