Players that increased in value

[Roy Of The Roasters]

Many good points made above.

 

The bottom line is we have no underlying transfer philosophy and no long term plan. We appear unable to think more than half a season ahead. And as long as that's the case we'll continue to hang onto some players too long and give others up too quickly.

 

The fact that we have spent a net £30 MM or so on players under the current ownership only to be staring into L1 is a shocking indictment of how our club is run.

[S36 OWL]

1 minute ago, Roy Of The Roasters said:

Many good points made above.

 

The bottom line is we have no underlying transfer philosophy and no long term plan. We appear unable to think more than half a season ahead. And as long as that's the case we'll continue to hang onto some players too long and give others up too quickly.

 

The fact that we have spent a net £30 MM or so on players under the current ownership only to be staring into L1 is a shocking indictment of how our club is run.

 

You cannot plan long term in football 

[Animis]

The strategy was set during 2015/17 with a relative amount of success.

 

A different strategy should have employed in the Summer of 2017, as most thought that was our two year punt on promotion, which most clubs; Wolves; Brighton; Derby etc. had also gambled on and, which seemed to be the championship game plan at the time.

 

We just carried on, with DC spurred on by the ridiculous fan survey at the end of 2017, which had most fans saying - yeah, carry spending and charging us top money. What DC should have said is shall we carry on spending, risking FFP and a points deductions that could end up relegating us - I'm sure the fans would have answered differently.

 

If we had replaced CC in the Summer of 2017, and recruited better in 2017 we may have had another season in the play offs and who knows where we'd be. 2017 was the missed opportunity year, and we will suffer for a few more years yet.

[ZicoSterland2]

1 hour ago, Rogers said:

Sterland (trainee) Warhurst (Oldham) Bart-Williams (Leyton Orient), Palmer (West Brom); trying to think of other players we took from lower league teams or trainees, improve them, and sold for more money than we bought them for. 

Williams, jonnson, Hirst, Marwood.

[Guest LondonOwl313]

56 minutes ago, 83owl said:

You get an offer 4x what you paid for a player then you sell them. Doesn’t matter if you’re looking to win the league or avoid relegation. Doesn’t matter if it’s January or September. They are second tier players and should be easily replaced, especially in the case of a player who has played well for 18 months out of his entire 12 year career so far.

I’d say the biggest factor when deciding is the financial position. In hindsight we should have taken the money for Forestieri. But in 2016 he was the best player at the club and we were hoping to go for automatic promotion. Other clubs don’t always sell their best players. From a footballing perspective we’d have missed him so in that respect I was happy he was staying. However, I was making the assumption that Chansiri didn’t really need the money and that he would continue to finance us as he had done up to that point. If I’d known that he was basically going to throw money at it until 2017 and then pull the plug then that would put things in a different perspective and we’d need to wheel and deal. By the same token, signing Rhodes for £10m sounds great assuming we still have money but if it’s all you’ve got left it’s a moronic decision.

 

FF was good in 2016/17 as well, then was injured in 2017/18 but when he came back he was very good under Jos as well at the end of the season. It’s only really 2018/19 and 2019/20 where he seemed to disappear.. coincided with when he got charged with racial abuse and had multiple suspensions

[Guest LondonOwl313]

45 minutes ago, Animis said:

The strategy was set during 2015/17 with a relative amount of success.

 

A different strategy should have employed in the Summer of 2017, as most thought that was our two year punt on promotion, which most clubs; Wolves; Brighton; Derby etc. had also gambled on and, which seemed to be the championship game plan at the time.

 

We just carried on, with DC spurred on by the ridiculous fan survey at the end of 2017, which had most fans saying - yeah, carry spending and charging us top money. What DC should have said is shall we carry on spending, risking FFP and a points deductions that could end up relegating us - I'm sure the fans would have answered differently.

 

If we had replaced CC in the Summer of 2017, and recruited better in 2017 we may have had another season in the play offs and who knows where we'd be. 2017 was the missed opportunity year, and we will suffer for a few more years yet.

2017/18 wasn’t really a missed opportunity because the biggest factor was that the majority of the best players were out injured for games 15-35.. no chance we could make the play offs then.

 

2018/19 and 2019/20 were missed opportunities. 2018/19 we still had a top 6 squad on paper but we wasted it by having Jos in charge for the first half.. Bruce got our form back to the level required but we had too much to do, if he’d been here all season we’d have probably made it.

 

Last season we had enough for top 10

and to maybe sneak in top 6, but Monk made a right mess of it. What he did after Xmas was just diabolical.

 

This seasons been a write off because we’ve lost most of our best players and we got the points deduction. All down hill now I’m afraid 

[Bluewings]

It's easy saying we should have sold Foresteri and we should have sold Reach...

We sold Joao for a profit and in reality we should have kept him we all know this.

 

I get that Wednesday never recover money we spend on players, but as its been said

this is down to dire recruitment.

We sold Hunt to Brizzzzle City and I thought we got a good deal his attacking contribution was

poor and he wasn't the best defender but that said I'm having to watch Liam Palmer's abysmal

efforts at right back instead.

I'm sure when Hunt left we could have bought a younger dynamic full back using half his fee but

we never do this.

Things need to change but I can't see it happening.

 

 

[SallyCinnamon]

Bannan, Lee, Lees, Reach, Forestieri, Hutchinson all improved.

 

But then we hung on to them for too long until they lost value, lost form and ran down their contracts. 

[gurujuan]

1 hour ago, Animis said:

The strategy was set during 2015/17 with a relative amount of success.

 

A different strategy should have employed in the Summer of 2017, as most thought that was our two year punt on promotion, which most clubs; Wolves; Brighton; Derby etc. had also gambled on and, which seemed to be the championship game plan at the time.

 

We just carried on, with DC spurred on by the ridiculous fan survey at the end of 2017, which had most fans saying - yeah, carry spending and charging us top money. What DC should have said is shall we carry on spending, risking FFP and a points deductions that could end up relegating us - I'm sure the fans would have answered differently.

 

If we had replaced CC in the Summer of 2017, and recruited better in 2017 we may have had another season in the play offs and who knows where we'd be. 2017 was the missed opportunity year, and we will suffer for a few more years yet.

Even then there was too much wastage We didn’t need to sign 30 odd senior players, half that would have been plenty. Carlos was more than happy to use the same 14-15 players, and clearly didn’t want a lot of the others. Post Wembley, he said we needed 3 players, a strong man in midfield, a winger and someone to compete with Forestieri We ended up bringing in 16 players, and addressed none of those positions Carlos identified. Were some of those players, youngsters we could develop, that wouldn’t have been so bad. Most of the time though, it was duplicating what we had, with more thirty somethings 

[Themagiccap]

We've made a nice little profit on Shaw...

 

seriously though, whilever our objective set by the top is win now at all costs, let's not forget DC was talking play offs earlier this year, then price rise and sale profit is not even considered, its can player X do a job now. Hence the massive financial struggles we are under. 

Until the hierarchy at the top sets us up with a long term structure and objective then we'll never be bothered about sell on values. 

[Zarostulus]

It's something we do well at Oakwell. Our late owner Patrick Cryne started the philosophy of buy low, sell high to keep the club afloat because he was one of the least affluent owners in the division and simply couldn't subsidise millions upon millions of pounds to be competitive. When he was gravely ill and looking to sell the club to the right owners to secure its long-term future, he passed on this philosophy to them, and they have taken it a couple of steps further. 

 

There were flaws in 'the plan' as we affectionally called it under Cryne. We stayed afloat and had a few good seasons, but when we signed players we never gave them contracts of a sufficient length and rarely paid over £300k for a player. This usually lead to losing players a year or two into their contracts for £500k-£3m or risk them leaving on a free. This is how you got Winnall off us for example, we couldn't afford to not take the 500k for whatever it was when he would have left for nothing in the summer. We lost Hourihane similarly, and lost a couple at the start of last season too. 

 

Our recruits were peaking right as their contracts started running down. 

 

Our new owners have started paying a bit more up front, up to £1.2m in some instances to fetch a slightly higher calibre of new recruit in. I know that's small change to Chansiri, but it's what we have to work with as we run our club self-sufficiently. We have an excellent data-driven scouting system which allows us to get away without spending millions. Contracts for new players have gone from 1-3 years under Cryne, to 3-5 years often with an optional extra year in the club's favour. This means that generally, as they peak with us, they'll still have a couple of years left and if we do sell them we can sell them at a premium, rather than panicking about losing them for nowt. 

 

As we make more money, the transfer fees paid and quality of recruit go up, and in turn allow even higher profits later and so on (in theory, which obviuously can be different in practice). Very similar to Brentford. Now we need to follow them in taking £10m+ for our top players rather than 3m. 

 

I'm proud that our club has a sustainable long-term vision, and we're reaping the rewards of it now, despite yesterday's frustration. 

 

I don't understand why a club like Wednesday wouldn't want to try something similar. Chansiri has the money to set up the scouting system, the club has the pulling power to attract the top talent in recruitment & data science, and even if run sustainably, with the history and the crowds you pull you'd have good pulling power for young, hungry players and a much higher budget to work with at the start of 'the plan' than we did at Barnsley. You could skip steps 1 & 2, if that makes sense. You'd just need to phase out the dead wood on 90 bazillion quid a week. 

 

 

 

 

[Guest LondonOwl313]

12 minutes ago, Zarostulus said:

It's something we do well at Oakwell. Our late owner Patrick Cryne started the philosophy of buy low, sell high to keep the club afloat because he was one of the least affluent owners in the division and simply couldn't subsidise millions upon millions of pounds to be competitive. When he was gravely ill and looking to sell the club to the right owners to secure its long-term future, he passed on this philosophy to them, and they have taken it a couple of steps further. 

 

There were flaws in 'the plan' as we affectionally called it under Cryne. We stayed afloat and had a few good seasons, but when we signed players we never gave them contracts of a sufficient length and rarely paid over £300k for a player. This usually lead to losing players a year or two into their contracts for £500k-£3m or risk them leaving on a free. This is how you got Winnall off us for example, we couldn't afford to not take the 500k for whatever it was when he would have left for nothing in the summer. We lost Hourihane similarly, and lost a couple at the start of last season too. 

 

Our recruits were peaking right as their contracts started running down. 

 

Our new owners have started paying a bit more up front, up to £1.2m in some instances to fetch a slightly higher calibre of new recruit in. I know that's small change to Chansiri, but it's what we have to work with as we run our club self-sufficiently. We have an excellent data-driven scouting system which allows us to get away without spending millions. Contracts for new players have gone from 1-3 years under Cryne, to 3-5 years often with an optional extra year in the club's favour. This means that generally, as they peak with us, they'll still have a couple of years left and if we do sell them we can sell them at a premium, rather than panicking about losing them for nowt. 

 

As we make more money, the transfer fees paid and quality of recruit go up, and in turn allow even higher profits later and so on (in theory, which obviuously can be different in practice). Very similar to Brentford. Now we need to follow them in taking £10m+ for our top players rather than 3m. 

 

I'm proud that our club has a sustainable long-term vision, and we're reaping the rewards of it now, despite yesterday's frustration. 

 

I don't understand why a club like Wednesday wouldn't want to try something similar. Chansiri has the money to set up the scouting system, the club has the pulling power to attract the top talent in recruitment & data science, and even if run sustainably, with the history and the crowds you pull you'd have good pulling power for young, hungry players and a much higher budget to work with at the start of 'the plan' than we did at Barnsley. You could skip steps 1 & 2, if that makes sense. You'd just need to phase out the dead wood on 90 bazillion quid a week. 

 

 

 

 

Not every club can apply this strategy though, transfers are a zero sum game. If everyone tried to do what Brentford have done it would push up the price of young talent and reduce the price of players at the stage at which you’d look to sell on for a profit. So it would reduce the profit margin on the strategy. It works as long as it’s a niche strategy and not the thing which everyone is trying to do.

 

 

[Zarostulus]

Just now, LondonOwl313 said:

Not every club can apply this strategy though, transfers are a zero sum game. If everyone tried to do what Brentford have done it would push up the price of young talent and reduce the price of players at the stage at which you’d look to sell on for a profit. So it would reduce the profit margin on the strategy. It works as long as it’s a niche strategy and not the thing which everyone is trying to do.

 

 

Absolutely, but there's scope for a couple of other clubs to try it yet whilst most clubs are still spaffing millions/billions on random punts 

[Guest LondonOwl313]

2 minutes ago, Zarostulus said:

Absolutely, but there's scope for a couple of other clubs to try it yet whilst most clubs are still spaffing millions/billions on random punts 

To be honest with all the money Wednesday have wasted it would have been better if Chansiri had done the buying part of the strategy and not necessarily the selling part, as that would have given us a better chance of promotion. We could have signed lots of £2m players with potential for the amount we’ve spent on some of our players

 

The problem with selling is it improves your financial position but makes it hard to progress on the pitch. Brentford sold Watkins and Benrahma for £50+m combined and this season they’re in a tight promotion race where those two probably would make the difference 

[shezzas left peg]

It's just not how we've really operated in my 30+ years of watching us. 

Yes weve had a few throughout that time, but it seems like whomever we have in charge either Dare'nt/refuses to sell on players. Even if you go back to the Premier league years how many kids were brought in through our youth system??? Very few.

we were signing 27/30+ year olds. It's not a new thing that only Dc does, Hirst snr, Carbone to name a couple of our finest we refused to sell at their peak of profit. 

[0742]

We can't develop players with the current coaching set up. It's too weak and one of the reasons we're not favoured for younger players to come here on loan.

 

It's not just about finding the players, most clubs have a big enough scouting network these days, it's more about finding the players our back room can actually develop. Barnsley don't just buy decent, they have the infrastructure in place to know how to develop those players, we don't. 

[bobness]

13 hours ago, Morepork said:

 

In the DC era......That I can recall, we've improved (albeit for a short time) three players significantly before letting the moment pass. Bannan, Forestieri and Reach.

 

Don't forget Tom Lees and Dominic Iorfa. Lees was immense when he had Loovens at his side, mostly downhill since then.

 

Did "the moment" pass on Iorfa though? I'm not sure it would be a fair assessment. Him getting injured was probably the biggest blow to our season, injury wise. 

Edited March 21, 2021 by bobness

[Morepork]

15 minutes ago, bobness said:

 

Don't forget Tom Lees and Dominic Iorfa. Lees was immense when he had Loovens at his side, mostly downhill since then.

 

Did "the moment" pass on Iorfa though? I'm not sure it would be a fair assessment. Him getting injured was probably the biggest blow to our season, injury wise. 

 

You are right about TL, we did improve him to the point at which he'd have been very saleable, much like the others, it was a brief moment in time, pretty much downhill after he signed his improved deal. I've said many times on here he's a much better player when his partner (Loovens) is the organiser. 

 

I don't know if we've improved Iorfa as a player or are we just saying he was already good and we managed to sign him at a very good price? Given our record we should probably cash in once he's fit before he goes the same way as the others.

[83owl]

9 hours ago, bobness said:

 

Don't forget Tom Lees and Dominic Iorfa. Lees was immense when he had Loovens at his side, mostly downhill since then.

 

Did "the moment" pass on Iorfa though? I'm not sure it would be a fair assessment. Him getting injured was probably the biggest blow to our season, injury wise. 

Problem with Lees is he’s good at the basics of defending and nothing else. He can mark his man, block, win headers, tackle and scrap for the ball quite well still. That’s ok if you have an older experienced head next to you to organise things.

 

Problem is as you get older he is now seen as the older experienced head however he has none of the attributes for it. I’ve never once seen him organise the defence properly or dish out a bollocking for poor play, if there’s a decision to make he generally dithers about for a bit and then makes the wrong one and is often quite happy to just do his own thing and mark his man whilst the rest of the defence falls apart.

 

Nobody knows if Iorfa will be the same again when he returns. Serious injury like that quite often players lose a yard or aren’t as sharp. Thankfully we won’t be at a level where it will really effect our own game but would put off any potential sale to higher levels.

[Loppy]

Total transfers that earned us money in 6 years - Shaw, Joao, Hirst, Hunt, Wiggins(!!), May. 2 of those we also had no intention of losing. Total income (based on Transfer market) - £8m

We made as much in 94/95 alone. 

 

Have to say that's shocking mamagement.