Ismaila Sarr

Do we need to balance the books now, though? We’ve not taken an immediate hit on income, that will come in a years time. Sure, we need to make some cutbacks but we don’t really have to worry about it until next year, at the point our income actually drops quite significantly.

 

I don't know enough about the clubs finances to know when we'll feel the pinch to be honest, but may not be in line with when parachute payments drop depending on how they're structured. I guess it will also be a judgement on how much risk the owners are prepared to take but I for one would prefer they be more prudent with the clubs future than gamble it away like the dozen or so clubs that have got into real trouble in the past.

 

The s*n reporting that we are offering Sarr around for £40m.

https://www.thesun.co.uk/sport/football/12350956/watford-ismaila-sarr-40m-crystal-palace/

However, they go on to say we only want £15m for Deulofeu which destroys all credibility for me.

 

That's your view.

I disagree.

There's other players to be sold before Sarr goes for £30m.

Just can't see Gino going for that.

 

£40m for Sarr, fair cop, gotta be done with the financial reality of our situation.
But like you say, £15m for Deulofeu? Is that assuming his knee never recovers? £30m if he comes with two of them.

 

Is Sarr on big wages, I don't know that he is relatively speaking? Does anyone know what he is earning?

 

I think the issue is that Covid will have hit a number of clubs financially, and that will affect the price we get. There will be exceptions, if Man City suddenly become interested the price will rocket. But many clubs will be looking for bargains, and won’t want to pay £50m. If Delefeou is on £85k a week that will impact on the fee, along with the fact that he is coming back from injury. I am sure the club will do everything they can to get the best price, but are selling at a bad time.

 

I think that's far more likely to be the fee than the £30m I've seen banded around on here recently. He's must be a very high earner, will have zero desire to play in the Championship and is recovering from a serious injury. I wouldn't be surprised if he had a relegation clause in his contract too setting he asking price lower than we would like, although I suppose his agent would have leaked that by now if true.

 

Which is one of the reasons we should not sell, the other is that selling our best assets will not help our quest to bounce back up to the PL. Get rid of the deadwood yes, but hold on to those who can help us to bounce back.

The time to sell would be at the end of next season when we have gained promotion if any players really want to leave, but hopefully most of them will want to stay. Having said that, there will be a fair few who will have done a great job in the Championship, but who's days as a PL player are over, the likes of Deeney, Cleverly etc.

 

It’s the sun, there was no credibility to start with

 

Yes i am not sure football works that way any more especially post Covid. Players wont want to spend a season at least in the Championship, revenues will be down and the transfer market deflated. We will need to get wages down and soon, rather than gambling on a return to the Prem in 12 months time

 

I believe it would be less of a gamble with Sarr in the team. But if he goes he goes. Not the end of the world. Everybody is replaceable. You also have the scenario that he wants to stay, slim yes but not impossible.

 

Always remember that a year to a footballer, who is a young man, seems a long time and the prospect of that period in the Championship, even ending in a glorious promotion, is not an enticing one.
I expect richer clubs to try and exploit the situation of poorer ones by trying to the the players they want at lower than normal prices.

 

Whilst there will be an element of having to cut our cloth accordingly, wasn’t there an article recently that said we’ve taken out a bridging loan with Barclays to mitigate some of the losses in revenue and also borrow against the first set of parachute payment?

That loan, along with the mandatory wage cuts, you’d think softens the blow somewhat of relegation?

I really don’t think there will have to be a fire-sale.
I suspect there will be players that the club view as having naturally run their course with us - Doucoure, Pereyra, Deeney..and they will be the players used to mitigate any further financial impact.
There will be players that will want to play at a higher level as well obviously but I don’t think Watford will be doing them favours and allowing them to go for anything less than market value - and we certainly won’t be touting them around like The S*n claims.

Obviously money talks. But Sarr is the one player I really think the club will play hardball with. He will be seen as the player the club could financially secure themselves very well with in 12-24 months time - I just don’t see him going permanently unless it’s for a decent profit and to a club he can’t say no to.

 

We won't sell Sarr at a loss, anyone thinking that will happen (or that we should feel pressured to do so) is an idiot frankly

 

Agreed, but didn’t we buy Sarr for £30m. If so £40m does represent a profit, but clearly not as much as we would like. I am wondering whether part of the reason, we want to raise cash to re-invest in some players and may also be able to pickup some bargains.

 

I think we'd very likely sell for £40m + some sell on clauses - assuming the player also wanted to leave

I was more responding to people who bizarrely think we should be obligated to simply break even or, even more laughably, sell at a loss just because we got relegated

 

There is talk of a salary cap coming in anyway, which could really **** as with regards to keeping any of our best players:

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp....alary-cap-unlawful-and-unenforceable-says-pfa

Interesting that they’re looking at introducing it now, with a cap of £18m for the championship just as Leeds got promoted with a wage bill of £50m

 

Well we have enough deadwood that would I believe cover or come close to that 40m equivalent stated.
Currently he hasn't stated that he wants to go unlike some players. Get them out first and foremost.
I would even try and get a compatriot of Sarr's in just to make him more comfortable, as long as he brings value to the team. We were looking at Diatta of Club Brugge but relegation has probably fooked that up.

 

Can't see how they could possibly enforce something like that. It will completely devalue the EFL.

 

Our income will drop by approx 50% this season so our costs need to too unless we want to grow our debts even higher.
If he wants to go and play in the top tier again, which he alomost certainly will, he will go and we will just have to get what we can for him. No point in keeping an unhappy and depreciating asset.

 

I can only assume if they did it, then (as a relegated club) you’d have a few years to get yourself within the cap.

Even then it would be very problematic, most teams would want to gamble on going back up so wouldn’t strip their squad right away, so you’d still have issues trying to get yourself under the cap.

It would also massively play into the bigger clubs hands, which we don’t need more of. Imagine we had no choice but to bring our wage bill down to £18m, we’d be forced to sell players like Sarr whether we wanted to or not which would lead to stupidly low bids.

Without a cap in the PL it would also lead to even less loyalty to lower league clubs when a bigger club game calling.

 

Well the pointless tabloids are now saying Liverpool are interested in David Brooks at 35m. He's only just come back from a majorly long layoff. So what would the so called tabloids value Sarr at?

 

A salary cap only works with revenue sharing across all major sources of income. In other words, tickets, merchandise, Television and advertising. You also would have to rope in agents fees otherwise you'd have back door payments to players from agents. In addition, it would have to extend across the whole EU economic zone, or england would be killing itself.

In short, it's utter nonsense at this point.

 

Tbf 10m of that valuation probably comes from him being homegrown.

 

I would imagine that if this salary cap comes in it will probably only apply to new contracts.

Therefore any player who is already on a higher value PL contract who's team gets relegated whilst he is still on that contract would only have to drop below the cap once that existing contract runs out. Unless of course there is some sort of relegation clause written into the said contract, then he would obviously drop to whatever the clause says, which of course at present might still be above the EPL cap.

Eventually, there will probably be an automatic clause written into all PL players contracts that if they drop down to the EPL there salary will automatically drop to the maximum allowed under the EPL cap.

Which will of course mean that the vast majority of any players relegated from the PL will want to leave, however the team they play for SHOULD not be forced to sell them below market value, and those teams should be able to hold those players to their contracts.

Otherwise this could lead to an unfair advantage for the remaining and new PL teams, making it a buyers market and creating an elite almost cartel type league.

 

Does he depreciate massively if he has one season in the Championship and scores say 15+ goals to get is back up? He seems quite a reserved/shy lad and from what we have heard from his agent, they have a fairly sensible outlook. I have no doubt that agent will be doing his best for his client to get him top tier football - but they don’t seem the type to properly kick off either.

Saying ‘we will just have to get what we can for him’ doesn’t really fit in with how I see it. What if he wants to leave but no one offers more than £10m?

 

I sense that the sort of flawed thinking that convinced some people that Brexit is a good idea is at play - just take a breath and think then you will understand

The parachute money does not cover even half the wage bill and we start the year owing 70m+ to others

If we are to avoid a Bolton style calamity or a fire sale then we must take an axe to the cost base as the Pozzo family cannot absorb the problem short term like maybe Abramovich would. I read that on the one hand some contracts have relegation clauses but in others that some of the high earners do not. The value of GD/Sarr/Doucs will be less next year when we get about half the parachute money we get this.

It is not about gambling on promotion it is about managing financial risk - About 6-8 of the high earners have to go

 

I think this is the major point. Ensuring the club is on a financially sound footing is more important than whether we get the highest potential return right now.

 

Agreed - if I was Sarr (ie leaving our prejudices aside) i would prefer a season in the Prem playing for palace than a season in the championship getting kicked up in the air by wycombe and rotherham

 

But does it do his career good? We have seen how a club like Palace have held Zaha’s career back by refusing to lower their price etc - it may well be that he has a better chance of a big move by staying with us a bit longer, if that makes sense. Clubs like ourselves and Palace are stepping stones for the top - but you still have to pick the stepping stones wisely.

 

You can only accuse others of flawed thinking when you know the exact nature of the financial outlook at the club. We know about one loan taken out, there could be more...we don’t know who has wage cuts written into their deals, we don’t know what the players are paid.

Obviously some players will go. But I suspect we are on a sound enough footing to make sure that those who go, will do so largely on our terms.

 

I hope you are right
But we know the wage bill is over 100m and the parachute about 50 in the first year
We know that a £75m loan was obtained against future TV moneyand can therefore assume that other cash resources were low
I agree we do not have a full understanding
We can i suspect be sure that matchday money will be negligible for a while
So unless we have got 50% relegation clauses we have a problem
Betting the club on promotion at the first attempt feels wrong to me