Good old-fashioned common sense (part 5)
According to Shaun O'Hara: "Failure to win promotion at the end of 2006/7 will reduce our income by a minimum of £7m. While the club remains in the Championship it will be necessary to generate surplus funds for future players by selling assets."
So was it really that wise to structure the Green and MacKenzie transfer deals so that the vast bulk of the money was only payable AFTER the end of 2006/7? Apparently it was :“I wouldn't accept that there's any weakness in any of the deals that have been done" says Neil Doncaster. I wonder who negotiated the deals then?
More comment on the accounts to come next week.
posted by The King of Prussia @ 12:45 AM
2 Comments:
Playing devil's advocate here for a moment, though, do we know most other transfers at most other clubs aren't structured in a similar way, KoP? And at least this way, it does guarantee us SOME revenue in the years ahead - just as, if Earnie is sold in January, his transfer would probably be organised in a similar way. I just don't know if an all-upfront deal is possible nowadays, basically.
What takes MY breath away about the accounts, though, is how high the wage bill remained last season: the club plainly gambled far more than many of us realised on going straight back up. Which makes their backing of Worthington even more unfathomable: how on earth could they not have sacked him when it was obvious we weren't going up?
My argument is that the way "most" transfers at "most" other clubs are structured is irrelevant. Doncaster is employed to do the best for Norwich City in our particular circumstances - which over the past 18 months or so have differed markedly from those of "most" other clubs.
We have known since May 2005 that without promotion by May 2007 we would suffer a substantial drop in income without promotion. By January 2006 it was painfully clear that the squad we had was nowhere good enough for promotion. Yet the Ashton deal - struck with a club who have been boasting about their excellent cashflow - was structured so that the manager did not have access to the moneys during last summer's transfer window. A fact that Doncaster, for reasons that remain wholly obscure, chose not to reveal when explaining why the club was not awash with cash.
Worse still, again with the loss of £7 million's worth of income hanging over us - the Green and MacKenzie deals were struck in such a way that most of the moneys would not be available until after season 2006/7.
In a year we get to find out what Doncaster's remuneration is. I am really looking forward to that.
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