Views from the Sieve

The club have been very busy with new player contracts this week, I can only think we have Saido Khan and Kenny Clark still to sign if they are happy with the terms. We may even see one of two new additions to the squad after that.

Is it sensible to hand out 3 year contracts at this level, regardless of how good the player is?

I suppose the management staff working closely with him, believe his fitness levels and influence in games and on other players having made him captain, justify giving him a further two years contract.

Giving out contracts of that length at this level is madness.

We will only be sure if the decision is spot on in the future ,but it does also show a commitment and ambition by the current owners in taking the club forward.

It is a little worrying. We've seen so many times clubs at this level run out of funding and have to cut costs rapidly. You can't do that if you have long term contracted players.

I'd like to think that players of the ability of Balanta and Justham would be easy to offload in that worst case scenario though, as they are top drawer. I suppose it depends on their form at the time though.

I hope we have some kind of insurance that would cover us if anything long term happened to those players. A club like us can't afford to carry contracts of non playing players.

What about today's announcement Mark . Wage cap coming in from next year and the proposal for step 1 is a cap of 900k a year. You would imagine that the four players we have resigned will take out a third of that add in Mccullum and you heading for at least half of it.
Interested in views on this because we have to attract players to a Club on the ourtkirts of one of the most expensive Citys in the World and do it with a pathetic proposed limit of 900k

Just to do the maths a squad of 23 works out an average of just over 39k a year.

If that proposal is adopted that in the very least it offers a massive advantage to Northern based teams but we are almost certain going to have to offload a few of the high earners you would have thought

I'd be surprised if the proposals make it out of the blocks. The PFA challenged the cap in the football league and won.

It is quite sad that even when governing bodies or clubs vote to try to stem the unsustainable spending in football, that someone always finds a way to get it shelved. Too many vested interests. As usual it will be the fans left to pick up the pieces when unsustainable spending leaves a club on its arse.

Good posts guys - will be interesting to see if those proposals get anywhere

Agree in principle Mark but we will be trying to attract the top of the proffession for this level for an average of 40k a year on the outskirts of London. The current average wage in London is 86k a year.

Think there should be Regional variations at the least as if not you will then have a massive gulf between Step 1 and the EFL in no time .