Thank heavens someone has noted the coaching deficiency which needs to be addressed urgently. It should also be appreciated that football is an entertainment industry and there is little of that in evidence at Adams Park recently. Fans will not consistently support the present style of play
The apparent fact that we have one of if not the lowest budget in the league (get the sick-bucket out, Micra) has been widely reported, the latest a couple of weeks ago. Do you have any evidence that this is not the case, Aloysius or, in what seems to be the new culture (see referendum), is this just a case that it is an inconvenient fact in the conclusion you wish to reach and hence should be ignored?
All opinion of course but (with respect to Aloysius) I thought Aloysius analysis that Micra seems to have been so impressed by to be just standard generic superficial stuff when results are not great. Wrong team, wrong substitutions, wrong tactics - heard it all before many times. Not sure where the bad overseeing training regimes has come from, any evidence for this?
Not sure, with the exception of the defence, who these Lg1 standard players just waiting for a bit of competent management before storming us to the top of the table are?
Budgets drive reasonable expectations of performance. Last season Bournemouth finished a whopping 11 places below Man Utd yet Howe is hailed as a genius in waiting while Van Gaal was fired. Why do you think that is? Occasionally a team with a low budget will over-achieve as Leicester proved last year and us the year before, but the sad, depressing but nonetheless existent reality is that more often than not there will be a strong correlation between budget and finishing position. You can change your manager repeatedly to try to buck that reality, many teams do, very few succeed, virtually none succeed repeatedly.
Give me one quote or article from someone outside of the club giving our budget ranking. Ainsworth is a proven liar to the media over injury status's and I don't trust him on budgets as repeating the story only adds to his legacy.
On a slightly difference slant I would like to see the combined salaries of the eleven players who played for us last Saturday against the starting elevens of other teams. We don't have as many players as others in our squad but those that are on the pitch are proven lower league players on the same or more money than similar players.
The rest of the argument can be found in numerous other threads already. The sport is not played on the Balance Sheet. There is no doubt having more money increases the chances of success but to use it as the benchmark for success is disrespectful to the people involved.
@DevC said:
The apparent fact that we have one of if not the lowest budget in the league (get the sick-bucket out, Micra) has been widely reported, the latest a couple of weeks ago. Do you have any evidence that this is not the case, Aloysius or, in what seems to be the new culture (see referendum), is this just a case that it is an inconvenient fact in the conclusion you wish to reach and hence should be ignored?
All opinion of course but (with respect to Aloysius) I thought Aloysius analysis that Micra seems to have been so impressed by to be just standard generic superficial stuff when results are not great. Wrong team, wrong substitutions, wrong tactics - heard it all before many times. Not sure where the bad overseeing training regimes has come from, any evidence for this?
Aloysius' second paragraph, with its emphasis on the many positive aspects of GA's management, is key.
Do you have any evidence that he and Howard (and as I recall Trust guys) are lying about the budget, Righty or are you presuming that because it is an inconvenient statistic for your argument.
While the sport is of course not played on the P+L account, relative money is inevitably a major determinant of expected performance - which is why what may be a success for say a Bournemouth would be an abject failure for Man Utd.
If you ignore budget and get very upset that Bournemouth always finish below Man Utd, sacking the manager for his failure to solve the problem and the next one and the next one, do you think that would improve Bournemouth's chance of success.
Is it Micra. Quite a remarkable achievement to be good at player development while bad at overseeing training drills. Is he perfect, no. is he better at some aspects of the job than others, presumably - wouldn't be human otherwise, is he a very good Lg2 manager that we are lucky to have - yes in my judgement.
@Right_in_the_Middle said:
Give me one quote or article from someone outside of the club giving our budget ranking. Ainsworth is a proven liar to the media over injury status's and I don't trust him on budgets as repeating the story only adds to his legacy.
There have been plenty, haven't there? One I can specifically remember was Karl Robinson in the Waddock era.
@DevC said:
Is it Micra. Quite a remarkable achievement to be good at player development while bad at overseeing training drills. Is he perfect, no. is he better at some aspects of the job than others, presumably - wouldn't be human otherwise, is he a very good Lg2 manager that we are lucky to have - yes in my judgement.
Bit selective Dev. Player development goes a lot wider than oversight of training drills, I would have thought.
@DevC
My evidence on our player budget is the quality of player we have at our disposal. We have some good, experienced lower league players in our small squad. We put a premium on quality over quantity. Our first choice eleven is as good or better than most in the league but we struggle when we get injuries.
That is why overall budgets aren't a good barometer. Are you telling me Hayes, Thompson, Jacobson, Akinfenwya and others are amongst the lowest paid players in the league?
Football is still a sport and is subject to far more things than money. The Team GB cycling squad win medals due to the highest funding but also through immense talent and hard work. Portsmouth have the highest income from attendances in League Two but struggle to win promotion. I like those aspects.
@Chris Not sure you can say there have been plenty and then name something from years ago with no back up. I think Ainsworth is spinning a good story on the budget. It's obvious we aren't flush with cash but we have managed to get better players than the stories suggest we should. If we are really paying good players peanuts it might explain some of the performances. Maybe we should go more down the youth route? Oh we binned that to save money to pay Akinfenwya and others
No Righty, not true. We had to close the Academy for financial reasons; we chose to recruit young players with potential and it could be argued that, at least in the short term, this has proved pretty successful. We are still going down the youth route. We still recruit older experienced players to ensure the right balance. Allegedly.
OK, enough of this. Instead of basing what we know on hearsay and speculation, I've spent the last hour delving into the annual accounts of all 24 clubs in League Two in 2014/15, the last set of accounts available. Here is what they say:
:: Thirteen of the 24 clubs are considered too small a company to need to publish detailed accounts. This includes Wycombe.
:: It's worth noting that not all those clubs will actually be small; Plymouth Argyle, for example, is registered as a small company, but its ultimate parent company has a turnover of £41m, including £10m from its leisure division (where the football club resides).
:: Of the eleven clubs that are medium or large companies, nine have published the number of staff employed and their combined salaries. That ranges from Burton Albion's £507k spent on salaries to Portsmouth's £5.1m
:: Of the medium-sized clubs in the league that season that published their accounts in full, Tranmere spend £1.8m on staff, including 49 players & coaches; Morcambe £2.1m on 29 staff members; York City £2.2m on 63; Wimbledon £2.2m on 44; and Carlisle £2.4m on 52.
:: The average salary in League Two, isolating those five clubs, is therefore £44,857.
So, not cut and dried, but it isn't a stretch to say Wycombe's budget is likely to be in the bottom half of the clubs in the league. That's not guaranteed - if Plymouth can pretend they're a small club, so can others - but I think we can take it as read we'll have a budget in the lower half of the table.
During that season we had 27 players on the books at one stage or another. This season we've got eight in the dug-out (can't recall what the numbers were then). So a total of around 35, significantly fewer than all those clubs bar Morcambe. Does that mean our salaries are similar to Morcambe's or more because of higher living costs in Wycombe, or less because we could not rely on the largesse of an owner. Who knows? Not me, not Dev, and given the opacity in the annual accounts of half the clubs in the league, almost certainly not Andrew Howard or Gareth Ainsworth either.
Budgets aside...it is true that on Saturday we had JJ, Harriman, PCH, Akinfenwa, Pierre,Stewart and Blackman on the pitch...Gape has potential to play higher in the leagues and Freeman is decent enough...I would suggest the first six at least can be ranked amongst the better players in this Division and yet they do not seem to be able to deliver with any consistency. I like GA, but in the fifth season it is starting to look like the budget is not entirely the problem...
Would it be right to assume that clubs player totals in accounts include academy players?
If they are then our budget is not comparing like for like. I think Ainsworth is at best spinning a part truth based on this. Our actual first team best eleven budget is very competitive in my view based on the players we have recruited.
No doubt DevC will argue that the Burton/Portsmouth comparison is the exception that proves his rule on the correlation between players' salaries and success on the field. Either that or Burton have been blessed with genius managers.
Three final comments from me and then I will leave you to it
1) Eric, None of us know how much Akinfenwa is paid. Unlike the vast majority, arguably all of Lg2, he is a slightly different case. He is a celebrity that guarentees column inches. The commercial guy needs to put a value on that and effectively that gets subtracted from his salary to calculate his football cost. i.e. Hypothetically you could sign Akinfenwa on 60k and more anonymous but identically effective player for £40k. If the marketing guy says Akinfenwa celebrity status is worth £40k a year, logically you would sign Akinfenwa.
2) In response to Aloysius point, I am fairly certain that I have read that clubs have to report their salary costs to the FA and then get an anonymised summary of all clubs in their division back for comparison purposes. The management of WWFC have a pretty fair idea of where they sit.
3) On June 23rd, the country voted on a key decision that will effect all our lives. The process was characterised by particularly leave voters ignoring all evidence that didn't back up their preconception, stating openly that those whose evidence contrasted with their preconception were lying and found a simplistic scapegoat solution to genuine deep lying problems. As is becoming increasingly clear, by adopting a simplistic solution, they have simply made the effect of those deep lying problems even worse. Learn the lesson, Gentlemen.
I hear that Akinfenwa argument quite often from marketing teams I've worked with in the past. Problem with it is that it looks at costs and benefits and not pure cash. If he is on a high wage that is a cash cost and unless the benefit he brings was being paid for in the past it's still a higher cash outlay.
The Brexit paragraph is multi layered irony at its best. To be enshrined to Gasroom legend I hope. Great way to sign off on this post (but I'm guessing you won't)
@Hughie said:
In recent weeks there has been much discussion about style of play and tactics. Rather than heaping all the blame on the manager,perhaps we should accept that the players he has brought in are of sufficient calibre ,but he has limited motivational experience. In these circumstances, rather than sack him, should we consider bringing in a coach to address these issues ?
I think Ainsworth is a great motivator, and has a canny recruitmant policy.
I see Andy Fairman is now goalkeeper coach at Bolton Wanderers. Given that he was at Everton before us this move probably suggests he wanted a role near home. Best of luck to him at the Trotters.
Comments
Thank heavens someone has noted the coaching deficiency which needs to be addressed urgently. It should also be appreciated that football is an entertainment industry and there is little of that in evidence at Adams Park recently. Fans will not consistently support the present style of play
The apparent fact that we have one of if not the lowest budget in the league (get the sick-bucket out, Micra) has been widely reported, the latest a couple of weeks ago. Do you have any evidence that this is not the case, Aloysius or, in what seems to be the new culture (see referendum), is this just a case that it is an inconvenient fact in the conclusion you wish to reach and hence should be ignored?
All opinion of course but (with respect to Aloysius) I thought Aloysius analysis that Micra seems to have been so impressed by to be just standard generic superficial stuff when results are not great. Wrong team, wrong substitutions, wrong tactics - heard it all before many times. Not sure where the bad overseeing training regimes has come from, any evidence for this?
Not sure, with the exception of the defence, who these Lg1 standard players just waiting for a bit of competent management before storming us to the top of the table are?
Budgets drive reasonable expectations of performance. Last season Bournemouth finished a whopping 11 places below Man Utd yet Howe is hailed as a genius in waiting while Van Gaal was fired. Why do you think that is? Occasionally a team with a low budget will over-achieve as Leicester proved last year and us the year before, but the sad, depressing but nonetheless existent reality is that more often than not there will be a strong correlation between budget and finishing position. You can change your manager repeatedly to try to buck that reality, many teams do, very few succeed, virtually none succeed repeatedly.
Damn lies and statistics.
Give me one quote or article from someone outside of the club giving our budget ranking. Ainsworth is a proven liar to the media over injury status's and I don't trust him on budgets as repeating the story only adds to his legacy.
On a slightly difference slant I would like to see the combined salaries of the eleven players who played for us last Saturday against the starting elevens of other teams. We don't have as many players as others in our squad but those that are on the pitch are proven lower league players on the same or more money than similar players.
The rest of the argument can be found in numerous other threads already. The sport is not played on the Balance Sheet. There is no doubt having more money increases the chances of success but to use it as the benchmark for success is disrespectful to the people involved.
Hear hear "Righty" and, yes, I have had to take a couple of quells.
Kwells are better.
Aloysius' second paragraph, with its emphasis on the many positive aspects of GA's management, is key.
Do you have any evidence that he and Howard (and as I recall Trust guys) are lying about the budget, Righty or are you presuming that because it is an inconvenient statistic for your argument.
While the sport is of course not played on the P+L account, relative money is inevitably a major determinant of expected performance - which is why what may be a success for say a Bournemouth would be an abject failure for Man Utd.
If you ignore budget and get very upset that Bournemouth always finish below Man Utd, sacking the manager for his failure to solve the problem and the next one and the next one, do you think that would improve Bournemouth's chance of success.
Two more Kwells.
Is it Micra. Quite a remarkable achievement to be good at player development while bad at overseeing training drills. Is he perfect, no. is he better at some aspects of the job than others, presumably - wouldn't be human otherwise, is he a very good Lg2 manager that we are lucky to have - yes in my judgement.
There have been plenty, haven't there? One I can specifically remember was Karl Robinson in the Waddock era.
You had to delve deep into the recesses of your memory for that one, Chris!
Bit selective Dev. Player development goes a lot wider than oversight of training drills, I would have thought.
@DevC
My evidence on our player budget is the quality of player we have at our disposal. We have some good, experienced lower league players in our small squad. We put a premium on quality over quantity. Our first choice eleven is as good or better than most in the league but we struggle when we get injuries.
That is why overall budgets aren't a good barometer. Are you telling me Hayes, Thompson, Jacobson, Akinfenwya and others are amongst the lowest paid players in the league?
Football is still a sport and is subject to far more things than money. The Team GB cycling squad win medals due to the highest funding but also through immense talent and hard work. Portsmouth have the highest income from attendances in League Two but struggle to win promotion. I like those aspects.
@Chris Not sure you can say there have been plenty and then name something from years ago with no back up. I think Ainsworth is spinning a good story on the budget. It's obvious we aren't flush with cash but we have managed to get better players than the stories suggest we should. If we are really paying good players peanuts it might explain some of the performances. Maybe we should go more down the youth route? Oh we binned that to save money to pay Akinfenwya and others
Would be interesting to see how much Akinfenwa costs compared to Akinde
It may also be fairly depressing
No Righty, not true. We had to close the Academy for financial reasons; we chose to recruit young players with potential and it could be argued that, at least in the short term, this has proved pretty successful. We are still going down the youth route. We still recruit older experienced players to ensure the right balance. Allegedly.
OK, enough of this. Instead of basing what we know on hearsay and speculation, I've spent the last hour delving into the annual accounts of all 24 clubs in League Two in 2014/15, the last set of accounts available. Here is what they say:
:: Thirteen of the 24 clubs are considered too small a company to need to publish detailed accounts. This includes Wycombe.
:: It's worth noting that not all those clubs will actually be small; Plymouth Argyle, for example, is registered as a small company, but its ultimate parent company has a turnover of £41m, including £10m from its leisure division (where the football club resides).
:: Of the eleven clubs that are medium or large companies, nine have published the number of staff employed and their combined salaries. That ranges from Burton Albion's £507k spent on salaries to Portsmouth's £5.1m
:: Of the medium-sized clubs in the league that season that published their accounts in full, Tranmere spend £1.8m on staff, including 49 players & coaches; Morcambe £2.1m on 29 staff members; York City £2.2m on 63; Wimbledon £2.2m on 44; and Carlisle £2.4m on 52.
:: The average salary in League Two, isolating those five clubs, is therefore £44,857.
So, not cut and dried, but it isn't a stretch to say Wycombe's budget is likely to be in the bottom half of the clubs in the league. That's not guaranteed - if Plymouth can pretend they're a small club, so can others - but I think we can take it as read we'll have a budget in the lower half of the table.
During that season we had 27 players on the books at one stage or another. This season we've got eight in the dug-out (can't recall what the numbers were then). So a total of around 35, significantly fewer than all those clubs bar Morcambe. Does that mean our salaries are similar to Morcambe's or more because of higher living costs in Wycombe, or less because we could not rely on the largesse of an owner. Who knows? Not me, not Dev, and given the opacity in the annual accounts of half the clubs in the league, almost certainly not Andrew Howard or Gareth Ainsworth either.
Budgets aside...it is true that on Saturday we had JJ, Harriman, PCH, Akinfenwa, Pierre,Stewart and Blackman on the pitch...Gape has potential to play higher in the leagues and Freeman is decent enough...I would suggest the first six at least can be ranked amongst the better players in this Division and yet they do not seem to be able to deliver with any consistency. I like GA, but in the fifth season it is starting to look like the budget is not entirely the problem...
Would it be right to assume that clubs player totals in accounts include academy players?
If they are then our budget is not comparing like for like. I think Ainsworth is at best spinning a part truth based on this. Our actual first team best eleven budget is very competitive in my view based on the players we have recruited.
@Right_in_the_Middle Yes, includes academy players when they receive a salary, also academy coaches etc.
No doubt DevC will argue that the Burton/Portsmouth comparison is the exception that proves his rule on the correlation between players' salaries and success on the field. Either that or Burton have been blessed with genius managers.
Three final comments from me and then I will leave you to it
1) Eric, None of us know how much Akinfenwa is paid. Unlike the vast majority, arguably all of Lg2, he is a slightly different case. He is a celebrity that guarentees column inches. The commercial guy needs to put a value on that and effectively that gets subtracted from his salary to calculate his football cost. i.e. Hypothetically you could sign Akinfenwa on 60k and more anonymous but identically effective player for £40k. If the marketing guy says Akinfenwa celebrity status is worth £40k a year, logically you would sign Akinfenwa.
2) In response to Aloysius point, I am fairly certain that I have read that clubs have to report their salary costs to the FA and then get an anonymised summary of all clubs in their division back for comparison purposes. The management of WWFC have a pretty fair idea of where they sit.
3) On June 23rd, the country voted on a key decision that will effect all our lives. The process was characterised by particularly leave voters ignoring all evidence that didn't back up their preconception, stating openly that those whose evidence contrasted with their preconception were lying and found a simplistic scapegoat solution to genuine deep lying problems. As is becoming increasingly clear, by adopting a simplistic solution, they have simply made the effect of those deep lying problems even worse. Learn the lesson, Gentlemen.
I hear that Akinfenwa argument quite often from marketing teams I've worked with in the past. Problem with it is that it looks at costs and benefits and not pure cash. If he is on a high wage that is a cash cost and unless the benefit he brings was being paid for in the past it's still a higher cash outlay.
The Brexit paragraph is multi layered irony at its best. To be enshrined to Gasroom legend I hope. Great way to sign off on this post (but I'm guessing you won't)
I don't really judge a player by what the marketing dept think he's worth to be honest, more what he offers on the pitch
I think Ainsworth is a great motivator, and has a canny recruitmant policy.
Me thinks @Hughie is Alan Swann
I see Andy Fairman is now goalkeeper coach at Bolton Wanderers. Given that he was at Everton before us this move probably suggests he wanted a role near home. Best of luck to him at the Trotters.
Thought the Trotters’ home was in Peckham.
Nelson Mandela House.