Pre- and early season signings | Vital Football

Pre- and early season signings

Straightbat

Vital Reserves Team
Is it my imagination or have we had particularly rich pickings this year compared to previous years, both in terms of a larger number of signings and their quality? If so, which of the following are the main reasons do you think?

1. PS has been much more generous than usual. If so, why is this? Confidence in SE? A new lease of ambitious optimism? An investor in his sights to sustain life in the Championship and beyond? Fewer debts and liabilities compared to previous years? Pure coincidence that lots of contracts were up at once (were they?)?

2. SE is a skilled operator - persuasive towards players, persuasve towards PS, good contacts in the game, good management of scouting and excellent judge of potential?

3. Difficult times made it much harder for clubs to outbid us, levelling the playing field, while our finances had been managed prudently?
 
We have a new sponsor - Bauvill - they have refurbed the player’s entrance and changing rooms. Plus designed a new video analysis room and refurbed the players’ lounge.


A director of theirs, Damien South, is now listed as an associate director of Gills, he must be the mystery person seen sitting with Scally at matches:

https://www.gillinghamfootballclub.com/club/whos-who/

I guess it’s possible they’ve invested money, but I think at present all the above works were carried out for free in return for sponsoring the club and advertising on iFollow etc.
 
Is it my imagination or have we had particularly rich pickings this year compared to previous years, both in terms of a larger number of signings and their quality? If so, which of the following are the main reasons do you think?

1. PS has been much more generous than usual. If so, why is this? Confidence in SE? A new lease of ambitious optimism? An investor in his sights to sustain life in the Championship and beyond? Fewer debts and liabilities compared to previous years? Pure coincidence that lots of contracts were up at once (were they?)?

2. SE is a skilled operator - persuasive towards players, persuasve towards PS, good contacts in the game, good management of scouting and excellent judge of potential?

3. Difficult times made it much harder for clubs to outbid us, levelling the playing field, while our finances had been managed prudently?

I would say it's maybe a mix of 2 and 3. However, i do think it's too early to count our chickens and announce our players to be quality. They have played some good games so far, lets wait and see how they get on over the course of the season.

I think a lot of people are saying we'd never sign players like this under previous managers, but i remember signing the young Chelsea midfielder (houghton?) and of course we signed Ogilvie well before SE was here and a few others also - unfortunately some were good, and some just didnt meet their touted potential. I do think he's very persuasive though. That's one common factor i heard in all the player interviews when they signed - the player going out of his way to express how convincing/nice SE was.
 
I think there’s an element of all 3 of your points Straightbat.

SE certainly seems very skilled in his transfer and loan dealings. And he does also appear to sell GFC very well to his targets. In previous years we have pulled the odd gem out of the transfer hat. But the last 2 seasons under SE we seem to have a better level of consistency in picking out quality targets and loans. There haven’t been too many complete duds, even the ones that haven’t excelled certainly appeared decent when we got them. They did to me anyway.

As for the investment. I’m wondering if people at the club (mainly PS) have realised that with the levelling of the salary cap this year, there is a definite opportunity to assemble a decent squad to challenge the usual big budget clubs.

I personally think that if the likes of Sunderland, Charlton, Pompey, Hull etc were allowed to spend what they wanted on wages, then maybe Dempsey, Graham and Samuel would have ended up at those clubs rather than us. We are definitely more competitive in the market.

It would also be nice to think we have got some form of investment to help GFC, even if it’s not a mega big deal.

Whether we have actually increased our wage budget from last season? No idea.
 
Points 2&3 in my opinion.
SE has, via contacts managed to get in six young loan players for virtually no outlay when compared to normal football contracts.
That leaves more available for experienced players.
The cap has certainly made a difference although Scally did say our budget is about a million less than the maximum allowed.

I noticed that Peterborough have had to release George Boyd because they have maxed out their player’s budget.

The players signed so far are generally capable of multi positions which is what SE said from the beginning.
Small squad, no passengers. Money in the budget.
If we are serious promotion candidates come the next transfer window, there is still money available.
Good management in my opinion.
There’s no substitute for experience.
 
...no passengers...

That is the biggest difference in last 2 seasons. We don’t have many ‘squad players’. Everyone is a first team player and if they’re not, they’re loaned out or released.

For that reason, I think that our budget isn’t dissimilar to previous recent seasons.
 
I think to be fair if a Manager (Edinburgh & BFSE) have shown potential / get results Scally has backed them. Maybe the appointments of Lovell and Pennock were out of loyalty / cost savings but neither cut it. Although Lovell got results it wasn’t entertaining in any shape or form.
 
At home, it's true that we weren't entertaining under Lovell. Away from home, though, I thought we often played some very good football at times.
Agreed although I only attended one away game during his reign (which we lost) and everything else was at home. Loved Lovell as a player and would have loved him to succeed but the dross I saw most weeks just didn’t please me. Don’t get me wrong BFSE uses similar tactics quite often like Saturday and I don’t enjoy watching back to the wall for 30 minutes but he gets results and it’s all forgotten when the final whistle blows as 3 points are in the bag
 
Agreed although I only attended one away game during his reign (which we lost) and everything else was at home. Loved Lovell as a player and would have loved him to succeed but the dross I saw most weeks just didn’t please me. Don’t get me wrong BFSE uses similar tactics quite often like Saturday and I don’t enjoy watching back to the wall for 30 minutes but he gets results and it’s all forgotten when the final whistle blows as 3 points are in the bag

Yes, as an exile I had the advantage of watching all matches, home and away, via iFollow. Can imagine for those fans who only saw us play at home and rarely or never went to away games it must've been very frustrating.
 
Let's not turn this into a Lovell bashing thread. Some of the football when he first took over with the GOF was exciting (ok we had Dack) it was only when he got the job full time he seemed to get cautious. Some of the football under Evans isn't great but people don't notice when we get results.
Anyway back to the question, I think it's a combination of all 3. Lots of clubs have prem players on loan but it's the quality of players we have actually signed such as Graham, Samuel and Dempsey I have been most impressed with
 
Lots of clubs have prem players on loan but it's the quality of players we have actually signed such as Graham, Samuel and Dempsey I have been most impressed with


Fully agree. Very lucky to have what appears to be 3 Championship standard players there. Plus Ogilvie as well. And I think SE must be persuasive in outlining how good and competitive he expects us to be. Or these players would join other L1 teams expected to be near the top.

But as Shotty said above, the fact we have got in 6 top quality young loanees on (probably) very little wage outlay by ourselves, has left the budget there to sign these players.

On the assumption that our wage bill so far is similar to last seasons, I think we have overall a lot better quality 18 for the money.
 
We have a new sponsor - Bauvill - they have refurbed the player’s entrance and changing rooms. Plus designed a new video analysis room and refurbed the players’ lounge.


A director of theirs, Damien South, is now listed as an associate director of Gills, he must be the mystery person seen sitting with Scally at matches:

https://www.gillinghamfootballclub.com/club/whos-who/

I guess it’s possible they’ve invested money, but I think at present all the above works were carried out for free in return for sponsoring the club and advertising on iFollow etc.
D South putting the money in at Chatham
 
Fully agree. Very lucky to have what appears to be 3 Championship standard players there. Plus Ogilvie as well. And I think SE must be persuasive in outlining how good and competitive he expects us to be. Or these players would join other L1 teams expected to be near the top.

But as Shotty said above, the fact we have got in 6 top quality young loanees on (probably) very little wage outlay by ourselves, has left the budget there to sign these players.

On the assumption that our wage bill so far is similar to last seasons, I think we have overall a lot better quality 18 for the money.

From what I recall OSK, there are many options when loaning players.
At the highest tier, there may be a loan fee plus the receiving club picks up the wage or a portion of it.
At our level, particularly with very young players, the home club will pick up the majority or all of the wage, with development being the over riding issue.
We are probably contributing to the loan players wage but not by too much.
I wouldn’t be surprised if all six are only costing us about three grand a week.
That’s about £160k for the season out of a players budget of £1.6 million.
As I said, relative peanuts for the return.
 
From what I recall OSK, there are many options when loaning players.
At the highest tier, there may be a loan fee plus the receiving club picks up the wage or a portion of it.
At our level, particularly with very young players, the home club will pick up the majority or all of the wage, with development being the over riding issue.
We are probably contributing to the loan players wage but not by too much.
I wouldn’t be surprised if all six are only costing us about three grand a week.
That’s about £160k for the season out of a players budget of £1.6 million.
As I said, relative peanuts for the return.
And then spend the rest of the budget on some quality players to fill up the squad, as we seem to have done. Unfortunately, it leaves us a bit fooked if we can't find similarly cheap options on loan next year.
 
And then spend the rest of the budget on some quality players to fill up the squad, as we seem to have done. Unfortunately, it leaves us a bit fooked if we can't find similarly cheap options on loan next year.
Shows how important it is to have a manger with good contacts who can convince these players to come with us paying very little for their services.
 
We have a new sponsor - Bauvill - they have refurbed the player’s entrance and changing rooms. Plus designed a new video analysis room and refurbed the players’ lounge.


A director of theirs, Damien South, is now listed as an associate director of Gills, he must be the mystery person seen sitting with Scally at matches:

https://www.gillinghamfootballclub.com/club/whos-who/

I guess it’s possible they’ve invested money, but I think at present all the above works were carried out for free in return for sponsoring the club and advertising on iFollow etc.

I notice another of our directors is Angel Scally - the mind boggles