New Players/Loan

[Southampton Gull]

Signed for Dover today. Pity we didn't get him instead of Anderson who somehow seems to have been on the books at Blackburn, Exeter and Barrow without having hardly played a first team match for any of them.

He wanted £800 a week and we simply can't afford it. He got it at Dover.

[merse btpir]

........and I am reliably informed that the club are currently trying to persuade a player to sign for them being only able to offer them £300 a week!

[Dazza]

At some stage the club will need to weigh the obvious short term financial benefit of playing pauper against the long term cost of falling into the National South. £800 a week for 18 weeks is not a fortune.

[nickbrod]

And don't forget Clarke Osborne told me on Saturday, "we have to stay in this league".

[Scott Brehaut]

We are only able to offer 300 quid a week and still people think that Kev is a crap manager!!

[Dazza]

Why are we only now able to afford to offer £300 a week Scott. ? The question has no relevance to the management of the club. If that is the situation at this time of the season when clearly relegation is a clear possibility we are surely entitled to an immediate explanation from those running the club. ?

[Plymouth Gull]

Why are we only now able to afford to offer £300 a week Scott. ? The question has no relevance to the management of the club. If that is the situation at this time of the season when clearly relegation is a clear possibility we are surely entitled to an immediate explanation from those running the club. ?

The answer is that the owners could not give a ****. If anything, relegation makes their job easier. Less fans to oppose them.

[merse btpir]

The answer is that the owners could not give a ****. If anything, relegation makes their job easier. Less fans to oppose them.

Personally I think you're wrong in that assumption; I don't believe they will sanction a playing budget over and above what the matchday income warrants and THAT is the problem...with that matchday income severely compromised by the season ticket fiasco and the ever falling gates now; it is no wonder in my opinion.

It is not the wage bill that makes the manager's performance any less unacceptable in my view because there are plenty of other managers having to manage in that situation. I do know what a few players are on in this league at a few different clubs, and whilst there are others and other clubs on much more; those sort of 'poverty' packages are not uncommon ~ and remember, most of those clubs are part-time also and clubs which Nicholson with his full-time facility fails to beat!

Also too; the manager's individual distribution of his budget could bear scrutiny with one particular signing allegedly doubling the salary he was on at his previous National League club

[Dazza]

I am not going to join you on the Manager hunt ... if we can't afford one player I am pretty certain we couldn't afford that..

Yes GI will want to achieve a balanced budget but that probably is unlikely to be achieved if fan disillusion gets stacked on fan dislllusion by austerity measure after austerity measure.

[tomogull]

Also too; the manager's individual distribution of his budget could bear scrutiny with one particular signing allegedly doubling the salary he was on at his previous National League club

Obviously you know, or profess to know, what goes on at Plainmoor more than us mere mortals know. But it is easy to trot out 'facts and figures'. If, for example, the player you are referring to is Dan Sparkes, that would not be surprising because he was part-time at Braintree.

As for losing to teams with part-time players, this has been discussed ad nauseum on here. Most of these part-time sides are situated in, or near, cities where it financlally pays better players than what we are able to attract (for £300 per week) to have two incomes. Options for similar part-time work here in Devon is limited. Other part-time sides like Guiseley and North Ferriby may flourish for a season or two, but ultimately they can't compete and will go back down from whence they came. Look where Welling and Altrincham are now.

[merse btpir]

If, for example, the player you are referring to is Dan Sparkes, that would not be surprising because he was part-time at Braintree.

It is not Dan Sparkes it is a player who was full-time last season; and I need to correct my original statement because the doubling of the money was double of what he was offered by his old club for this season and it's not 'knowing what goes on at Plainmoor' that came from within his old club.

[merse btpir]

As for losing to teams with part-time players, this has been discussed ad nauseum on here. Most of these part-time sides are situated in, or near, cities where it financlally pays better players than what we are able to attract (for £300 per week) to have two incomes. Options for similar part-time work here in Devon is limited.

I'm not advocating part-time status for Torquay United. In reality given that most weeks the players are given Mondays off and then might be travelling on the Friday they are only putting in the same three mornings a week clubs like Dover, Sutton and Bromley are. Maidstone stand almost alone as a part time club with evening training (just two and then sometimes only one if there is a midweek game) who are planning to go to the three morning a week arrangement next season.

What United need to do is take advantage of their full-time status and use their time as efficiently and sport scientifically as some of those part-time clubs.

Barrow overcome their particular geographical isolation by basing their training in Manchester, only going into Barrow on home match days. Dover do their's at Greenwich University and years ago Yeovil used the Metropolitan Police club in Molesey when they were a Ryman League club.

There are ways to overcome the perceived factors which some people see as the reason for the under achievement and those are three examples of clubs thinking outside the box to overcome their's

[desperado]

Assume that player was Damon Lathrope who was offered a substantially reduced deal by Aldershot because he was not fit and needed to prove his fitness ? ! Which is what we should have done !!

[merse btpir]

Good thinking Batman!

[Alpine Joe]

merse

Also too; the manager's individual distribution of his budget could bear scrutiny with one particular signing allegedly doubling the salary he was on at his previous National League club

The calculation that I'd like merse to do, as he's at least likely to be able to make a more accurate guess than most of us,is the percentage decrease between what Lathrope was on and the new amount that Aldershot were offering to pay him.


At the moment, I can't help feeling the new deal might have been so pathetically small that Damon might have given it less than 10 seconds consideration or insinuated he'd be better off taking a job sweeping the Aldershot streets. The figure (possibly the exact figure) of Aldershot's offer is known. His wage at Torquay has allegedly been hinted at to do this calculation......but the figure that's missed out, and would put the whole thing in context for me, would be even a rough guess of what he actually was on......and I'd be surprised if he hasn't taken a pay cut for this season in comparison to last.

My suspicion is that it might be a situation with rough similarities as with us easing Ryan Jarvis out of Plainmoor. Knill in the Summer telling the player that he was unlikely to be a first team choice, that he had no real desire to keep him, but if he wanted to hang around as a squad player we'd pay him peanuts. In other words offer a derisory wage which you know the player isn't going to accept, in order to help ease him out the door and look for another club.

Knilly's exact words being:

‘’We offered him a deal and to be fair, it wasn’t the most money. I more or less said to him that if someone came in with a better deal and at his age, with another baby coming, he would have to take that".

http://www.torquayunited.com/news/artic ... 26614.aspx

You can bet it 'wasn't the most money'.....and if Jarvis wanted to pay the mortgage and feed the kids, the message in our offer was clear...'find another club !