Bargain hunter Neil Lennon pleased with Bolton Wanderers' transfer juggling act

Wanderers managed to sign SIX players in the January transfer window but still bring down costs.

After a frantic transfer deadline day, which saw Manchester United’s Saidy Janko, Celtic’s Filip Twardzik, Crystal Palace’s Barry Bannan and Sporting Lisbon’s Simeon Slavchev added to the squad, Lennon declared himself pleased with the business done.

Big earners such as Chung-Yong Lee and Keith Andrews signed for Crystal Palace and MK Dons respectively, while another, Jay Spearing, joined Blackburn Rovers last week.

Adding loanees Adam Le Fondre and Rochinha to the mix, Lennon said the overall wage bill had been slashed, meaning costs were now well in line with Financial Fair Play guidelines.

“My own opinion is that we were paying players too much in the first place,” he said.

“I’ve come from Celtic, where you learn to be frugal. Whether it works or not remains to be seen but we’ve got players in who are not on great money but hungry to play.

“It was important to get things tidied up in terms of the wage bill because we had the spectre of FFP hanging over us as well. I don’t think we’ll have that going forward.”

Lennon has lined up deals for Northern Irish youngster Daniel Hughes and Dutch defender Nick Kuipers, which could be completed at the end of the season and is understood to have had a late bid rejected for a another foreign-based full-back.

But the manager believes there is now a brighter financial outlook at the club.

“When you have the Premier League on your doorstep it’s easy to peer in at the neighbours and think ‘ooh I fancy a bit of that,’ and buy someone,” he said.

“It’s the same at Celtic even though they are a huge club. They had to be sensible and creative with who they brought in.

“We’ve got players from lots of parts of the world. I think we’ve got a great player in Barry Bannan for the Chungy deal – he’s a good player at this level, and a Scotland international.

“You have to think about going forward in the summer too and spending a bit of money then if we can’t do it now.

“But all in all I’d have to say I am very pleased with the business we got done.”

Source

i saw this on the bolton news website and for some reason i just imagined neil lennon singing to dougie "anything you can do i can do better!"

I must be going mental

Have running costs really come down? If the combined wages of those coming in is less than those of the players going out I'd be surprised, but even if it's true it's false accounting.

We've lost assets in CYL, Eaves, Riley etc because they were contracted to us and the total income received for those assets is around a quarter of what we paid for CYL alone. Loanees aren't assets as they are contracted to other clubs.

Short term costs may have come down (just) but at the expense of having to write off £1.5 million of assets (Minimum!) and we'll be writing off more when Andrews finally leaves although that will help reduce running costs further.

surely whilst we are under such scrutiny with ffp, running costs being reduced would help us in the long run when it comes to reacquiring further "assets"

wanderlust wrote:Have running costs really come down? If the combined wages of those coming in is less than those of the players going out I'd be surprised, but even if it's true it's false accounting.

We've lost assets in CYL, Eaves, Riley etc because they were contracted to us and the total income received for those assets is around a quarter of what we paid for CYL alone. Loanees aren't assets as they are contracted to other clubs.

Short term costs may have come down (just) but at the expense of having to write off £1.5 million of assets (Minimum!) and we'll be writing off more when Andrews finally leaves although that will help reduce running costs further.

Lusty ,
I'm not sure that I agree with you here. The assets that you mention were depreciating anyway. One of the technical definitions of depreciation is that it's caused by 'effluxion of time' - that is,  the accounting rule  for time based assets such as football players is that their value is written down over the life of their contracts.
We got the right price for Chungy in an efficient arms length market as that was what someone was willing to pay for him. He and Andrews like the others we offloaded  were soon out of contract and would have walked for nothing. It was an efficient buyers market.. It would be unreasonable to suggest that when we buy a player we'll be able to re-sell him at the same price or more. Some times asset values increase and we make a profit , but just as often their value decreases and they're sold at a loss.
Look at Zaha at United- they paid a lot for him, but he lost value in the market and they sold him at a loss.
I don't think its false accounting at all- its simply that asset values fluctuate in efficient markets and the value of the players that we have off loaded were fair values in that market

Andrews will be worth about £50,000 by the time his contract is up AKA a week of Chungy and Spearing.

rammywhite wrote:

wanderlust wrote:Have running costs really come down? If the combined wages of those coming in is less than those of the players going out I'd be surprised, but even if it's true it's false accounting.

We've lost assets in CYL, Eaves, Riley etc because they were contracted to us and the total income received for those assets is around a quarter of what we paid for CYL alone. Loanees aren't assets as they are contracted to other clubs.

Short term costs may have come down (just) but at the expense of having to write off £1.5 million of assets (Minimum!) and we'll be writing off more when Andrews finally leaves although that will help reduce running costs further.

Lusty ,
I'm not sure that I agree with you here. The assets that you mention were depreciating anyway. One of the technical definitions of depreciation is that it's caused by 'effluxion of time' - that is,  the accounting rule  for time based assets such as football players is that their value is written down over the life of their contracts.
We got the right price for Chungy in an efficient arms length market as that was what someone was willing to pay for him. He and Andrews like the others we offloaded  were soon out of contract and would have walked for nothing. It was an efficient buyers market.. It would be unreasonable to suggest that when we buy a player we'll be able to re-sell him at the same price or more. Some times asset values increase and we make a profit , but just as often their value decreases and they're sold at a loss.
Look at Zaha at United- they paid a lot for him, but he lost value in the market and they sold him at a loss.
I don't think its false accounting at all- its simply that asset values fluctuate in efficient markets and the value of the players that we have off loaded were fair values in that market

A fair interpretation Rammy. Ultimately market value is what someone will pay. It bemuses me that clubs don't revisit player contracts more frequently so assets are tied in.