Filipe Morais told of Bolton Wanderers exit via a tweet

I once met Ken Morley in a wine bar. Nice fella.

Natasha Whittam wrote:I once met Ken Morley in a wine bar. Nice fella.

Well he is from Chorley.

Sluffy wrote:

luckyPeterpiper wrote:The 'going rate' may well be less than we were paying some of these guys though sluffy. Don't forget quite a few of them were holdovers from Dougie and Neil's days. I suspect what's happening is two things. First we're looking to trim the wage bill and second, we're replacing certain players with guys Phil thinks have more to offer and are younger with a concommitant reduction in costs and a potential increase in resale value down the road. I hope the lads coming in perform the way Phil seems to think they will and as to Morais I can see why the club would let him go if his wage was high or he wanted more than a year because he's past 30 and in all likelihood wouldn't command much of a fee if any should it become necessary to offload him later.

I think you are misunderstanding me Peter perhaps?

I was talking about the signing of Oztumer when I talked about 'market rate'.

If he had received interest from other clubs - and we are led to believe he did - then clearly he would know what the others were offering in wages and we must have been there or thereabouts in our offer, otherwise he would not have given us not much consideration of signing for us.  Therefore we must have offered the current going rate (or better) in wages for him to be here with us.

The only player on our books with 'stupid' wages is now only Ben Amos, and he is purposely loaned out from the club to avoid club house upset.

Fair enough mate but since I rate Oztumer anyway I don't mind if he is on bigger money than some of the players we've released. What I meant to say (obviously not clearly enough because I didn't think it all the way through) is that the target seems to be that the net wage bill for next season will be lower than this in total. I also suspect that we'll mainly sign kids who potentially have a resale value that brings a profit if they work out as opposed to a whole slew of older players who even if they're on peanuts wouldn't have a potential transfer value later.

luckyPeterpiper wrote:Fair enough mate but since I rate Oztumer anyway I don't mind if he is on bigger money than some of the players we've released. What I meant to say (obviously not clearly enough because I didn't think it all the way through) is that the target seems to be that the net wage bill for next season will be lower than this in total. I also suspect that we'll mainly sign kids who potentially have a resale value that brings a profit if they work out as opposed to a whole slew of older players who even if they're on peanuts wouldn't have a potential transfer value later.

We've signed most of the players we still have left whilst being under the embargo, so our wage bill for them won't be vast.  At the same time though we've released the majority of players too, who (like Morais) were also signed under the embargo - so again we aren't 'cutting' players to save money on wages - we're pretty much down the bottom of the Championship wage bill as was I suspect (Amos wage of around £950,000 pa. apart).

However we did lose two of the big wage earners with Derik and Dervite leaving.

So what I'm attempting to say is that we aren't looking to lower the wage bill which seems to be your view - unless we simply don't build the squad back up again - and if that is the case we can't possibly stay up - and if that really is the case why have we gone out of our way to sign Lowe and Oztumer?

To me it simply means that the ownership/management realises that the squad we had last season wouldn't be able to stay up in the new season and are simply taking the opportunity of strengthening it so we do.

Obviously money is a factor in doing this so decisions not to resign players like Morais (if they aren't going to be featuring much this coming season) are being taken.

As for putting faith in youngsters - which is trotted out season by season by many, many people - the facts simply don't back up people's unrealistic opinions of how good they are.

For instance our star development squad player from last year Alex Samizadeh and for the year before, Jamie Thomas, have both been released (as not being good enough) by Kilmarnock and Burnley respectively.

Very, very few kids go on to make it.  Yes there's always one that does - but thousands simply don't.

Anderson/Parkinson will be working within a limited budget to strengthen the squad to make it competitive enough to stay up next season.

It's as simple as that to explain what is going on with whom we have released and who we will be signing, in my opinion.

I think you misunderstood me this time mate. When I talk about younger players I don't mean 18 or 19 year olds who might turn out to be decent in four or five years. I'm talking about players in their early to mid 20's who for one reason or another aren't wanted/needed by their current club but have at least some proven ability. My overall guess is that Ken and Phil are trying to recruit for less (if possible) but that the overriding consideration will be to (a) survive in this division and (b) go with short-ish contracts that mean they won't cost a fortune to release if needed but can be offered an extension with a concommitant rise in potential resale value if they work out as well as the club hopes. I've noticed that the players we've signed thus far have two year deals rather than four or five which suggests to me that the club is hedging its bets on the one hand while the players themselves may want to see where we're headed before committing to a longer deal.

In truth I don't fully understand everything that's going on behind the scenes at the club but from where I sit we don't seem to have a great many options either way. I believe if we can improve on last season and show both the players who've joined us and potential investors that we're going the right way then next summer should be a lot better for us in terms of ability to recruit a squad that's genuinely competitive in both strength and depth. For now it looks to me like we're in a sort of 'holding' pattern where we're keeping the number of players the same or thereabouts as last season and hoping to get an increase in quality but not a huge leap forward thanks to the money situation.

luckyPeterpiper wrote:I think you misunderstood me this time mate. When I talk about younger players I don't mean 18 or 19 year olds who might turn out to be decent in four or five years. I'm talking about players in their early to mid 20's who for one reason or another aren't wanted/needed by their current club but have at least some proven ability. My overall guess is that Ken and Phil are trying to recruit for less (if possible) but that the overriding consideration will be to (a) survive in this division and (b) go with short-ish contracts that mean they won't cost a fortune to release if needed but can be offered an extension with a concommitant rise in potential resale value if they work out as well as the club hopes. I've noticed that the players we've signed thus far have two year deals rather than four or five which suggests to me that the club is hedging its bets on the one hand while the players themselves may want to see where we're headed before committing to a longer deal.

In truth I don't fully understand everything that's going on behind the scenes at the club but from where I sit we don't seem to have a great many options either way. I believe if we can improve on last season and show both the players who've joined us and potential investors that we're going the right way then next summer should be a lot better for us in terms of ability to recruit a squad that's genuinely competitive in both strength and depth. For now it looks to me like we're in a sort of 'holding' pattern where we're keeping the number of players the same or thereabouts as last season and hoping to get an increase in quality but not a huge leap forward thanks to the money situation.

I'm still not fully understanding what you are saying Peter?

We've not issued any player contracts for lengths of over two years since the Eddie Davies/Phil Gartside 'stupid contract issuing' era.

We have no money to speak of to buy players so we have no choice but to look for potential in other teams cast-offs (such as Lowe) or decent players in the past who are now over the hill (such as Wilbraham was).

We certainly aren't going to be giving these players 5 year contracts just on the off-chance that they turn into world beaters.

Players are on contracts and we certainly don't have the money to buy their contracts up if we don't want them anymore - that's why we had Chris Taylor at the club last season who never played a game for us. We aren't going to be able to buy any players contracts out until we get another owner who throws the cash about as Gartside did with Eddie's.

We are where we are.

Forest are buying £12 million players, Leeds have just appointed a former Argentine national manager and we are looking at Birmingham cast offs and Walsall's star player.

That's not to say I'm defeatist about things - I'm not, I think with an astute owner in Anderson and a pragmatic manager in Parkinson we will continue to survive and go forward - just that it won't be easy - or pretty!

No doubt the usual suspects will demand Anderson and Parkinson's heads throughout the season - and I'm more worried that they might get their wish one day, only to find the grass isn't always greener on the other side!

Sluffy and others please forgive my fuzzy typing today. I took my meds a couple of hours ago and I'm trying to think straight but my brain feels like its wrapped in cotton wool or something. I guess what I meant by the shorter contracts is that it gives both sides an easy 'out' if things don't work out as quickly as we need them too. What worries me about that is if we do unearth a 'hidden gem' then we could wind up losing him for nothing or peanuts but I suppose that's not very likely so the club is playing it safe which is all they can do right now. Personally I think Ken's doing fine with the cards he's got and while Phil might not be the world's most exciting manager he's at least got a practical mindset about who we are and what's genuinely acheivable.