The Red Knight wrote:Christies Child wrote:Insider info?
Rather than moaning about it and saying it isn't fair you should be asking yourself why the likes of Dagenham are able to assemble squads that are able to compete in this League and comply with the salary cap yet we go so far over the cap that even when we get rid of 3 players we can't come out of it.
Daggers have a lot more players close to hand.
'Wine', the club understands the spirit of the rules and agrees with the 'principle'. No-one wants to see clubs spend beyond their means and go under.
The 'unfairness' is that the rule hasn't been developed properly and has some glaring anomalies that are penalising us.
We overspent because we didn't predict the size of the drop in gates and didn't get any decent cup runs (you can never bank on cups and the club didn't - but a good cup run would have mitigated against the attendance drop, that's why it's mentioned).
Now we are facing negotiations with a League that is good at making rules and quoting them - but isn't good at making decisions that, though they technically may mean finding leeway within the rules, are RIGHT ones to make.
So they tell us what items of our overall budget -within the rules they can point to - we can and can't include in the salary calculations. That's where the problem is.
They are happy to let other clubs run up massive - multi-million pound - debts (not included in the calculations) but, just because they get a thousand more on their gates (included), they can have a much bigger player budget than us.
We have no debt - and have money in the bank, the club's money which isn't owed to anyone - but we aren't being allowed to invest that money in strengthening our squad.
The club WILL work within the rules but it is right to push the League to look at the points we are making about a very well-run club being penalised by these rules. They have only recently been drawn up - a situation like ours may not have been envisaged.
But they should be reviewed so as not to penalise clubs like us and, at the same time, favour others who run things far less prudently but get away with it.
Is the glass half full or half empty? Mmmm? hard to say - but it does look like there's room for more beer!