That *was* the January Window

[jim mk2]

33 minutes ago, Angry_Pirate said:

I'd rather spend that money on permanent fees. £200k Hedges, £500k Markanday type deals (hope for better!) Let's have a gamble on an actual long term player. Better than paying 5x that for shit on loan (Morton, Mola, Hirst!).

Would you really pay hard cash for Markanday? I've seen nothing to warrant making him a permanent member of staff - unless we're building a squad to play in League One

[bluebruce]

12 minutes ago, tomphil said:

Markanday will never cut it at this level that's pretty clear by now and if we'd loaned him at first then that wouldn't have been 500k down the tubes.

Hedges they should have loaned him for that few months then got him for nothing in summer like was already pre agreed.

Why would either of those clubs loaned us a player for 6 months who was due to be out of contract in 6 months? If they did it would have been for the same price we paid.

[tomphil]

42 minutes ago, MarkBRFC said:

Already covered with Buckley coming back.

About half that at best i reckon but with him being out for a few months with surgery i'm assuming insurance will cover his wages.

[Paul Mellelieu]

7 hours ago, Paul Mani said:

Huge question marks around the future of Travis, our club captain who can’t get a game. The strong links to CB’s lead you to think we’re losing one. Then there’s our top scorer, SS who will be attracting admiring glances. Some suggestions on here that a bid is in for him.

Here’s my big worry…Based on evidence, I think there’s a managed decline at the club. I actually do trust GB and JDT but I don’t trust Venkys not to pull the rug from under them.

Whats the chances that we’d adequately replace the possible sales of Trav, Carter and SS whilst plugging the glaring gaps at fullback and the forward line? 🙈

You can feel the decline every time you set foot in Ewood Park.  I hate it.

[phili]

2 minutes ago, tomphil said:

About half that at best i reckon but with him being out for a few months with surgery i'm assuming insurance will cover his wages.

Yep insurance will cover all injured player wages, which is probably why we have a bit of spare cash at the moment with all of the players injured.

Also I was told the deals for Moran and Hill are free with no contribution to wages from us but we have committed to a set number of minutes of playing time during their loans.

[tomphil]

1 minute ago, bluebruce said:

Why would either of those clubs loaned us a player for 6 months who was due to be out of contract in 6 months? If they did it would have been for the same price we paid.

Eh ?

Hedges we'd agreed to sign him in summer when his contract finished but bizarrely then jumped in and paid a needless fee to get him straight away with no intention of using him properly.

Markandy again his contract was running down and we stepped in and offered 500k to take him straight away, no need at all at that point.  

I doubt very much it would have cost the thick end of a million quid to loan both for a few months and in Hedges case it should have been just left until summer.

The Mowbray brothers obviously had other ideas though.

[Angry_Pirate]

21 minutes ago, tomphil said:

There is a flip side to loans especially if it's loan to buy, we certainly could have done with having a look at Leo first !

A "loan to buy" is of course the exception. I agree.

Unfortunately, lets say a player is going to cost £1m, the loan may be £400k, but I bet the option doesn't come down £400k to include the fee.

The only 2 genuinely good loan options were Gestede and Cairney. DJ Campbell, Vardy, Diaz etc were obligations, and the good ones we had like Tosin and Reed ended up moving for affordable prices, soon after.

I much rather the Armstrong model, low fee, high sell on. Seems a win win (as annoying as it is when you lose out on 40% of £12m).

[Angry_Pirate]

Sorry, to clarify, I'm not trying to correlate Markanday/Hedges to loan value.

They are two recent examples of a January "speculative" cheap signing (who happened to be in final 6 months) vs an expensive loan signing like Lewis O'Brien.

The Crewe lad is a speculative signing who has years on a contract. I'd rather do that, than pay a loan (with no option) for any player, given the way the season has gone.

Edited January 2, 2024 by Angry_Pirate

[tomphil]

11 minutes ago, Angry_Pirate said:

A "loan to buy" is of course the exception. I agree.

Unfortunately, lets say a player is going to cost £1m, the loan may be £400k, but I bet the option doesn't come down £400k to include the fee.

The only 2 genuinely good loan options were Gestede and Cairney. DJ Campbell, Vardy, Diaz etc were obligations, and the good ones we had like Tosin and Reed ended up moving for affordable prices, soon after.

I much rather the Armstrong model, low fee, high sell on. Seems a win win (as annoying as it is when you lose out on 40% of £12m).

But that's not taking into account the 3 or 4 year thousands per week contract we doff out on an instant signing.

The idea of having a look first guards against that.

If Markandy stays for the duration of his deal and doesn't cut it hes cost us maybe 1.5 million in fee, wages of say 4k pwk and maybe an add on or two triggered.

That's the risk with untried kids.

Edited January 2, 2024 by tomphil

[RoversClitheroe]

Hedges and Markanday can leave.

Hopefully we can replace Pickering too who can't defend.

[Dolly blue]

Why do goalkeepers develop / blossom once they have left Ewood Park ?
Christian Walton .. Brighton on loan at Ipswich                                                                         
Jason Steele ..Brighton    
Andy Fisher …Swansea ….all these looked very , very poor for us ..but they get  proper   coaching and bingo ..our current 2 make them look like Gordon Banks 

David Raya and Thomas Kaminski had some extremely iffy moments between our sticks ….look at them now ! Both given away, not sold !

The goalkeeping coaching at Ewood is, at best , semi pro level ( apologies to semi pro clubs)

Our fitness training / coaching looks like it doesn’t work …and hasn’t for  along time    
. We repeatedly struggle get players off the treatment table….as much wrong off the pitch as on it .
I know , from very reliable sources , just how much more professional the setup is at Bolton Wanderers …and didn’t they go into liquidation ? ..and do they get gates of 18, 000 plus each week ?                                                                                            

We’re tin pot from top to bottom …I didn’t use my season ticket on Monday ….the match day experience is just too miserable to witness… bloody dark days!

 

[Rover8T4]

1 hour ago, bluebruce said:

The fallout that may not have happened at all?

His uncle was very vocal about it in August.

Edited January 2, 2024 by Rover8T4

[tomphil]

12 minutes ago, Rover8T4 said:

His uncle was very vocal about it in January.

Not the first one either i bet.

[CambridgeRover]

Unsackable gk coach, unsackable first team coach. Welcome to the clown world

Edited January 2, 2024 by CambridgeRover

[LDRover]

3 minutes ago, CambridgeRover said:

Unsackable gk coach, unsackable firs team coach. Welcome to the clown world

The retention of these 2 through various regime changes has always felt iffy to me.

I mean, look at the state of Stig of the dump Lowe, he wouldn't look out of place in a shop doorway yet he continues in employment at Ewood overseeing year after year of decline.

[davulsukur]

11 minutes ago, CambridgeRover said:

Unsackable gk coach, unsackable firs team coach. Welcome to the clown world

Yeah, really strange. Can't really get my head around why they had to be retained.

Aren't they on contracts that expire, similar to the manager/assistant manager?

[bluebruce]

1 hour ago, tomphil said:

Eh ?

Hedges we'd agreed to sign him in summer when his contract finished but bizarrely then jumped in and paid a needless fee to get him straight away with no intention of using him properly.

Markandy again his contract was running down and we stepped in and offered 500k to take him straight away, no need at all at that point.  

I doubt very much it would have cost the thick end of a million quid to loan both for a few months and in Hedges case it should have been just left until summer.

The Mowbray brothers obviously had other ideas though.

Eh? You suggested loaning Hedges first instead of signing him permanently. If we hadn't signed him to the pre-contract (ie permanently), why would they loan him to us when his contract is nearly done and they wanted to use him? And with the pre-contract signed, why would they loan him to us for a fee any different to the one they insisted on? With 6 months left on a contract, a club is going to insist on roughly the same fee whether it's for a 6 month loan or a permanent, whether or not you've signed a pre-contract. That fee will be a bit less when the precontract is signed, because the selling club know you're definitely getting him in the summer, but there'll still be no real difference between the loan or perm, because those two things are essentially the same thing to the selling club at that stage.

Markanday we couldn't sign a pre-contract with, so we had less power in that situation. If I remember rightly, Spurs had offered him a new deal too, which means with his age it would have gone to tribunal.

You can argue that we shouldn't have signed Hedges if you like, and there's a very good argument that we should have just stuck with the freebie given how little we used him at first, but it's entirely irrational to expect we could have loaned him for less than we paid, because that would essentially be the same deal. Markanday wasn't going to be coming on loan for less than we paid either, unless he signed his Spurs deal. We could have ran the gambit of the tribunal though, may have been less may have been more, and then potentially seen his wage demands go up if other clubs were interested, or down if he'd had a poor 6 months in Spurs u21s.

Ask yourself if you were in those clubs' positions why you would agree to what you're suggesting. It can only work that way when the club wants rid and sees the player having no market value, in which case they're happy to let them go for nowt and a loan first can work for all parties (or rather to the buying club, it's all the same).

Edited January 2, 2024 by bluebruce

[sharpysharps86]

32 minutes ago, davulsukur said:

Yeah, really strange. Can't really get my head around why they had to be retained.

Aren't they on contracts that expire, similar to the manager/assistant manager?

Typically yes, backroom staff are on similar contracts to managers and players. The thing is we appear to have certain coaches that happy to coast by and be part of the furniture. It'd be on Greg Broughton to negotiate contracts with staff I imagine, but I would also imagine that our budget for backroom staff is tiny, so we'd be unlikely to bring better coaches in....which is why I'm assuming that JDT was only able to bring in one assistant.

[Angry_Pirate]

42 minutes ago, LDRover said:

I mean, look at the state of Stig of the dump Lowe, he wouldn't look out of place in a shop doorway yet he continues in employment at Ewood overseeing year after year of decline.

Never seen a "1st team coach" so reliant on a whistle.

[simongarnerisgod]

43 minutes ago, LDRover said:

The retention of these 2 through various regime changes has always felt iffy to me.

I mean, look at the state of Stig of the dump Lowe, he wouldn't look out of place in a shop doorway yet he continues in employment at Ewood overseeing year after year of decline.

good at blowing a whistle though

[LDRover]

On a slightly related topic, I saw Keith Andrews in Hawksmoor restaurant in Manchester last week. He was in with all the Sheff Utd staff prior to them playing City - how the hell has he pulled that gig?

[jim mk2]

17 minutes ago, LDRover said:

On a slightly related topic, I saw Keith Andrews in Hawksmoor restaurant in Manchester last week. He was in with all the Sheff Utd staff prior to them playing City - how the hell has he pulled that gig?

He pointed at himself 

[JHRover]

1 hour ago, davulsukur said:

Yeah, really strange. Can't really get my head around why they had to be retained.

Aren't they on contracts that expire, similar to the manager/assistant manager?

Since the day they sacked Allardyce and appointed Kean it has always been not what you know but who you know down there.

See also Coyle over Warnock and the retention of certain people whilst those with ambition who won't put up with such nonsense don't last long.

When you prioritise being 'nice' and telling you what you want to hear over getting the best people for the job decline is inevitable.

[AJW]

4 hours ago, pick32 said:

Get someone like Timo Horn in, big tall and experienced keeper

Is he good with his feet ? Can he play a pass along the 6 yard box to a Centre Half 

[Upside Down]

7 hours ago, Gavlar Somerset Rover! said:

Indeed. If the owners wanted to progress then they'd compensate the focus on youth with a few older heads. But they won't. 
The big question is who is advising them on the 'model'.

Agents.