The January 2026 Transfer Window Thread - Now Closed!

[TruckerJack]

I’m not sure losing £13-14 million per season for 3 consecutive years can be seen as good management no matter how bonkers football finances are.

Relying on owners with no real attachment to the club covering that for a prolonged period is risky at best IMO.

Then we would be relegated, and that would also be called bad management.

 

[Frankie Burrows Cap]

Then we would be relegated, and that would also be called bad management.

Depends what you want long term I guess. Maybe the football bubble will never burst and it won’t be an issue.

However, the owners themselves have said the club needs to be more sustainable (albeit reliant on player sales). I just don’t see why they’d continue to cover that level of loss each season indefinitely, so I’d rather be in a better financial position if/when they walk away.

Others will disagree and what to spend every penny allowed to chase the PL dream which is absolutely fine.

 

[crazedbison]

It would genuinely be poor management if we were so close that £300k tipped us over.

I don’t think we are to be honest. We lost a lot of high earners last summer (the amounts that players that were bit part for us like Pedersen were on was crazy). Plus Grimes was a high earner (replaced by O’Brien who was very high), plus Allen and Naughton retired who were high earners. We lost a lot from our monthly cost base. And lots of lesser paid players went (our overall numbers dropped a lot). And Coleman was being paid a fair whack. And we shed quite a bit of back room cost with Gorringe’s cuts.

We have of course had the hit of sacking yet another coaching team. But the new ones will be on relatively low wages. And we’d not really have been doing stuff like paying Britts and Allen on coaching staff on top of the Matos coaching team and hiring a bunch of media people if we were really tight.

I mean we won’t have loads to spare as we have terrible commercial income and didn’t sell much in the way of players last summer. But we won’t be within £300k unless we are spending on some strange stuff that we don’t know about.

All that you've said makes complete sense, but I do wonder about one thing.

Would Walta's situation not make sense in terms of PSR if we knew that there was increased revenue coming next season that would offset his fee (the pro-rated portion)?

For example, obviously with PSR there's a loss limit per rolling 3 year period (I believe you mentioned what it was earlier). Let's just say that we're somewhat close to that figure. So, if we were to loan Walta for this season and only pay his salary but "purchase" next, would that not push the first whack of the fee into the next fiscal year? Which for instance, if we already had a signed contract or two totallying £5-10m in increased commercial revenue, wouldn't that allow for extra wriggle room?

 

[Copamundial]

Who gives a toss , he’s signed …end of!!

 

[Londonlisa2001]

How is it bad management? I’d say if it’s a sign of good management to be as close to the cap as possible. If we were millions under I would say that’s wasted potential performance.

Well firstly it’s never a sign of ‘good management’ for any business to spend up to your maximum possible loss and secondly and more importantly for this purpose getting to within a few hundred grand of a £41.5m allowed loss (it is £41.5m still btw, not £39m - I checked after I posted yesterday saying I wasn’t sure the additional allowance was still in place but it seems to be) is dangerous. FFP allows no ‘mistake’ in budgeting - in other words, if you’re caught out with an unexpected cost before the end of the period you can’t say ‘sorry, we didn’t allow for that because we weren’t expecting it’. You breach rules and are subject to all that that can bring.
So say, for arguments sake, (and this is just an example off the top of my head - it’s not in reference to anything) that you are owed an instalment of money for the sale of a player in the past and the other club can’t pay any longer (goes into admin or whatever), and you suddenly have a bad debt write off in your accounts you weren’t expecting it and hadn’t provided for it, that could be a disaster. Or say you have a claim against you for a fatal accident at the stadium and have to pay out a significant sum that insurance doesn’t cover because of negligence.

It’s just good financial management to leave headroom in case something happens.

No one expects it to but that’s the point.

Pretty much the same principle as spending every penny you have and then the boiler breaks down in January. If you save a bit just in case that’s not wasted potential ‘going out and having a laugh’ money, it’s sensible.

 

[Londonlisa2001]

Then we would be relegated, and that would also be called bad management.

We’d be relegated if we didn’t make the signings we have in January? I don’t think so.

Surely the very time to be prudent is when there’s little chance of going up or down?

On the wider point though, I agree that the championship is a financial nightmare. Clubs almost invariably spending up to the absolute limits in the hope of scraping a play off place and ending with the premier league windfall.

At some point it’s going to go bang. Let’s hope we aren’t blown up when that happens.

It’s why the Trust needed the pot of money it was entitled to.

But let’s not bother starting that again.

 

[TruckerJack]

We’d be relegated if we didn’t make the signings we have in January? I don’t think so.

Surely the very time to be prudent is when there’s little chance of going up or down?

On the wider point though, I agree that the championship is a financial nightmare. Clubs almost invariably spending up to the absolute limits in the hope of scraping a play off place and ending with the premier league windfall.

At some point it’s going to go bang. Let’s hope we aren’t blown up when that happens.

It’s why the Trust needed the pot of money it was entitled to.

But let’s not bother starting that again.

He said about losing £14m a year for 3 seasons. If you take £42m out of this side over that time period, whether that’s transfer fees and/or salaries, then we get relegated, or at least consistently under serious threat of being relegated. I don’t think there is much doubt about that.

I would say our budget is about middling, if we were to operate break even at current income levels then our budget would be bottom few and that correlates to one thing usually.

 

[Londonlisa2001]

All that you've said makes complete sense, but I do wonder about one thing.

Would Walta's situation not make sense in terms of PSR if we knew that there was increased revenue coming next season that would offset his fee (the pro-rated portion)?

For example, obviously with PSR there's a loss limit per rolling 3 year period (I believe you mentioned what it was earlier). Let's just say that we're somewhat close to that figure. So, if we were to loan Walta for this season and only pay his salary but "purchase" next, would that not push the first whack of the fee into the next fiscal year? Which for instance, if we already had a signed contract or two totallying £5-10m in increased commercial revenue, wouldn't that allow for extra wriggle room?

Well if we could afford the PSR element this season with room to spare best to do it now. Who knows what the future will bring. The system next year is different and it would help us start that new system with a cleaner slate (assuming it goes through - I don’t think it’s yet finalised or what transitional arrangements will be). In fact, I’m not sure that there is any real rolling element to it from next year - it may be each year at a time (apart from there’s some sort of green zone / red zone thing from memory that is affected by previous years).

Anyway, it’s is what it is. I’m pleased we’ve signed him and look forward to seeing him in action. The club will do whatever they think best re deal structure. The only point I made yesterday and we continue to discuss is whether it was likely a result of PSR. It doesn’t matter now as it’s done.

 

[Londonlisa2001]

He said about losing £14m a year for 3 seasons. If you take £42m out of this side over that time period, whether that’s transfer fees and/or salaries, then we get relegated, or at least consistently under serious threat of being relegated. I don’t think there is much doubt about that.

I would say our budget is about middling, if we were to operate break even at current income levels then our budget would be bottom few and that correlates to one thing usually.

Oh sorry, I didn’t read the whole bit. I thought you were talking about Walta.

Yes, if we took £42m out of our budget over the past three years we’d have no players…

I am a great supporter of the owners’ current strategy btw. Live within our means as far as possible, increase commercial activity however we can, generate substantial profits through player trading with selective incremental advancement of squad quality allowing a promotion push within 2 or 3 years. Move to category 1 academy to have the greatest possible pick of players to develop and ultimately sell on.
It’s the only way forward for a sustainable future. As I said in an earlier post at some point it will all go bang and I don’t want us to be blown up. Particularly now we’ve no Trust safety net.

The only bit I’m not sure about is the stadium purchase, But that’s not because I think they can’t use it for increasing money for the club, it’s just that I prefer as a supporter to forgo that money for guarantees against future misuse by whoever will own the club over the next thirty years.

 

[Frankie Burrows Cap]

He said about losing £14m a year for 3 seasons. If you take £42m out of this side over that time period, whether that’s transfer fees and/or salaries, then we get relegated, or at least consistently under serious threat of being relegated. I don’t think there is much doubt about that.

I would say our budget is about middling, if we were to operate break even at current income levels then our budget would be bottom few and that correlates to one thing usually.

I’m not sure I said it should be zero tbf. I just questioned whether being so close to the limit was good management as was stated.

There’s a big difference between the two extremes of ‘we must break even’ and ‘we must spend every penny we’re allowed’

I’d suggest that good management in the Championship is somewhere in the middle which allows you to cover unexpected events and have headroom for any January relegation panic/promotion push as and when required.

 

[TruckerJack]

I’m not sure I said it should be zero tbf. I just questioned whether being so close to the limit was good management as was stated.

There’s a big difference between the two extremes of ‘we must break even’ and ‘we must spend every penny we’re allowed’

I’d suggest that good management in the Championship is somewhere in the middle which allows you to cover unexpected events and have headroom for any January relegation panic/promotion push as and when required.

Isn’t that what they did though? Left enough room for x3 January signings.

 

[JackSomething]

Isn’t that what they did though? Left enough room for x3 January signings.

I think what we're debating is Flash's suggestion that operating as close to the limit as possible would be 'good management'.

 

[Neath_Jack]

I think what we're debating is Flash's suggestion that operating as close to the limit as possible would be 'good management'.

I don’t think we have any choice if we want to be competitive. Imagine the furore on here if we were buying complete unknowns / journeymen to achieve it. It’s bad enough now with some clamouring to buy untold numbers of players constantly.

 

[JackSomething]

I don’t think we have any choice if we want to be competitive. Imagine the furore on here if we were buying complete unknowns / journeymen to achieve it. It’s bad enough now with some clamouring to buy untold numbers of players constantly.

I'm in agreement with Lisa's earlier post being supportive of how the owners are running the club (live within our means, increase commercial income, generate profit through player trading, return Academy to Cat 1, etc) and I don't think they are operating with us right at the limits of the financial cap.

If they were really doing that, sacking Sheehan probably would have been impossible and we'd have been stuck with him. Any financial decision made regarding Walta was likely to ensure we do still have financial headroom in case anything unexpected happens between now and the end of the season, although I appreciate that is just a guess on my part.

I can't support the suggestion that a club should aim to spend every available penny and be right at the limit, because of unexpected developments. That's not 'good management' to me. But I don't think that's what the owners are doing, so I guess it's pretty much irrelevant.

 

[Neath_Jack]

I'm in agreement with Lisa's earlier post being supportive of how the owners are running the club (live within our means, increase commercial income, generate profit through player trading, return Academy to Cat 1, etc) and I don't think they are operating with us right at the limits of the financial cap.

If they were really doing that, sacking Sheehan probably would have been impossible and we'd have been stuck with him. Any financial decision made regarding Walta was likely to ensure we do still have financial headroom in case anything unexpected happens between now and the end of the season, although I appreciate that is just a guess on my part.

I can't support the suggestion that a club should aim to spend every available penny and be right at the limit, because of unexpected developments. That's not 'good management' to me. But I don't think that's what the owners are doing, so I guess it's pretty much irrelevant.

I don’t think anyone has suggested we should aim for it, but more the case of we are going to be up and around it if we want to be competitive. Unless we suddenly start producing high level championship players from the academy to fill the team, and that isn’t going to happen.