Playing budgets next season?

[Indian Dan]

Do you mean Notts County excepted?

You could potentially chuck Swindon/Northampton in the top seven of budgets at a guess, I imagine not much is in it.

Indian Dan, did you ever tell us good folk why you thought the £5m figure was real?

Same as most of the bollocks on forums, it came up in one. £5m or £3m it’s still big for L2. Ours included all staff wages, not just players. But you’re right, we should have done much better.

Strangely, we were unbeaten against all 4 PO teams this season. A failure to beat the real munchkins was our problem.

 

[valefan16]

From what I gather, every club get the figures of each individual club budget but they are not named.

Correct

 

[hellogregory]

What are everyone's playing budgets looking like next season? With Kenny End long gone I'd say it's safe to discuss this topic again; and since there are already a couple of threads up about next season, and at this point the biggest factor is likely to be the business everyone can get done in the summer, it may be a more relevant question to ask before we start to pick out potential promotion and relegation candidates.

I seem to be having deja-vu but our current status is; new manager who will want to build his squad, hardly any players carried over from the previous season, board warning that we need to make cuts.

Barring the odd season here and there they’ve been doing that each year for their entire 11 years in charge.

They took over when we finished 4th in league 1, riding high with attendances high. Since then they’ve drove half of the fan base away, lost a generation of fans, got us relegated and now continue to make cuts.

It’s all part of the plan to take us into non league and go part time. No wonder they were so pleased with Pressley’s performance in the second half of the season.

 

[Mark kavanagh]

Salford will have a stupid budget. Could be as high as 3 or 4 million

 

[huddsmoose]

Cambridge's AGM was this morning. Apparently we have a £1.7m wage bill for players, which puts us 12th in the table.

 

[The_Boss]

Salford will have a stupid budget. Could be as high as 3 or 4 million

And the rest. Will definitely be the biggest in the league.

 

[Raymondo316]

Salford will have a stupid budget. Could be as high as 3 or 4 million

They were rumoured to be spending over 3 million this season.

 

[SaddlerJonny]

We will have a mid-table budget but with 19 players out of contract Darrell Clarke will have pretty much all of the budget to play with.

 

[RLC]

If there’s one league where money talks to L2. Those, Newport excepted, were the biggest budgets.

The problem really are those owners who don’t see L1 as being much more financially appealing than L2 - but the operating costs are much higher. With relegated Championship clubs having such financial clout it’s really hard. It’s why Luton’s rise has been so impressive.

There is no way we have got one of the biggest budgets. Ours is £1.8 million, which is bang average apparently.

 

[Casey]

Crawley were said to have a top ten budget but how much of that was spunked on Harry Kewell is anyone's guess.

The owner has said it will increase again and Paul Hayward said he will invest (but in the facilities) so I would guess we will be around the same mark again.

Only two players from last season leaving so unless some fool club wants to give us some cold hard cash for the players who did so well this season we will have a struggle to keep in this division.

Casey

 

[Bottega Don]

Not really sure what we will have to play with. We spent big two years in a row in L1 and got nothing out of it, that led our chairman to pull the budget back for last year. Sadly we lumbered ourselves with stupid contracts for bad players in those years we spent big. I don't know the exact figures but I know Rory McArdle is one of our higher earners and he's shite.

Imagine we will have a top 10 budget next year.

 

[White Army]

We will have a mid-table budget but with 19 players out of contract Darrell Clarke will have pretty much all of the budget to play with.

Is Andy Cook our of contract?

 

[The_Boss]

We don't worry about budgets. Our squad just play for the love of the fans.

 

[Boz]

Is Andy Cook our of contract?

Thought he signed for 2 years?

 

[SaddlerJonny]

Is Andy Cook our of contract?

No he still has another year.

I expect he will go to a League 1 club though which could net us a tidy amount. Maybe even you lot will get him. If he doesn't move on though he's a guaranteed 20 goals I reckon.

 

[dedwardp]

Not really sure what we will have to play with. We spent big two years in a row in L1 and got nothing out of it, that led our chairman to pull the budget back for last year.

Pretty much how it went for us - spent big trying to return to the Championship and never quite made it, so the investment was diverted instead to the academy and we started struggling each year before eventually dropping down.

 

[Si Robin]

Our's is being cut from last season, but I would expect it to be a mid to lower-mid table budget.

 

[Fuzzyvalefan]

The vanity project near Manchester will have a Championship budget. The rest of us will live in the real world.

 

[Jabba the gut]

I’d imagine ours is pretty strong, but nowhere near the levels of the Mansfields of this world.

We will probably only bring in free transfers but I expect we can offer decent wages. I’d imagine Nicky Law and Lee Martin wouldn’t have signed if we were offering peanuts. Taylor wants to bring in 5 or 6 permanent players and I’d imagine 4 of those would be first 11 players so it’s quality over quantity for us.

As for other teams, I’d imagine that Bradford have a few quid, as would Scunny. If Mansfield stay down they’ll have another strong window too.

Depends what you mean by "strong". It's never been above mid-table as far as I'm aware and often much lower.

 

[Jabba the gut]

The league seems to have changed from our previous five season spell 08-13.

Then there was more about bigger clubs in terms of likes of Bradford, Gills, Crewe, Rotherham, Stockport, Vale, Plymouth, Swindon etc who’d slipped down from the top two leagues at the turn of the millennium and the post ITV digital issues (most still floating around the bottom two leagues)

This time I was surprised as when we came down didn’t expect clubs like Mansfield/Lincoln for eg to be spending huge wages at this level so it’s been a different challenge. Seems a lot more about the smaller clubs who’ve recovered from non league spells now wanting to invest to get up which is fair enough. Feels a different dynamic these days that will probably take more finance to really challenge or shrewd management over a longer period of time to build a squad. Problem is most clubs don’t have that patience.

Plymouth have only spent 13 seasons in the 2nd tier in the last fifty years. Don't believe their hype.

 

[Jabba the gut]

So far this is what I've read into this thread and a couple of others:

MINTED
Bradford
Mansfield
Scunthorpe
FGR
Plymouth

GOING UP
Tranmere
Port Vale

SPENDING WISELY
Exeter

GOING DOWN
Carlisle
Cambridge

SKINTED
Macclesfield
Morecambe

Plymouth are very far from minted.

 

[Moomin]

Depends what you mean by "strong". It's never been above mid-table as far as I'm aware and often much lower.

Strong as in being competitive with most at this level. Can’t recall the source but I read recently that we had a top 8 budget this season. Could be bollocks but I’m sure the likes of Law, both Martins, Bowman, Williams and Forte didn’t sign for peanuts

 

[Conker]

Exeter definitely have a competitive budget.

 

[Jabba the gut]

Strong as in being competitive with most at this level. Can’t recall the source but I read recently that we had a top 8 budget this season. Could be bollocks but I’m sure the likes of Law, both Martins, Bowman, Williams and Forte didn’t sign for peanuts

But look who we got rid of. I doubt our budget is vastly improved from last year's. We had the same insistence then that Tisdae had a promotion budget and it turned out to be only 13th.

 

[Jabba the gut]

Exeter definitely have a competitive budget.

Do you have a source for that?

 

[Conker]

Do you have a source for that?

No but I have a really good knowledge of players for this level, and Exeter have quite a few that are really good at this level.

Considering the location, without a good budget Exeter wouldn’t be able to compete for these players.

 

[Jabba the gut]

No but I have a really good knowledge of players for this level, and Exeter have quite a few that are really good at this level.

Considering the location, without a good budget Exeter wouldn’t be able to compete for these players.

That's a bit tenuous isn't it?

 

[Conker]

That's a bit tenuous isn't it?

Not to mention they have generated absolutely loads in fees in recent times.

 

[Jabba the gut]

Not to mention they have generated absolutely loads in fees in recent times.

Yes, but we have no rich owner and inherited a basket case from our last private owners. Most of those fees have gone into infrastructure and other costs and not been given to the manager - certainly not until at least 2017-18

 

[Jabba the gut]

Strong as in being competitive with most at this level. Can’t recall the source but I read recently that we had a top 8 budget this season. Could be bollocks but I’m sure the likes of Law, both Martins, Bowman, Williams and Forte didn’t sign for peanuts

i don't understand why these players would be so valuable.

Prior to Motherwell Bowman spent almost his entire career at Conference level or below, with brief stints in L2, and his scoring record is mediocre to say the least.

Aaron Martin has played remarkably few games in his career - virtually his only full season was with Coventry a couple of years ago after which he was released. He also suffered a serious injury while at Oxford and was again released.

In his last two seasons at Notts County, Forte made fewer than twenty starts and scored 15 goals (i.e. he was a sub more often than not).

Williams spent the recent past on loan at fellow fan-owned cash-strapped Wycombe, and is a very inexperienced 22 year-old - in fact prior to signing for us the only six league appearances in his entire career were made at Wycombe, so I doubt he attracts a big wage.

Lee Martin obviously had a better career once upon a time, but he spent the last two years at Gillingham, suffered a serious injury and was eventually released. He's also 32. He's originally from Torquay, so he might have been easier to persuade to move to Devon than is usually the case.

Nicky Law has had a lot of accolades in his career, but in the lower divisions mostly a while back. He's 31 now and was released by Bradford. People get excited about his Rangers career but that was the new, refounded Rangers in the bottom Scottish divisions, not the old, liquidated Rangers in the SPL. He's also from Devon (P**m**th) so again, he mght not have required the same financial incentive to move to the back of beyond.

I'm not an expert on these things, but none of these sound like particularly expensive signings that demonstrate a large budget. On the contrary most of them seem pretty identical to the sort of players we've always signed in the fan-owned/Tisdale era. Players who have some talent in there somewhere, but who for whatever reason lost their way - either because of injury, bad luck, circumstance, age or being a bad apple when they were young (Harley) - and who we hope to get back on track or unlock their potential.

Don't forget that even in the season we signed Stockley for a record fee the club exploded the usual myths flying around exeweb by revealing our budget was only 13th. I remember the shocked tweets.

I'd be astonished if our budget was as high as eighth, but I suppose anything's possible.