Transfer strategy

[Exiled in Toronto]

It seems to me, from events over the past few months, that the two sets of consultants did more than was generally thought. Rather than send in a few bean counters to use red highlighters on the P&L, I think they were proper consultants who laid down a long- term financial strategy, which I think might look like follows:

Previous thinking:

Q) How do you stop losing shitloads of money every year?

A) Get promoted to the PL

New thinking:

A) Transfer price inflation over time has beaten pretty much any other investment. The latest obscene TV deal will accelerate it further. Brexit will accelerate it even further for British players.

Therefore the Academy, even if it got no more effective, will produce increasingly high transfer fees for the good ones who get in our team. Luckily, money was never taken away from the academy even when the first team was being gutted. 

The effectiveness can be increased by focusing less on finding our own 8-year olds and more on the cast-offs from the now vast top 6’s academies, because they only have one first 11, just like us, but theirs is 100x harder to get into. 99% of their youth players won’t be good enough to play for them, but a fair few will be good enough to play for us. Plus, it’s an imperfect science, some of them will prove their old employers wrong and become really valuable. Then it’s a win-win: we get more young British players capable of getting in our team . Our team gets better and, if we fail to go up, we sell the good ones for massive returns on investment. Rinse and repeat till we do go up.

Transfers: buy British no matter where you are in the league. One Ben Brereton may be a bust; ten Ben Breretons will make money between them. BUT, if you are getting close to promotion, buy the best you can get no matter the nationality. £10m spent today on a top striker gets a payback of £100m if you go up. £200m if you stay up another year.

Of course this approach requires very deep pockets to get it going and cover the ups and downs, but that’s the one thing our owners have. And we will still be selling our best players at peak value, say one every two years. But that’s not any different to the last 55 years ever since Vernon and Pickering went.

 

 

[philipl]

It was put to me this summer (so a year after their visit) they weren't "proper accountants" from the two big 4 firms.

The rumoured £750k bill suggests they were management consultants rather than bean counters.

Your analysis ties in with the club adopting a four window strategy for transfers once we were back in the Championship and explains why money was ear-marked specifically for a Brereton style signing in the Summer and fits with BA being targeted now. BA has only just turned 26 (6 December birthday) so will have a good resale value for another three years or more- he is only a year and a few days older than Bradley Dack.

[Leonard Venkhater]

5 minutes ago, philipl said:

It was put to me this summer (so a year after their visit) they weren't "proper accountants" from the two big 4 firms.

The rumoured £750k bill suggests they were management consultants rather than bean counters.

Your analysis ties in with the club adopting a four window strategy for transfers once we were back in the Championship and explains why money was ear-marked specifically for a Brereton style signing in the Summer and fits with BA being targeted now. BA has only just turned 26 (6 December birthday) so will have a good resale value for another three years or more- he is only a year and a few days older than Bradley Dack.

Venky's stung by Julius Caesar Consultants.." I came, I saw..I invoiced"

Edited January 28, 2019 by Leonard Venkhater

[JacknOry]

Too much redbull.

That said, we do seem to be buying up the entire England youth setup recently.

[Exiled in Toronto]

1 hour ago, philipl said:

It was put to me this summer (so a year after their visit) they weren't "proper accountants" from the two big 4 firms.

The rumoured £750k bill suggests they were management consultants rather than bean counters.

Your analysis ties in with the club adopting a four window strategy for transfers once we were back in the Championship and explains why money was ear-marked specifically for a Brereton style signing in the Summer and fits with BA being targeted now. BA has only just turned 26 (6 December birthday) so will have a good resale value for another three years or more- he is only a year and a few days older than Bradley Dack.

If you can avoid chasing an immediate promotion by buying “experience” - which will have poor resale and massive wages - I think it’s a good plan: fund medium term growth through the inevitable inflationary transfer fees British players generate. Buy/grow them young and, as long as you don’t run out of cash (which they won’t), it’s inevitable you’ll eventually get a crop that can take you up.

 

Edited January 28, 2019 by Exiled in Toronto

[tomphil]

The audit definitely appears to have been a turning point but again I think a lot is down to Mogga by the simple fact he's the most experienced and best qualified gaffer since Allardyce. I think they got lucky with him nothing more nothing less but maybe the advice from some with experience was get and experienced boss even if it's from the scrap heap and one from your favourite suppliers who've let you down time and again.

Having seen Boro through a transition and laid foundations for Karanca then fought fires at Coventry alongside his success at West Brom he knows the score off t5the pitch as well as on it. 

Whatever happened they've had some proper football orientated advice from somewhere and they've listened so along with the Mowbray pitching up it's going well for a change. Once they get the right wind in their sails then you never know they could suddenly take a real interest in pushing it on although you always fear a big set of sales again at some point to cover running costs since the last lot !!!

So important to not waste ANY window if you want to continue to build though.

 

Edited January 28, 2019 by tomphil

[Stuart]

3 hours ago, Exiled in Toronto said:

It seems to me, from events over the past few months, that the two sets of consultants did more than was generally thought. Rather than send in a few bean counters to use red highlighters on the P&L, I think they were proper consultants who laid down a long- term financial strategy, which I think might look like follows:

Previous thinking:

Q) How do you stop losing shitloads of money every year?

A) Get promoted to the PL

New thinking:

A) Transfer price inflation over time has beaten pretty much any other investment. The latest obscene TV deal will accelerate it further. Brexit will accelerate it even further for British players.

Therefore the Academy, even if it got no more effective, will produce increasingly high transfer fees for the good ones who get in our team. Luckily, money was never taken away from the academy even when the first team was being gutted. 

The effectiveness can be increased by focusing less on finding our own 8-year olds and more on the cast-offs from the now vast top 6’s academies, because they only have one first 11, just like us, but theirs is 100x harder to get into. 99% of their youth players won’t be good enough to play for them, but a fair few will be good enough to play for us. Plus, it’s an imperfect science, some of them will prove their old employers wrong and become really valuable. Then it’s a win-win: we get more young British players capable of getting in our team . Our team gets better and, if we fail to go up, we sell the good ones for massive returns on investment. Rinse and repeat till we do go up.

Transfers: buy British no matter where you are in the league. One Ben Brereton may be a bust; ten Ben Breretons will make money between them. BUT, if you are getting close to promotion, buy the best you can get no matter the nationality. £10m spent today on a top striker gets a payback of £100m if you go up. £200m if you stay up another year.

Of course this approach requires very deep pockets to get it going and cover the ups and downs, but that’s the one thing our owners have. And we will still be selling our best players at peak value, say one every two years. But that’s not any different to the last 55 years ever since Vernon and Pickering went.

Good post, good idea. But I don’t buy it.

We buy British because of Mowbray in my view. And his semi-obsession with getting the right players to fit into the group, whether noble or otherwise. We’ve done it with players for some time who done fit into the academy cast off criteria. Not on the scale suggested. Dack, Bell, Smallwood, Samuel and others.

We seem to have lots of different methods, youngster (Lyons, Candlin), ex academy (Rothwell, Brereton), ex Mowbray clubs/contacts (Smallwood, Armstrong, Samuel, Caddis, Downing), better players in L1 (Dack, Bell), timing (Rodwell), as well as loans (Reed, Palmer)

I think Brereton is this season’s Jordan Rhodes and Assombalonga is a pipe dream.

[Exiled in Toronto]

3 minutes ago, Stuart said:

Good post, good idea. But I don’t buy it.

We buy British because of Mowbray in my view. And his semi-obsession with getting the right players to fit into the group, whether noble or otherwise. We’ve done it with players for some time who done fit into the academy cast off criteria. Not on the scale suggested. Dack, Bell, Smallwood, Samuel and others.

We seem to have lots of different methods, youngster (Lyons, Candlin), ex academy (Rothwell, Brereton), ex Mowbray clubs/contacts (Smallwood, Armstrong, Samuel, Caddis, Downing), better players in L1 (Dack, Bell), timing (Rodwell), as well as loans (Reed, Palmer)

I think Brereton is this season’s Jordan Rhodes and Assombalonga is a pipe dream.

I think you are conflating get the f*ck out of League 1 with put in place a medium term financial strategy to end up in the PL. 

Any half-decent consultants would review current practices, classifying them into stop doing that, keep doing that, do more of that, then add on new strands to make a cohesive strategy.

If it’s all Mowbray, then what do you think the consultants did for their £750k?

[tomphil]

Hopefully they forensically analysed where every penny was going and advised that it all should go into the football side of things not pockets.

[47er]

Advice from Auditors-----collect as many mid-fielders as possible.

Don't spend any money on defenders, including keepers---anyone can fill in there.

Oh---and only buy British. 

[SBlue]

12 minutes ago, 47er said:

Advice from Auditors-----collect as many mid-fielders as possible.

Don't spend any money on defenders, including keepers---anyone can fill in there.

Oh---and only buy British. 

Looking at investment/return that would be pretty sound advice tbh.

[philipl]

8 hours ago, Exiled in Toronto said:

I think you are conflating get the f*ck out of League 1 with put in place a medium term financial strategy to end up in the PL. 

Any half-decent consultants would review current practices, classifying them into stop doing that, keep doing that, do more of that, then add on new strands to make a cohesive strategy.

If it’s all Mowbray, then what do you think the consultants did for their £750k?

They probably had huge fun analysing the only multi-billion industry they are normally not welcomed into.

In consulting terms there was no rocket science but Rovers have now got an enormous competitive advantage having 

1) previously been so badly run so the benefit of the recommendations are easy to see thus giving credibility to their full reports and

2) being the only club which has had such a thorough and professional going over and a strategy put in place. 

I guess Venky's in India have also used strategic consultants in India which is why they had the good sense to bring two lots in to keep them honest.

 

The fact this is such a one off is probably why it doesn't resonate with a football man like Stuart.

Edited January 29, 2019 by philipl

[philipl]

6 hours ago, 47er said:

Advice from Auditors-----collect as many mid-fielders as possible.

Don't spend any money on defenders, including keepers---anyone can fill in there.

Oh---and only buy British. 

They were not auditors.

They were management consultants. The first lot looked at the business as is and the second lot sent their strategists in from what I was told. 

 

[Tyrone Shoelaces]

I must admit I'm a bit concerned at what appears to be at times as a scatter gun approach to recruitment.

[JHRover]

Just now, Tyrone Shoelaces said:

I must admit I'm a bit concerned at what appears to be at times as a scatter gun approach to recruitment.

Again I think it comes back to Venkys and their ever moving goalposts and budgets.

It seems to be a running theme under their ownership that spending is restricted in the early days of transfer windows and any significant outlay only takes place at the back end. Cast our minds right back to the deadline day signings of Yakubu and Dann in 2011 when prior to that we'd barely spent anything. Rhodes was deadline day. Brereton deadline day and had to wait until the loan window opened. Under Coyle we spent nothing until a sudden late splurge with Williams, Mulgrew, Gallagher and Emnes late on. IF we do anything major this window it is going to be close to deadline day.

If we look at yesterday's signing of Chapman I noticed that the club website referred to it as our 3rd January signing after Brereton and Lyons. Trouble is both Brereton and Lyons were here before January, one has been a benchwarmer, the other a kid in the u23s, and now our '3rd' signing we're told isn't physically ready to play for us. It would be nice if we signed someone to come in and immediately strengthen us, though I accept it isn't necessarily easy nor an urgent requirement given recent results.

[tomphil]

Agree with the above on the scattergun we seem to get managers planning for very little or nothing to spend so they are rooting around the lower end then all of a sudden there's money or money for decent wage loans and freebies.   Then we've had guys expecting a healthy budget and lining up one or two good un's then being told no, also had a few with good players sold from underneath them.

Bowyer had all three scenarios probably because he was here the longest until Mowbray.  I think the trick is keep getting assets developed then when you inevitably lose one or two for good money there is still book value in the squad so the bankers don't panic and a bit can be reinvested even if the ownership turns the taps off again. 

[SBlue]

I'd expect the majority of deals in football are done at the end of windows due to a "you blink first" standoff type thing between clubs and agents trying to get the best value and realistic contracts. Mowbray has alluded to this and I buy it.