Ted Hughes wrote:We had to pay over the odds wages in order to persuade these players to sign for City because we weren't a fashionable club to sign for at the time. They, quite rightly, don't see why they should take a cut in wages, when they have been ready & willing to play for the club & have been discarded.
The clubs who are interested in them do not pay wages of that level & the players involved are not good enough to merit those clubs breaking their pay structure, so either City, or the player, has to sacrifice money in order for them to move on.
That's why we can't shift them.
My beloved, extremely respected Ted,
the third reason why I love You so much (besides Your very remarkable understanding of football and Your genuine vision for a romantic way to preserve its original beauty and charme) is the amazing way You, sometimes, make and stand by Your points.
while the first sentence preamble is a no brainer, I am amazed by the way You
pretend not to see that one of the differences which distinguishes a global top club from a just nationwide midtable one is the ability to deal with and sort out those kind of issues.
the likes of AC Milan, fucking Juventus, fucking Rags, fucking Bayern, RM and Barca have been quite profitably offloaded their highly paid scraps (become redundant either by age or changing of playing style/management) for ages to the so called lesser clubs, sometimes satellite clubs. In a way, that is what defines the power and influence of a club and - most of all - what defines the job itself of a sporting director and his/her ability to earn a top salary.
I can concede that in the very last years the influence of finance on football has peaked to levels that even those football aristocrats struggle to cope with, but yet again You don't need to pay a senior director salary to have a bloke only capable to buy players (when he succeed to) at twice the market value and sell them at one fifth of the market value,contributing to pay the remainder of their inflated wages when they become redundant.
every Mancio4ever or Beefy of this world can do that for a normal employee wage and, more seriously, I am convinced that a Ted Hughes will certainly do better than what MCFC is getting from is amateur tv pundit, even providing that said Ted Hughes don't features the necessarily influence on the market that an employer would presume when hiring a sporting director.
and to make the point even stronger, I'd like to draw Your attention to the fact that the Italian managers, even the most senior and established ones, are well used to share decisions on market strategies with the Club's Owners and even with sporting directors: it lasts in the tradidion of Italian football at club level: so that, if Mancini has felt the need to speak out his discontent for 2 consecutive seasons, You can rest assured that it is an issue: otherwise - different from the use of British and north European managers, he will be more than happy to have an effective sporting director who acheive the targets given, and previously agreed with Owner and Chairman: targets which can be reasonably presumed to consist in a couple of options for each role to be covered.
I will never get tired of calling after that issue and I am pretty sure that, as happened for other previous matters, in a year or two, there will be plenty of voices pointing out that issue.
by Piccsnumberoneblue » Wed Aug 01, 2012 9:15 am 
