The Daily star today speculated that MON does have some money to spend, some £15m but if he wants any more he must sell players to get the cash in.
For me that seems a totally logical common sense approach in this current economic times and I posted about the annual report here and also another post here about the issue with the wages.
Now I have made continual references to the wage bill and I believe it is obvious we need to bring th wages down (or at least not increase them) to maintain a stable club and start to get off the reliance from Randy’s wallet. This does not mean we have to sell to buy but it means we have to be careful of what we do.
For example we could sell these (or already let go) with estimate wage bills per week
Shorey – £25k
Salifou – £5k
Harewood – £25k
Davies – £20k
Heskey – £60k
Carew – £60k (yeah I know many of you want him to stay !)
Milner – £40k
Bouma – £25k
Sidwell – £50k
Beye – £40k
total savings approx – £350k a week
We would in my view just need 4 players in (reserve full back, central midfield, attacking midfielder, forward) with the kids to keep the squad strength and still ‘save’ money on wages of course depending on who we get. We should not look at this in anyway on a sell to buy measure but more of a shrewd economic policy.
But lets not kid ourselves that this would not be easy and the biggest test of MON’s career at Villa, to date.
Aston Villa News 24/7
so we sell this lot of muppets
Shorey – £25k
Salifou – £5k
Harewood – £25k
Davies – £20k
Heskey – £60k
Carew – £60k (yeah I know many of you want him to stay !)
Milner – £40k
Bouma – £25k
sidwell – £50k
who I agree are surplus
and we bring in just 4 ???? so we have a squad of what ? the smallest squad in the worls never mind the premiership and just how are they going to cope with 38 games 3 cups to go at … you havent thought that one out Ian… thats daft mate…..you on the Home Brew ? economic times and all that
put it like this the likes of Davies, Salifou, Harewood, Shorey hardly or never featured, would they be a loss really ?
can easily be replaced by the kids being progressed
and then 4 quality signings (however people define that)
so it does depend on who comes in and playing the kids and them coming through, we do not need a one for one swap on players by buying them
I agree, lets bring the kids through, we have a pretty impressive academy and reserve set-up! I bet 2 or 3 of the youngsters could step up straight away (in a 1st 16 basis) and if we keep the club on a sound financial footing, then we can grow solidly forward. Agreed it is nice to have a real ‘quality’ back up squad but MON doesn’t really use a squad. May as well take a chance and maybe unearth a gem or 2!
Solid, sensible stuff will hold us in good stead for the future, and some quality up & coming signings would provide a really healthy, vibrant club in my opinion…
exactly Mickey, you made the point much better than me, want to take this over
We may have to take a step backwards to go forwards, we have to say whether they they will be good enough and give them the chance otherwise why have a youth system ?
Bear in mind as full back cover we have given Lichaj and Lowry extended contracts
it is a risk but a better risk than spending loads on bench players
RE: Ianrobo,
we need to put our young players to use now or what is the point in having them. We can’t sustain the spending. We have to bring young players thru quickly and keep em coming thru over the nxt few yrs…will O’Neill be happy with that?? I’m not sure…UTV
key question and I am not sure he is but in these days from my point of view we have to do that. Few teams now can afford to have expensive waged players on the bench
While I agree, we don’t have a 40 year old manager. He’s 58 already. I know he has a good 5-10 years left as a manager but don’t you think he would rather win a cup with the squad than bring the youth through. And who knows, in 2-3 seasons time we might not even have O’Neill anymore, the youth come through and the next manager might not like them and they’re off. In my opinion we should spend. Not much, but spend. Buy 2 more forwards and let Heskey go and Delfouneso go out on loan. If Di Santos from Chelsea who is utterly rubbish can get a team like Blackburn, I have no fear that Delfouneso isn’t being watched by the top teams for a loan deal as well…. Carew loves Villa and wouldn’t mind sitting the bench or even starting next to another striker we bought. But the key is, with those 3-4 signings, who do we bring in? Do we want top notch players? Van Der Vaart type? Huntelaar type. Who would probably want 80 and 50-60k respectively? That’s 140k on 2 players alone. Or do we go another way and bring in Premier League players that won’t be expensive or high on wages? Do we go for players like Scharner who is free and would want more like 40k, along with McGeady who would not only cost 8m but probably would be on 50k? We might be saving a little but is it worth getting knocked down the league table where we get less money anyways?
I think those are all the correct questions to ask andrew and we will find out the answers soon enough
If it is short term thinking expect two or three 28-31 year olds on large wages, if not expect quite a few youngster with maybe one older player
I’m expecting to see mcgeady unveiled at the kit launch tomorrow due to a rumour floating around bodymoor which was passed to me from a member of the groundstaffs daughter earlier today
McGeady is one of those possible signings that would certainly split the fans !!
I don’t expect an unveiling by tomorrow but I expect him to sign soon.
i agree with everyone but davies, carew and milner, im sure we’ve got £20mil lying around somewhere, that and a couple of sales will do us fine , oh and by the way, davies is certainly on more than £20k because it wasnt that long ago that if he played one more game, his wage would go up from £35k to £45k as would NRC
Chris, only put Milner in there as I expect him to leave
one centre back has to leave to make space for Clark
Carew is the engima and the question is whether he wants to stay and does anyone want especially especially if rumours of the seriousness of his back injury is true.
I figure Curtis is surplus because MON thinks Clark is a better player.
Wage bill is the important consideration. Even if he has up front money to spend he can’t if it inflates the wage bill over a predetermined limit. Not playing Curtis & NRC is all about keeping the wage bill under control. I think Randy and MON probably run a really tight ship there. If Sidders signs for someone then we’ll see movement.
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