Trialists

As I just said on another thread you can't just pay whatever they ask. You can spend 60% of turnover on wages (excluding any player under 21 who has homegrown status) so unless the free agents are Home Grown and under 21 you are limited by that. Failing it sees a fine handed out and a transfer embargo in place until the EFL feel the club has got its finances back in line. If these free agents cared just about playing you could no doubt bring a bunch in but they are still free agents because they don't just care about playing, they are motivated by money so are pricing themselves out. The only way to have no issue with signing them would be for Rupp to gift the club money but to add £10k a week to the wage budget needs a gift of £1mill, and I mean a gift. It has to be a gift not an investment to be allowed to count in the turnover figure

 

We were having this discussion in the shoutbox on Saturday and its not really the case. The squad looks larger because you don't have an u23 squad but the majority of these are excluded from the calculation as they are u21 and have homegrown status (Trained at a club in England for 3 years between the ages of 15 and 21). If the u23 was added back right now and players moved accordingly the first team squad would be around the norm. And most of the wage budget comes from these first-team players who account for around £55k a week of the total player wage spend of around £65k

To put it in context a club official stated in the press a couple of years back that the clubs turnover ranges from £4.5million to £7mill a year (It obviously fluctuates as football income especially at this level is impacted greatly by performance, especially cup runs and transfer fees received). £4.5mill gives a wage budget of £51k a week and £7million gives a budget of £80k a week. If you use the middle figure of £5.75mill that gives you £66k a week.

The total wage bill is also towards the top of the league and unlike some clubs is fairly evenly spread amongst the 'true first team' unlike some teams who have thrown money at a couple of key players and then built a squad of cheap but solid players around them. If you go down two divisions and look at Salford they are the perfect example, while the Vanarama has no FFP rules Salford as a club who expects to be in the EFL soon is working to the League 2 regulations of 55% of revenue on wages. They have given a couple of players what are really League 1 wages such as Rooney but they have a really small squad and not exactly outstanding on paper. If they lose their key players for long periods they potentially have major issues. In theory, your squad should be able to handle injuries to key players, the problem is as we discussed again in the Shoutbox is the squad just lacks Cohesion largely due to not having a manager when signings were made so the players haven't suited how either Collins and now Hopkin would want to play.

@JonButterfield said for example "I really think balance is everything @SimonW, had a manager signed a couple of players like Scannell AND Payne, I doubt he'd have then brought in pseudo strikers like Seedorf and Ball to complement physically weak players like Miller and Doyle."

And that's the thing, at the very least there is a lack of players who can link all those players together if not some of them just being a waste of a squad place as even with the right link players they wouldn't get minutes. Its the problem you have when the manager comes in after the players are brought in because unless you absolutely knew who you were going after like Man City had with Pep how do you build a squad to compliment an unknown style (and even with Pep he has binned off most of the players bought with him in mind and brought in his own as they weren't exactly what he wants)