Kalas - will we get "value on the pitch", like we did for Fam, before he undoubtedly walks in the summer?

[redsquirrel]

18 hours ago, Countryfile said:

I’m not implying anything other than stating my opinion, until he proves his fitness it would be surprising if the club offered him anything.

If a fee is agreed with another club he will have to prove his fitness before a transfer takes place, that would appear unlikely at the moment.

I agree he gives 100% when on the pitch, he hasn’t been able to get on the pitch for any length of time for 10 months?
 

The time he has been injured is extraordinary in my opinion given his previous appearance record.

I just hope that whatever is wrong can be put right, but it has to be considered that the injury(s) are such that he won’t recover sufficiently to be at the peak fitness required.

I hope I’m being incredibly pessimistic here, we shall see.

i agree with you on the 10 month bit.  when bakes got injured, it was nothing new to be told  he would be out for a while, kalas is unusual.  keeps crossing my mind  that it might be 'if can do it,so can i' 

almost certainly a mile off the truth but i cant help thinking it sometimes

[brady bunch]

I think Wells will be offered a reduced contract similar to the one Andy King has now (player with coaching responsibility), seeing his positive attitude over the last year and how he has helped the youngsters (I did misjudge him based on his "grumpy look" on the field of play in the past, but now realise what he has brought to the wider team and behind the scenes.

Kallas is a tricky one, I think we would mostly like to keep him (again on a reduced fee) and think he is quite settled here in Brizzle), but I suspect the one negative fly in the ointment maybe NP who I think is not "all in" on our Czech warrior... and would rather change him for a more old fashioned tall stopper...

[Davefevs]

1 hour ago, brady bunch said:

I think Wells will be offered a reduced contract similar to the one Andy King has now (player with coaching responsibility), seeing his positive attitude over the last year and how he has helped the youngsters (I did misjudge him based on his "grumpy look" on the field of play in the past, but now realise what he has brought to the wider team and behind the scenes.

Kallas is a tricky one, I think we would mostly like to keep him (again on a reduced fee) and think he is quite settled here in Brizzle), but I suspect the one negative fly in the ointment maybe NP who I think is not "all in" on our Czech warrior... and would rather change him for a more old fashioned tall stopper...

I think Nige does like him, lots of comments from him that I take to be his fondness for him.

I think he does want as you describe, but I’m not sure it’s to replace TK, but to compliment him.  Having said that it might be we can’t afford both.

[headhunter]

1 hour ago, brady bunch said:

I think Wells will be offered a reduced contract similar to the one Andy King has now (player with coaching responsibility), seeing his positive attitude over the last year and how he has helped the youngsters (I did misjudge him based on his "grumpy look" on the field of play in the past, but now realise what he has brought to the wider team and behind the scenes.

Kallas is a tricky one, I think we would mostly like to keep him (again on a reduced fee) and think he is quite settled here in Brizzle), but I suspect the one negative fly in the ointment maybe NP who I think is not "all in" on our Czech warrior... and would rather change him for a more old fashioned tall stopper...

But we also have Jason Euell as a forward coach; based on career goals / appearances Nahki would be an upgrade.

The "settled in Brizzle" - comfy club mentality worryingly could come in to play. He's 30, hasn't played for almost a year ...... we offer him at half his previous wage, his best alternative is 20% higher than that, methinks he could live with our lower number and have less pressure for 3 years; cynical old *ugger aren't I!

[GrahamC]

51 minutes ago, headhunter said:

But we also have Jason Euell as a forward coach; based on career goals / appearances Nahki would be an upgrade.

The "settled in Brizzle" - comfy club mentality worryingly could come in to play. He's 30, hasn't played for almost a year ...... we offer him at half his previous wage, his best alternative is 20% higher than that, methinks he could live with our lower number and have less pressure for 3 years; cynical old *ugger aren't I!

I think Euell is ambitious to manage & if the offer doesn’t arrive at some point in BS3 then will look elsewhere.

Please tell me that you aren’t seriously judging who is potentially the better coach of Euell & Wells based solely on their goal scoring records?

That’s before you get to the fact that Euell played in the Prem for a lot of his career & also had a fair spell In midfield or Wells has never done the job.

[Davefevs]

1 hour ago, headhunter said:

But we also have Jason Euell as a forward coach; based on career goals / appearances Nahki would be an upgrade.

but you wouldn’t recruit him to coach based on that, so that’s a non-starter.

The "settled in Brizzle" - comfy club mentality worryingly could come in to play. He's 30, hasn't played for almost a year ...... we offer him at half his previous wage, his best alternative is 20% higher than that, methinks he could live with our lower number and have less pressure for 3 years; cynical old *ugger aren't I!

I think length of contract offered to any of the more senior OOC players will be interesting.

[Tookster]

He has a local girlfriend in Long Ashton so I see him wanting to stay. Hope he gets back his fitness

[phantom]

2 hours ago, Tookster said:

He has a local girlfriend in Long Ashton so I see him wanting to stay. Hope he gets back his fitness

That's assuming she doesn't fancy moving away from the area 

[Peter1450]

14 hours ago, phantom said:

That's assuming she doesn't fancy moving away from the area 

Oh What  a life, living the dream in LA on a fantastic wage and not kicked a ball in anger for nearly 12 months ( yep absolutely I’m jealous)

[DaveF]

On 20/12/2022 at 13:53, redsquirrel said:

i agree with you on the 10 month bit.  when bakes got injured, it was nothing new to be told  he would be out for a while, kalas is unusual.  keeps crossing my mind  that it might be 'if can do it,so can i' 

almost certainly a mile off the truth but i cant help thinking it sometimes

Have I read that wrong or are you suggesting that because Baker had to retire through injury Kalas might be considering doing the same? 

[Guest]

So no Kalas for the Christmas and New Year games, NPs update doesn’t really say anything concrete, I still think it’s possible he (Kalas) may have problems regaining full fitness.

[AshtonRobin21]

We have suffered some huge losses from our big money signings.

- Kalas (expiring)

- Diedhiou (gone - free)

- Palmer (gone - free)

- Dasilva (expiring)

- Bentley (expiring)

- Wells (expiring)

Thats close to £30 million worth of transfer fees, set to leave / have left for no financial return. 
 

Have I missed anyone?

[Major Isewater]

3 minutes ago, AshtonRobin21 said:

We have suffered some huge losses from our big money signings.

- Kalas (expiring)

- Diedhiou (gone - free)

- Palmer (gone - free)

- Dasilva (expiring)

- Bentley (expiring)

- Wells (expiring)

Thats close to £30 million worth of transfer fees, set to leave / have left for no financial return. 
 

Have I missed anyone?

I believe we got a nominal fee for Palmer ~£ 200k 

Globally I agree with you, it’s eye watering sums of money walking out the door. I just think that we, like many other clubs, got caught out with the collapse of the transfer market. We started splashing the cash at entirely the wrong moment, typically unlucky. 

Edited December 22, 2022 by Major Isewater

[GrahamC]

16 minutes ago, AshtonRobin21 said:

We have suffered some huge losses from our big money signings.

- Kalas (expiring)

- Diedhiou (gone - free)

- Palmer (gone - free)

- Dasilva (expiring)

- Bentley (expiring)

- Wells (expiring)

Thats close to £30 million worth of transfer fees, set to leave / have left for no financial return. 
 

Have I missed anyone?

We got a fee for Palmer & 4 of these haven’t left yet so let’s see what happens, eh? 

I hate to have to even slightly defend Mark Ashton here but well done to anyone who forecast the pandemic & its impact on finances because you were in a tiny minority.

We were amongst the worst impacted true but loads of clubs at our level have very similar examples.

Joe Rothwell, John Swift, Darragh Lenihan, Alex Mowatt, Jed Wallace, Josh Laurent, Andy Rinomhota to name 7.

Edited December 22, 2022 by GrahamC

[Davefevs]

31 minutes ago, GrahamC said:

I hate to have to even slightly defend Mark Ashton here but well done to anyone who forecast the pandemic & its impact on finances because you were in a tiny minority.

Covid indeed, but the trend in our finances was there for all to see, if people wanted to look.  The strategy was flawed.  The last of the big “profit” players (Webster and Brownhill) had been sold by the time Covid hit.  Relying on £20m transfer profit each season wasn’t gonna happen, the players weren’t there, maybe once every few years from an academy player we might get good money.  Not all signings were badly thought through admittedly, but we were never gonna get any resell profit on Wells, Kalas unlikely to be sold for a decent profit having outlaid £8m.  We hamstrung ourselves.  And Covid hastened it.  It’s a poor strategy to rely on one route, which is effectively what we did.  I don’t blame it all on MA either, it’s a collective.

[GrahamC]

Just now, Davefevs said:

Covid indeed, but the trend in our finances was there for all to see, if people wanted to look.  The strategy was flawed.  The last of the big “profit” players (Webster and Brownhill) had been sold by the time Covid hit.  Relying on £20m transfer profit each season wasn’t gonna happen, the players weren’t there, maybe once every few years from an academy player we might get good money.  Not all signings were badly thought through admittedly, but we were never gonna get any resell profit on Wells, Kalas unlikely to be sold for a decent profit having outlaid £8m.  We hamstrung ourselves.  And Covid hastened it.  It’s a poor strategy to rely on one route, which is effectively what we did.  I don’t blame it all on MA either, it’s a collective.

Totally agree, but I just get bored of these “who can list all the errors we’ve made” posts that surprisingly never seem to acknowledge others have also done this.

Blackburn fans were steaming about allowing Lenihan & Rodwell’s contracts to expire, for instance.

[AshtonRobin21]

36 minutes ago, GrahamC said:

We got a fee for Palmer & 4 of these haven’t left yet so let’s see what happens, eh? 

I hate to have to even slightly defend Mark Ashton here but well done to anyone who forecast the pandemic & its impact on finances because you were in a tiny minority.

We were amongst the worst impacted true but loads of clubs at our level have very similar examples.

Joe Rothwell, John Swift, Darragh Lenihan, Alex Mowatt, Jed Wallace, Josh Laurent, Andy Rinomhota to name 7.

How many of those named, were purchased for a large fee? 

Sure they are players who were the best performers at their respective clubs, and were huge losses, but they certainly were not record signings such as ours. 
 

I fully agree RE: pandemic and it’s impact, but we have always seemed to struggle to extend contracts for key players.

[AshtonRobin21]

3 minutes ago, Davefevs said:

Covid indeed, but the trend in our finances was there for all to see, if people wanted to look.  The strategy was flawed.  The last of the big “profit” players (Webster and Brownhill) had been sold by the time Covid hit.  Relying on £20m transfer profit each season wasn’t gonna happen, the players weren’t there, maybe once every few years from an academy player we might get good money.  Not all signings were badly thought through admittedly, but we were never gonna get any resell profit on Wells, Kalas unlikely to be sold for a decent profit having outlaid £8m.  We hamstrung ourselves.  And Covid hastened it.  It’s a poor strategy to rely on one route, which is effectively what we did.  I don’t blame it all on MA either, it’s a collective.

Great point regarding re-sell value. We simply didn’t protect ourselves.

Add in our inability to renew contracts of key players, and it brings us to where we currently are.

A flawed plan, that was followed for far too long. 

[Davefevs]

2 minutes ago, AshtonRobin21 said:

I fully agree RE: pandemic and it’s impact, but we have always seemed to struggle to extend contracts for key players.

I still have post-it note on my bookcase in the spare bedroom / office of those players who extended their contracts. They are few and far between once you get beyond those players in their early 20s forging their career / gave broken through and getting their first big boy contract. 

[AshtonRobin21]

2 minutes ago, Davefevs said:

I still have post-it note on my bookcase in the spare bedroom / office of those players who extended their contracts. They are few and far between once you get beyond those players in their early 20s forging their career / gave broken through and getting their first big boy contract. 

I can’t remember too many announcements from the club regarding contract extensions, bar the customary “one year option exercised”.

We’ve been stung too many times in the past from ‘expiring contracts / last year of deal’ forcing transfers.

Bryan, Reid, Brownhill to name a few. We waited until they had outgrown us, before trying to negotiate extensions.
 

[Mr Popodopolous]

1 hour ago, GrahamC said:

We got a fee for Palmer & 4 of these haven’t left yet so let’s see what happens, eh? 

I hate to have to even slightly defend Mark Ashton here but well done to anyone who forecast the pandemic & its impact on finances because you were in a tiny minority.

We were amongst the worst impacted true but loads of clubs at our level have very similar examples.

Joe Rothwell, John Swift, Darragh Lenihan, Alex Mowatt, Jed Wallace, Josh Laurent, Andy Rinomhota to name 7.

Add Nyambe to that- three from the one club alone plus a realistic prospect thst Brereton-Diaz could also go on a free this coming summer. That's all from the one club.

Reading, Swift is another but I think in the case of Rinomhota, Laurent, Swift FFP will have played its part, Business Plan etc.

I wonder if it could be a future factor with our out of contract because clubs have to submit future Financial info to the League and contracts above a certain level can have issues with renewal above a certain amount FFP wise- the EFL withdrew approval of Derby renewing Marriott in summer 2021 as the wage renewal on existing tetms was too high, by way of example.

[redsquirrel]

22 hours ago, DaveF said:

Have I read that wrong or are you suggesting that because Baker had to retire through injury Kalas might be considering doing the same? 

no,not retiring, just milking it. Bakes couldnt help the concussion injury but previous to that, before his new contract ,  i did wonder at times if he was really injured

 as i said in my post, probably miles off the truth but it has crossed my mind. 

[phantom]

37 minutes ago, redsquirrel said:

no,not retiring, just milking it. Bakes couldnt help the concussion injury but previous to that, before his new contract ,  i did wonder at times if he was really injured

 as i said in my post, probably miles off the truth but it has crossed my mind. 

Possibly very unfair to speculate, like many were about Baker before we get to know the full facts

[AG City]

A little off topic, but I have always felt that Pearson's appointment has been a 'caretaker' to get us away from the Johnson/Ashton era to significantly trim the wage bill and maintain championship status - something I think has delivered on.

With Kalas, Wells, Massengo, Klose, Bentley, Martin, King and Dasilva out of contract I do wonder if Pearson has the fight/energy for a huge squad overhaul - esp as he goes into the final year of his contract himself.

With Kalas and other big earners likely to be playing somewhere else next season I see it as a massive opportunity for someone to come in and freshen things up with hopefully a bit room to manoeuvre in the transfer market.  I think we have been in a 3/4 year malaise - fanbase included.

[Davefevs]

3 minutes ago, AG City said:

A little off topic, but I have always felt that Pearson's appointment has been a 'caretaker' to get us away from the Johnson/Ashton era to significantly trim the wage bill and maintain championship status - something I think has delivered on.

With Kalas, Wells, Massengo, Klose, Bentley, Martin, King and Dasilva out of contract I do wonder if Pearson has the fight/energy for a huge squad overhaul - esp as he goes into the final year of his contract himself.

With Kalas and other big earners likely to be playing somewhere else next season I see it as a massive opportunity for someone to come in and freshen things up with hopefully a bit room to manoeuvre in the transfer market.  I think we have been in a 3/4 year malaise - fanbase included.

For me, I’ve always seen him as setting up the club for someone to come in and deliver us to the PL.  Caretaker if you like, as you say, Custodian, as Nige would say.  How far into that three year contract he gets I don’t know.  My gut feel is that he doesn’t just want to get to the summer and handover…I think the recruitment this summer is the first since the foundations have been laid, and I think he will want to oversee that.  Getting it wrong would put us back to square one.  I feel that he thinks if he can get it right, with the foundations built, he could give it a real go.  Personally, although I think that is a possibility, I think it will take longer.

Lots of ifs, buts and maybes, but 60 next season…I think he will set himself the 3 years on purpose.

[Guest]

Brownhill wasn’t a big profit sale.

Dyche said last night that Burnley stole him from us with the agreement for Wells to move the other way, Brownhill undervalued, Wells overvalued.

[Sir Geoff]

3 hours ago, AshtonRobin21 said:

We have suffered some huge losses from our big money signings.

- Kalas (expiring)

- Diedhiou (gone - free)

- Palmer (gone - free)

- Dasilva (expiring)

- Bentley (expiring)

- Wells (expiring)

Thats close to £30 million worth of transfer fees, set to leave / have left for no financial return. 
 

Have I missed anyone?

Nagy. Think we paid circa £2 million.

Massengo, though we may get some compo.

[Davefevs]

1 minute ago, Countryfile said:

Brownhill wasn’t a big profit sale.

Dyche said last night that Burnley stole him from us with the agreement for Wells to move the other way, Brownhill undervalued, Wells overvalued.

Dyche would say that!

My understanding (decent source) is that Brownhill had a £7m release clause that could be triggered in the summer of 2020 (contract exp. 2021).  That would be £7m flat for us, minus any percentage sell-on we’d have to give to Preston.  No add-ons (e.g. appearances, non-relegation for Burnley), no percentage sell-on in future for us, so in fairness to Ashton, he worked a deal in the January to try to get as much as possible, plus add-ons.

He knew he wouldn’t get much more than £7m because of the summer clause.  Maybe £9/10m plus add-ons for anyone wanting him before the summer rush.  Better than £7m flat in the summer…absolutely!

So, LJ says he wants a striker, the missing piece in the jigsaw.  Of course I’ve no idea who we were scouting the market for, but the option to recall Wells from QPR and sell him to us, was mooted.  If we wanted £9-10m plus add-ons for Brownhill, they wanted £5m plus add-ons for Wells.

(could we have found a better option for £5m or less plus his wages - that’s the big question.  Wells was banging them in for QPR but was 30, so really broke our recruitment model, more so than Kalas)

So, once decided on Wells, we then have a £9/10m player going out and a £5m player coming in…a £4/5m difference.  How could we work that to both clubs advantage?  By lowering the fees of both.  Would mean our profit on Brownhill would see less go to Preston!

The rough figures are:

£7m for Brownhill plus add-ons

£2.8m for Wells plus add-ons

We’ve received add-ons for Brownhill since he’s left, ie non-relegation payment for the seasons Burnley stayed up.  Not sure about appearance payouts.

We’ve paid out no add-ons (playoff / promotion) for Wells.

As per line 2, that’s my understanding of it.  The numbers fit well with the club accounts, although impossible to confirm as we don’t go into that detail.

£7m for Brownhill is a snip, especially when you realise what we lost from the team when he left us.  A bigger hole than I imagined, I don’t mind admitting.  Nige would’ve loved him.  All managers would.

 

[Davefevs]

3 minutes ago, Sir Geoff said:

Nagy. Think we paid circa £2 million.

Massengo, though we may get some compo.

Taylor Moore £1.5m

(not inc Nathan Baker)

[GrahamC]

47 minutes ago, Countryfile said:

Brownhill wasn’t a big profit sale.

Dyche said last night that Burnley stole him from us with the agreement for Wells to move the other way, Brownhill undervalued, Wells overvalued.

If I had a pound for every time Dyche took a dig at us since his truly horrible spell here as a player I’d be able to buy the club from SL.

Take everything he says in connection with us with a large pinch of salt, he has developed a real dislike for us.