Potential Buyers for Surplus Players....

[CitizenYank]

I have read some recent articles in the past few days regarding the hard line City
is taking with football clubs, who in last few years have asked for discounts on
transfers, or financial assistance taking on our surplus players.

I don't have the exact data to back me up, but I see no outstanding reason why City
should ask for anything but the assigned value on these players as almost all
are proven commodities at the highest professional levels.

A player such as Robinho is for me, an aberration because of his extravagant
contract and consistent decline in Premier League play.

Basically the situation as I see it: City wants cold hard cash to fund their
January acquisitions in order to balance the books without a large injection
of ownership's cash. This is as good a time as any for City to begin preparing
for the UEFA fair play standards rather than the 'golden goose' other clubs
feel they can exploit!

Thoughts??

[CityFanFromRome]

True, but at the same time there's not a lot of clubs who can afford our surplus players, so if we stay too hard we might end having to keep them because no club can buy them at the price we ask. And so we don't get a penny and get even in more trouble with the new UEFA rules because of course we won't let this stop us from acquiring new players we feel we need.

[Crossie]

In the case of the very high earners not getting games,

Bridge,
Given
RSC
Jo
SWP
Adebayor.

I would be tempted to cut our losses. The money saved on wages would make it worthwhile. I imagine those guys pull in around 500,000 a week, meaning we'd be saving 2 million a month.

The owners wanted quick success, and the players listed above are all another managers buys. I would let them go as quickly as possible, learn the lessons, take a hit then dont let it happen again on such a big scale.

We will soon learn the mentality of players when they would rather sit in our reserves and pick up 80k a week, than move to a lesser club on half the money but actually play 38 league games a season. If we were one of those players, i'm pretty sure we would all want to be out on the pitch doing our jobs as we are paid to do. Not fucking about at the Regional Athletics stadium to crowds of 500 ppl.

[Niall Quinns Discopants]

The big problem are the atronomical wages no one is going to match. Take RSC for example, we'd get less for him than we'd have to pay to him if he didn't ask for transfer himself.

One thing people don't seem to know but if player doesn't hand in written transfer request, even if he himself says he wants to go and all that, we are obliged to pay the player remainder of his contract if we sell him.

[Crossie]

Really? I didnt know that.

I thought he was contracted to us, only while he was playing for us?

Are we still paying Robbie Fowlers wages?!

[Niall Quinns Discopants]

Really? I didnt know that.

I thought he was contracted to us, only while he was playing for us?

Are we will paying Robbie Fowlers wages?!

We were paying to Robbie Fowler for years!

I think the wya it usually goes is that once we get the transfer fee, we pay remainder of the contract to the player.

[john@staustell]

Really? I didnt know that.

I thought he was contracted to us, only while he was playing for us?

Are we still paying Robbie Fowlers wages?!

No, Leeds are!

[CityFanFromRome]

One thing people don't seem to know but if player doesn't hand in written transfer request, even if he himself says he wants to go and all that, we are obliged to pay the player remainder of his contract if we sell him.

This comes completely new to me!!! You sure of that Antii? I can't understand why it would be this way...

[Dubciteh]

One thing people don't seem to know but if player doesn't hand in written transfer request, even if he himself says he wants to go and all that, we are obliged to pay the player remainder of his contract if we sell him.

This comes completely new to me!!! You sure of that Antii? I can't understand why it would be this way...

Im pretty sure hes spot on, you dont ask for a transfer your contract gets paid up unless you come to some sort of mutual agreement which is more common afaik.

[Dameerto]

It's why *cough, cough* 'some clubs' don't take too kindly to their players using a threat of retirement as a negotiating tactic.

[saulman]

One thing people don't seem to know but if player doesn't hand in written transfer request, even if he himself says he wants to go and all that, we are obliged to pay the player remainder of his contract if we sell him.

This comes completely new to me!!! You sure of that Antii? I can't understand why it would be this way...

Im pretty sure hes spot on, you dont ask for a transfer your contract gets paid up unless you come to some sort of mutual agreement which is more common afaik.

I'm not sure about this, it doesn;t make any sense. I know there's a loyalty bonus issue, where if we sell a player and he's not asked for a transfer then there's a pre-agreed figure that's payed to the player. This came to light when we offloaded Barton to Newcastle and he demanded his loyalty bonus, despite his breach of contract.

Also, if this were the case, why was Danny Mills happy to sit in our reserves to 20+ years when he could quite happily have walked off with our millions in his arse pocket and played at a level that suited him?

[Wonderwall]

One thing people don't seem to know but if player doesn't hand in written transfer request, even if he himself says he wants to go and all that, we are obliged to pay the player remainder of his contract if we sell him.

Now thats not completely true, it depends on the length of the contract. It is usually around the 12 months mark that the club has to pay as the player did not instigate the transfer in writing.

[Mikhail Chigorin]

I have read some recent articles in the past few days regarding the hard line City
is taking with football clubs, who in last few years have asked for discounts on
transfers, or financial assistance taking on our surplus players.

I don't have the exact data to back me up, but I see no outstanding reason why City
should ask for anything but the assigned value on these players as almost all
are proven commodities at the highest professional levels.

A player such as Robinho is for me, an aberration because of his extravagant
contract and consistent decline in Premier League play.

Basically the situation as I see it: City wants cold hard cash to fund their
January acquisitions in order to balance the books without a large injection
of ownership's cash. This is as good a time as any for City to begin preparing
for the UEFA fair play standards rather than the 'golden goose' other clubs
feel they can exploit!

Thoughts??

We might well have to be quite pragmatic over what we ask for players who we are wanting to off-load.

On the one hand, some will only command a fee that is less than the cost of a bag of peanuts, just so we can cut our losses and get shut (RSC, Bridge etc).
Some could be released for small fees because of their fast reducing asset values and what they've given to the club (SWP, Bellamy ?? etc).
For others, however, in order to recoup a reasonable balance, we might have to bite the bullet and sell to a 'competitor' outfit. I would imagine that if Given is a definite leaver this January, we could start a bidding war at around £15million or so, as clubs such as Arsenal, Spurs (and even The Scummers) are desperate for a decent keeper. Who knows, in this way we might conceivably raise £20million + for the Irishman.
In the case of Adebayor and (in the summer ??) Tevez, it might suit us to negotiate with clubs such as Real, Barca etc and do a player exchange deal rather than an outright sale/purchase agreement.

I still find it frustrating however, that when Spews was splashing the cash and paying over the odds for players (Lescott, RSC etc), he quite glibly smoothed it all away by claiming there was a 'City Premium' which had to be stumped up, but that now we're wanting to sell, this supposed City Premium doesn't necessarily work in reverse.

[Ted Hughes]

Their actual value decreases each year of their contracts of course, so the players available for transfer now will have a much lower value in the books compared to when we signed them. I should imagine Bridge & SWP's book value now will be very low indeed.

The actual fee we got for Robinho won't have been that much below his value I wouldn't have thought, so even if some of the players do move on for what now seems a lot less than their value, it may not actually be the case.

[Tokyo Blue]

What date does the UEFA "Fair Play" (for the already rich) come in? I suspect there might be a few current City players paid to fuck off the day before. As it stands now the club can afford the financial damage and none of them will really be good enough to bite us in the arse in the future. If I were running a club interested in a City fringe player and not relegation-threatened, I'd be biding my time.

[Im_Spartacus]

What date does the UEFA "Fair Play" (for the already rich) come in? I suspect there might be a few current City players paid to fuck off the day before. As it stands now the club can afford the financial damage and none of them will really be good enough to bite us in the arse in the future. If I were running a club interested in a City fringe player and not relegation-threatened, I'd be biding my time.

Like I posted on another thread, if I were city i'd be biding my time.

Loans with a view to a permanent transfer in the summer is the way I would go. The rules come in from 1st July I believe, so why would we sell now when realistically we could get £25m incoming cash to balance out any signing needed in the summer when that purchase will count against us.

Another example if Liverpool wanted to sell Torres it would make sense to only sell him after July 1st so they can use that money through the summer transfer window to fund replacements without showing a huge loss. Therefore Liverpool will be spending a fair bit of the owners' money in this window, and the proceeds of any Torres sale would be used to fund the summer's acquisitions and stay within the FFP rules.