potential sales of players.

[Hitman34]

What a great response to a sound point. Message Board equivalent of Vordeman versus Riley - I have klonk as Riley as she wins in my book all day long

I'd love to bend klonk over and give her one.

[dsqpr]

true... but because of the parachute payments, promotion to the premier league is only worth about £90m to us (as opposed to say leeds or rotherham or brentford who would get the full £140m benefit), therefore 15% is £13.5m, which is marginally less than the profit we would recognise in the accounts by selling him (£14m). in addition, you'd need to take into account contract amortisation (£1m) and wages (approx £1.5m?) as costs of not selling him, so the end position would be sell (gain of £16.5m) vs keep (gain of £13.5m).

Those are fair points Klonk but it was only intended to be a rough calculation! I was just trying to make the point that keeping Charlie for his last year is worth a significant amount of money to us.

That said, to rebut some of your numbers:
- The parachute payments in years 2-4 (which we already have and would not get again with promotion) are worth around £40m, making promotion worth £100m to us (assuming it is now worth £140m, which is just a guess).
- Contract amortization is an accounting cost not a real cost - we have already paid the £4m whether he stays or goes.
- Wages should be on the PLUS side of the ledger because we will get a forward worth £60k per week (again, just my best guess) and we are reportedly paying him £28k per week (I haven't seen his pay slip!) - all told about £1.5m extra value for us if we keep him. (If he goes then somebody will replace him in our squad and we will certainly have to pay that replacement!)
- There is also the issue that by keeping him we are strengthening our bargaining position in case somebody out there suddenly realizes that they really need a proven Premier League goal scorer.
- And of course the 15% increase in promotion chances is very arbitrary and is the key to the whole calculation - maybe it is 20%, or even 25%.

I'll let you crunch the numbers but I'd be inclined to hold out for at least £20m. If we do that I think we will get it. If we don't hold out for that then we will have been mugged yet again, IMHO. Let's see how he does for England. If he scores one or two, or even just plays well, that will certainly increase what clubs are willing to pay.

[klonk]

I'd love to bend klonk over and give her one.

hits... not that i'm not flattered, but NO!

[klonk]

Those are fair points Klonk but it was only intended to be a rough calculation! I was just trying to make the point that keeping Charlie for his last year is worth a significant amount of money to us.

That said, to rebut some of your numbers:
- The parachute payments in years 2-4 (which we already have and would not get again with promotion) are worth around £40m, making promotion worth £100m to us (assuming it is now worth £140m, which is just a guess).
- Contract amortization is an accounting cost not a real cost - we have already paid the £4m whether he stays or goes.
- Wages should be on the PLUS side of the ledger because we will get a forward worth £60k per week (again, just my best guess) and we are reportedly paying him £28k per week (I haven't seen his pay slip!) - all told about £1.5m extra value for us if we keep him. (If he goes then somebody will replace him in our squad and we will certainly have to pay that replacement!)
- There is also the issue that by keeping him we are strengthening our bargaining position in case somebody out there suddenly realizes that they really need a proven Premier League goal scorer.
- And of course the 15% increase in promotion chances is very arbitrary and is the key to the whole calculation - maybe it is 20%, or even 25%.

I'll let you crunch the numbers but I'd be inclined to hold out for at least £20m. If we do that I think we will get it. If we don't hold out for that then we will have been mugged yet again, IMHO. Let's see how he does for England. If he scores one or two, or even just plays well, that will certainly increase what clubs are willing to pay.

valid points... although it depends on whether you decide according to cash or accruals position.

i'm not sure we would sign a replacement striker on £60k a week, i think (or at least hope) those days are gone.

in truth, i'm not convinced that the finances will be the deciding factor. if charlie indicates that he wants to go, then we have a problem... keep him and his morale will drop (terminating various contracts last week, whilst a popular move with the fans, might not be so popular with some of the players - austin and barton were supposedly good mates). also, i assume he got a payrise when we went up, but his relegation clause will now be kicking in, which is unlikely to overmotivate him to stay.

keep him and there's a real risk that his performances might tail off (i seem to remember defoe was particularly rotten for wet spam when they were relegated about 10 years ago, until he got a move to spuds and then suddenly was scoring for fun).

ironically our best chance of keeping him is that we don't get any serious offers for him... charlie is not really good enough to command first team football at one of the top clubs and is more likely to sign for one of the middling clubs (stoke, villa, newcastle, palace etc), all of whom tend to look for bargain-priced players... we'll be lucky to get offers near £6-8m from them for him.

[Hove Ranger]

valid points... although it depends on whether you decide according to cash or accruals position.

i'm not sure we would sign a replacement striker on £60k a week, i think (or at least hope) those days are gone.

in truth, i'm not convinced that the finances will be the deciding factor. if charlie indicates that he wants to go, then we have a problem... keep him and his morale will drop (terminating various contracts last week, whilst a popular move with the fans, might not be so popular with some of the players - austin and barton were supposedly good mates). also, i assume he got a payrise when we went up, but his relegation clause will now be kicking in, which is unlikely to overmotivate him to stay.

keep him and there's a real risk that his performances might tail off (i seem to remember defoe was particularly rotten for wet spam when they were relegated about 10 years ago, until he got a move to spuds and then suddenly was scoring for fun).

ironically our best chance of keeping him is that we don't get any serious offers for him... charlie is not really good enough to command first team football at one of the top clubs and is more likely to sign for one of the middling clubs (stoke, villa, newcastle, palace etc), all of whom tend to look for bargain-priced players... we'll be lucky to get offers near £6-8m from them for him.

Pretty much spot on Klonk. We cannot force Charlie to stay and just assume he will fire us to promotion. We have no position of strength in the negotiations because we know we lose him for £0 next summer and in the days of financial prudence we need the Austin money to reinvest instead of drawing upon more money from the Bank of TF. Agree the days of signing strikers on £60k a week are things of the past at least in the championship I would hope. But I have my expected fee for Austin slightly higher at £10 mill with a sneaky feeling it may be declared as undisclosed just to avoid any dissenting voices

[stanistheman]

Austin will get us around £10M due to his contract situation.. Anyone expecting much more than that is dreaming...

In that case I would keep him and let him go on a free next season if he still wants to go.
He could be the difference between promotion or staying down. Promotion would be worth Upto 15 times the 10m fee.

[dsqpr]

In that case I would keep him and let him go on a free next season if he still wants to go.
He could be the difference between promotion or staying down. Promotion would be worth Upto 15 times the 10m fee.

That is exactly my point stan - it IS possible to put a value on keeping Charlie next season and although you need to make assumptions to come up with it, I personally believe it is a fair bit higher than £10m.

Ironically, the better we are next season, the greater Charlie's value would be to us. If we are anywhere close to the top 6 then the 10 extra goals that Charlie might get over whomever replaces him could get us into the playoffs and a 25% chance at going up. If we are in the top 6 his goals could get us into the top 2 and a 100% chance of going up. If we are lower mid-table without him, those extra 10 goals wouldn't help us to get promoted. So, Charlie's value will depend to a large degree on whether we can hang onto the likes of Phillips (I'm hopeful), Fer (not hopeful) and Greeno (seems to be a done deal).

To klonk's latest points, I will say that everything I have heard from Charlie has indicated that he is a true professional and will give us 100% next season if he stays. Of course it is in his best interests to do that anyway but as you have pointed out, in the past that has not stopped some sulky unprofessionals from not trying. My personal opinion on what we should do seems to be what we actually are going to do: keep Charlie unless we get an offer that meets our valuation. And I am very happy to see that the club are not setting that valuation at the bargain basement levels that even some of our fans seem to think appropriate!

I think we agree that it will take a serious offer to prise him away from us - our only difference perhaps being what number constitutes a serious offer.

As for £60k a week strikers - I think we should be prepared to offer Charlie that as he is worth it. I agree that we wouldn't pay any newcomers anywhere near that - they will be Championship strikers and it seems that we have finally realized that we need to pay them accordingly.