Where did it all go wrong for George Hirst at Sheffield Wednesday?

[Guest]

13 hours ago, Westfield Owl said:

 

Hirst played for our first team at a young age.

 

I’d say the Championship and League Cup are a decent level.  Wouldn’t you?

 

Leicester offered us £2 million quid for Hirst before the club’s relationship with the player had turned sour.

 

If the club didn’t think he was worth the salary GH was wanting, I totally understand the club not agreeing to pay him more than he is worth.

 

I mean, that type of thing must happen with many players at different clubs up and down the country.  It will be a very common occurrence in the football world.

 

It makes us look totally incompetent that the club turned down a £2 million quid transfer fee, for a player that ended up leaving for next to nothing 2 years later.

 

Yes I know it’s easy to shrug it off as ‘only’ £2 million.  But we’ve been in multiple transfer embargoes over the last few years because of poor financial management of the club.

 

Bullsh*t like this is part of the reason why we are in such a mess off the field and on it.

 

Also, Hirst being cheeky and asking for a raise in salary, doesn’t justify freezing the player out of the squad, just to save our stupid chairman’s pride.

 

Remind me again how many total minutes of first team football this was and then let me know if this warrants £10K a week, which was my original question.

 

You also seem to have missed the posts where I agreed that not selling for £2M was a mistake.

[Guest]

9 hours ago, Utah Owl said:

He did, or Leicester City did? Who knows the real answer to that one?

 

My point is that there may have been a problem between Chansiri and Leicester City's owner and when Leicester's offer was rebuffed then they may have felt insulted and colluded with Hirst's advisors to make the move happen and put one over on Chansiri. Given that Leicester's owners also own Leuven I'd say it's an odds on bet. As a young lad of 17 or 18 one would hardly expect Hirst himself to be pulling the strings on this. Also factor in Hirst senior's well publicised spat with the club and this has all the hallmarks of several parties getting their own back on Chansiri.

 

Chansiri may claim to be a businessman, but he clearly isn't. He is a fool (although I'll concede probably a well meaning one) and as the old adage goes a fool and his money are soon parted, hence our disastrous financial situation.

 

So you don't have a problem with the way Leicester went about this then?

[soldierboyblue]

8 minutes ago, hirstyboywonder said:

Remind me again how many total minutes of first team football this was and then let me know if this warrants £10K a week, which was my original question.

Bang on - and you can bracket Sean Clare in there as well (probably not 10k a week)

[Utah Owl]

10 minutes ago, hirstyboywonder said:

 

So you don't have a problem with the way Leicester went about this then?

I have a huge problem with it and with DEH but I am also extremely annoyed at the way Chansiri handled the whole issue.

 

Chansiri's behaviour ever since he took over the club has been a mixture of foolishness, naivety and arrogance, otherwise how do you think we find ourselves in such a mess over continual breaches of the rules, let alone the situation over Hirst?

 

I'm sure Chansiri is well meaning but he is not the right owner for us. He doesn't learn from mistakes and simply won't take proper advice. If thinks don't change quickly he will ruin the club.

[Utah Owl]

18 minutes ago, hirstyboywonder said:

 

So you don't have a problem with the way Leicester went about this then?

I have a huge problem with it and with DEH but I am also extremely annoyed at the way Chansiri handled the whole issue.

 

Chansiri's behaviour ever since he took over the club has been a mixture of foolishness, naivety and arrogance, otherwise how do you think we find ourselves in such a mess over continual breaches of the rules, let alone the situation over Hirst?

 

I'm sure Chansiri is well meaning but he is not the right owner for us. He doesn't learn from mistakes and simply won't take proper advice. If thinks don't change quickly he will ruin the club.

[bladeshater]

2 hours ago, adelphi1867 said:

Apart from the mid 70's to the mid 80's, it has never had any interest in developing it's own players, in my 50+ years of watching them.

Steve Burtenshaw  set up the Youth development process that led to Taylor, Smith, Sterland, Shirtliffe, Pearson, Bolder etc coming through to the Wed's 1st team, sadly Wilkinson scrapped it to concentrate on the 1st team, sad because the 1st thing he did when he joined Leeds was to implement a Youth development system

As a by word, Burtenshaw went on to build the Arsenal production line of young players.

Bolder came on a transfer fee

[malek]

1 hour ago, hirstyboywonder said:

 

Remind me again how many total minutes of first team football this was and then let me know if this warrants £10K a week, which was my original question.

 

You also seem to have missed the posts where I agreed that not selling for £2M was a mistake.

 

It doesn't matter how many minutes of first team football he played and it should be obvious to everyone.

 

He didn't warrant 10k based on how much he would have helped first team at that moment. However, I believe his talent was worth it as he could have been developed and sold for very good fee making our investment of 10k p/w no brainer. Especially considering how much we paid some truly awful first team players at the time.

 

We had 3 options:

 

1. Sell him for 2m that Leicester reportedly offered.

 

2. Work out contract with him to sell him for more money at later date.

 

3. Turn Leicester down and wait for tribunal to decide how much we should get.

 

We picked option number 4:

 

4. Tried to blackmail player threatening to stop him from training and playing. It backfired, so he fu*ked us up and we ended up with nothing.

 

 

[Guest]

23 minutes ago, malek said:

 

It doesn't matter how many minutes of first team football he played and it should be obvious to everyone.

 

He didn't warrant 10k based on how much he would have helped first team at that moment. However, I believe his talent was worth it as he could have been developed and sold for very good fee making our investment of 10k p/w no brainer. Especially considering how much we paid some truly awful first team players at the time.

 

We had 3 options:

 

1. Sell him for 2m that Leicester reportedly offered.

 

2. Work out contract with him to sell him for more money at later date.

 

3. Turn Leicester down and wait for tribunal to decide how much we should get.

 

We picked option number 4:

 

4. Tried to blackmail player threatening to stop him from training and playing. It backfired, so he fu*ked us up and we ended up with nothing.

 

 

 

I'm not saying we handled it correctly at all but regards to point 4, not players have handled contract disputes in such a way at to royally screw over a club. Option 1 and 3 would have been a better choice from our perspective though, no doubt.

 

Just because we have spent good money on bad in recent times doesn't mean we should have forked out £10K a week on a player who has still not played any first team football 2 years after he moved on, on the premise that we might recoup it.

£500,000 a year for a player without any first team experience - Dawson will be getting nowhere near that now as an established first team regular. The Leicester City's of this world might be able to afford that, we shouldn't be entertaining the thought of it. 

 

 

 

 

 

[edinburghowl]

2 hours ago, soldierboyblue said:

Bang on - and you can bracket Sean Clare in there as well (probably not 10k a week)

I suspect Clare will be on close to half of that £10k figure at Hearts. He is rumoured to be one of the higher earners alongside Steven Naismith. I hope Clare will stay at Hearts but the club might not have any fixtures to play until 2021 so that may force a move. He started very badly but he seemed to improve tenfold when Daniel Stendel arrived.

[edinburghowl]

If the rumours are right and Hirst was wanting £10k a week then the club were right not to pay him. That’s ludicrous money for a laddie that was in his position. He shouldn’t have even been offered anywhere near even half of that. The club were right to knock that back and they should have sold him straight away when that bid came in.

 

It’s a shame, he is gone and he

is history, it will be interesting to see if he makes it, but to be honest I couldn’t care less about his career now if it’s not with Wednesday. 

[sherlyegg]

On 26/05/2020 at 10:57, Danish said:

The perfect example of that is already at Leicester, he's called Jamie Vardy.

Not really a perfect example though is it, for every 1 Jamie Vardy, there are 500 David Micklethwites.

 

 

[malek]

30 minutes ago, edinburghowl said:

If the rumours are right and Hirst was wanting £10k a week then the club were right not to pay him. That’s ludicrous money for a laddie that was in his position. He shouldn’t have even been offered anywhere near even half of that. The club were right to knock that back and they should have sold him straight away when that bid came in.

 

It’s a shame, he is gone and he

is history, it will be interesting to see if he makes it, but to be honest I couldn’t care less about his career now if it’s not with Wednesday. 

 

I can't agree with that sentiment.

 

If we ever produce gem of a talent, Premiership clubs will get interested offering him wage package not unlike what Hirst reportedly asked here.

 

Are we supposed to let them all go as out of principle we won't match it as he got no or little first team experience ?

[edinburghowl]

11 minutes ago, malek said:

 

I can't agree with that sentiment.

 

If we ever produce gem of a talent, Premiership clubs will get interested offering him wage package not unlike what Hirst reportedly asked here.

 

Are we supposed to let them all go as out of principle we won't match it as he got no or little first team experience ?

Mate the club is already in a perilous financial position by paying ridiculous wages to first team players never mind overspending on projects. 
 

There is absolutely no way that any academy player should be earning anything close to £10k a week in the Championship. There’s an argument to suggest he maybe should have been involved more in the first team in his time here but the management at the time clearly didn’t think he was good enough or ready.

 

And yes we shouldn’t be trying to match Premier League clubs on wages. 

Edited May 27, 2020 by edinburghowl

[malek]

14 minutes ago, edinburghowl said:

Mate the club is already in a perilous financial position by paying ridiculous wages to first team players never mind overspending on projects. 
 

There is absolutely no way that any academy player should be earning anything close to £10k a week in the Championship. There’s an argument to suggest he maybe should have been involved more in the first team in his time here but the management at the time clearly didn’t think he was good enough or ready.

 

And yes we shouldn’t be trying to match Premier League clubs on wages. 

 

As opposed to insane wages we offered to average players not likely to ever give anything in return, investing in Hirst would have made sense.

 

Talented English youngster is the most expensive comodity in football and we are one of few clubs stupid enough to turn opportunity to earn on one of those down when we finally got one coming through our academy.

[Guest]

1 hour ago, malek said:

 

As opposed to insane wages we offered to average players not likely to ever give anything in return, investing in Hirst would have made sense.

 

Talented English youngster is the most expensive comodity in football and we are one of few clubs stupid enough to turn opportunity to earn on one of those down when we finally got one coming through our academy.

 

I admire your defence of academy products over recent years but how many have actually made it. This gem you speak of hasn't played at a decent level 2 years after leaving us. Others of the same age are making it at all levels in English football. Plenty of players have scored lots of goals for many teams at youth levels and not gone on to make it. 

Cubs at this level cannot afford to pay kids with no first team games under their belt £10K a week. How many games has Cameron Dawson played? An established first team player in a Championship team who signed a new 4 year contract recently but is probably not on £10K a week now, never mind what he was on before he signed that new deal in January. 

[malek]

16 minutes ago, hirstyboywonder said:

 

I admire your defence of academy products over recent years but how many have actually made it. This gem you speak of hasn't played at a decent level 2 years after leaving us. Others of the same age are making it at all levels in English football. Plenty of players have scored lots of goals for many teams at youth levels and not gone on to make it. 

Cubs at this level cannot afford to pay kids with no first team games under their belt £10K a week. How many games has Cameron Dawson played? An established first team player in a Championship team who signed a new 4 year contract recently but is probably not on £10K a week now, never mind what he was on before he signed that new deal in January. 

 

Can anyone understand simple economics ? We already had 2m offer on the table and we obviously thought he was worth more as we turned that offer down. You either take the offer or sign him to new deal and 10k (I'm not sure he asked that much) would make sense as if we sold him year later for half of what Leicester originally offered we would still made 500k.

 

Knowing that our back-up full backs got paid more than that makes decision of giving Hirst deal on his terms even more viable.

[SiJ]

The impression I got was that once Leicester showed an interest he was always going to move. 

 

Sure I read on here a few times that Hirst Snr pretty much said that George would be off and that was at least a year (if not more) before he did in fact go. 

 

Of course our owner then threw his toys out of the pram etc., and that sort of gave the Hirst's even more of an out. 

[Guest]

17 minutes ago, malek said:

 

Can anyone understand simple economics ? We already had 2m offer on the table and we obviously thought he was worth more as we turned that offer down. You either take the offer or sign him to new deal and 10k (I'm not sure he asked that much) would make sense as if we sold him year later for half of what Leicester originally offered we would still made 500k.

 

Knowing that our back-up full backs got paid more than that makes decision of giving Hirst deal on his terms even more viable.

 

As I said more than once we should have taken the £2M, that was the mistake. Not paying a kid who has not played more than a few minutes of professional football by the age of 21 £10K a week was not a mistake at our level. 

Edited May 27, 2020 by Guest

[malek]

Just now, hirstyboywonder said:

 

As I said more than once we should have taken the £2M, that was the mistake. Not paying a kid who has not played more than a few minutes of professional football by the age of 21 was not a mistake at our level. 

 

And I totally agree. And if we thought he was worth more then 2m then it would make sense to accept his offer.

 

Point is that we were never supposed to agree to reported 10k because we thought he could replace Fletcher in our starting 11, but because we hoped that bid higher then original 2m would come in due time.

 

Quite simply, we should have agreed to his terms if we thought he was worth more then 2m and sold him then if we didn't. What we chose to do was nonsense.

[Guest]

10 minutes ago, malek said:

 

And I totally agree. And if we thought he was worth more then 2m then it would make sense to accept his offer.

 

Point is that we were never supposed to agree to reported 10k because we thought he could replace Fletcher in our starting 11, but because we hoped that bid higher then original 2m would come in due time.

 

Quite simply, we should have agreed to his terms if we thought he was worth more then 2m and sold him then if we didn't. What we chose to do was nonsense.

 

But as someone else said earlier, the belief may have been that if we had argued it out and ended up going to a tribunal then we could have got more than £2M having not had to pay someone £10K a week. Shutting him out completely benefited nobody and clearly wasn't the best way to go about it but nobody could really have seen what transpired coming, it was underhand.

 

Or maybe we didn't want to sell him at all and had plans of seeing how he developed for another year or 2 with a view to gradual first team involvement. Paying him £10K a week at that point if planning to keep him would not have been wise if it proved that he wasn't going to be good enough and we ended up paying him £500K a year for 2 or 3 years with nothing to show for it. You can't justify £10K a week at that stage if we wanted to keep him.