2024/25 Squad and Transfers

[GMFC_95]

Just joined the forum is everyone an annoying twat or is it just frustration? Think this will be my first and last post was hoping for some decent chat

[Cet Homme Charmant]

11 minutes ago, GMFC_95 said:

Just joined the forum is everyone an annoying twat or is it just frustration? Think this will be my first and last post was hoping for some decent chat

Being an annoying twat is one of the last pleasures I have in life

[Cappiecat 1.2]

19 minutes ago, GMFC_95 said:

Just joined the forum is everyone an annoying twat or is it just frustration? Think this will be my first and last post was hoping for some decent chat

So you thought you'd initiate some decent chat by declaring in your 1st post that you think the forum users are annoying twats?

[SpoonTon]

You only need to look at some of the squads in our division to know the differences in budgets. Raith had players like Jack Hamilton, Josh Mullin and Zak Rudden sitting on the bench for their playoff matches against Partick. A team with pretty much the same average attendance as us the previous season. They have been able to speculate on increasing income, and have had a great season and really big travelling supports from Dunfermline and Dundee Utd to back that up. Ayr have been in somewhat of a similar position, and are obviously looking to drive that forward. Queens Park are doing...whatever it is they're trying to do. 

We're in a different position. We cannot afford losses, and have suffered from years of a lack of investment off the pitch. It's a difficult position, but the disadvantage is probably as much or more about squad depth than anything else. It's not massive money which makes the task simple - they're still picking from a similar pool of players. 

[Mr.Blue]

1 hour ago, GMFC_95 said:

Just joined the forum is everyone an annoying twat or is it just frustration? Think this will be my first and last post was hoping for some decent chat

You'll fit in well. 

Welcome.

[Chicken_Soup]

8 hours ago, Cet Homme Charmant said:

I think you're getting mixed up, I'm not claiming anything as fact without evidence. I'm doing exactly the opposite.

Dougie made a statement that we had the lowest budget in the league, without any evidence to support it. Unless you believe all managers in the league disclose to each other in the summer what their budget is, there's no way Dougie could know that for sure. I can understand why Dougie might have claimed it because for several obvious reasons that narrative suits him, but it still doesn't necessarily mean it's true. 

Dunning has done a better job than I could of illustrating just some of the information which is readily available, even to the likes of us. Given much of the evidence to support the claim is in the open, I don’t understand the degree of doubt, which itself is not based in evidence. 
 

I agree with your reasoning on why Imrie chose to say it, but to suggest he doesn’t have sufficient knowledge to make the claim is naive. There will be people involved in championship football in far less prominent roles than First Team Manager who are comfortably well enough informed to be aware of these things.

 

[Tink]

Imrie has a motive for deception here. If the team does well, he is a hero for overcoming the odds of having the lowest budget. If the team does badly, he can say “I told you we had the lowest budget, so what chance did I have”. He is protecting his future by pushing the notion that we have the lowest budget.
 

Other clubs publish their accounts in different styles. Some include all playing squad and staff in the playing budget (eg physio, kit man, manager, coaches etc) so comparing like with like from published accounts is difficult. Morton seem to list only players under the playing budget. Based on league averages, that makes a difference of about £200k per year to the figures.
 

Gossip around the league is that Airdrie, Arbroath and Queens Park had lower playing budgets than Morton last season (QP have more money but chose the suicide option of playing cheap kids). Next season, the likelihood is that only Airdrie will be lower than Morton. Ayr are openly pushing the boat out to get promotion, with an owner who is prepared to accept the risks of that gamble failing. They also have a fan zone that produces significant income for the club. We were promised a fan zone by Christmas 2022 but are still waiting. Falkirk will spend like Falkirk do until administration comes knocking. Hamilton will be on a par with Morton. The rest will probably be higher than us (although some budgets have not been confirmed yet!)

 

The Airdrie model is worth considering - they play cheap youngsters across the team but pushed the boat out to sign Todorov. We tried something similar under Gus, with Gozie and Reilly being what I assume were expensive options. It worked after Imrie lit a fire under them, but not under Gus.

[Chicken_Soup]

20 minutes ago, Tink said:

Imrie has a motive for deception here. If the team does well, he is a hero for overcoming the odds of having the lowest budget. If the team does badly, he can say “I told you we had the lowest budget, so what chance did I have”. He is protecting his future by pushing the notion that we have the lowest budget.
 

Other clubs publish their accounts in different styles. Some include all playing squad and staff in the playing budget (eg physio, kit man, manager, coaches etc) so comparing like with like from published accounts is difficult. Morton seem to list only players under the playing budget. Based on league averages, that makes a difference of about £200k per year to the figures.
 

Gossip around the league is that Airdrie, Arbroath and Queens Park had lower playing budgets than Morton last season (QP have more money but chose the suicide option of playing cheap kids). Next season, the likelihood is that only Airdrie will be lower than Morton. Ayr are openly pushing the boat out to get promotion, with an owner who is prepared to accept the risks of that gamble failing. They also have a fan zone that produces significant income for the club. We were promised a fan zone by Christmas 2022 but are still waiting. Falkirk will spend like Falkirk do until administration comes knocking. Hamilton will be on a par with Morton. The rest will probably be higher than us (although some budgets have not been confirmed yet!)

 

The Airdrie model is worth considering - they play cheap youngsters across the team but pushed the boat out to sign Todorov. We tried something similar under Gus, with Gozie and Reilly being what I assume were expensive options. It worked after Imrie lit a fire under them, but not under Gus.

Gossip is that QP comfortably outbid premiership teams to sign Ruari Paton, before they went and brought in Danny Wilson. They were outbidding championship teams when they were in league 2, and are now outbidding premiership teams while in the championship. Their budget will be nowhere near the lowest in the division. 

[Tink]

47 minutes ago, Chicken_Soup said:

Gossip is that QP comfortably outbid premiership teams to sign Ruari Paton, before they went and brought in Danny Wilson. They were outbidding championship teams when they were in league 2, and are now outbidding premiership teams while in the championship. Their budget will be nowhere near the lowest in the division. 

That may be right, but for Paton read Todorov at Airdrie. Spending big for a goalscorer can be the right option. Wilson was only in the budget for less than 4 months. They have the money, they just chose not to spend it last season. 

[Chicken_Soup]

15 minutes ago, Tink said:

That may be right, but for Paton read Todorov at Airdrie. Spending big for a goalscorer can be the right option. Wilson was only in the budget for less than 4 months. They have the money, they just chose not to spend it last season. 

Todorov is a journeyman who wishes he was operating in the same wage bracket as Paton. 
 

Why would they choose not to spend it? We could go through their large squad, but in addition to Paton and Wilson, guys like Thomas, McKinstry and Callum Davidson, for example, come at a premium. Their Dutch contingent didn’t come here for lower end championship money, and Owen Coyle’s wage beforehand was also very well documented. All of which they’re willing and able to pay, and continue to do so. They’re not called the Govanhill Gretna because of Lord Haughey’s penchant for chain smoking. 

[dazza]

2 hours ago, Tink said:

Imrie has a motive for deception here. If the team does well, he is a hero for overcoming the odds of having the lowest budget. If the team does badly, he can say “I told you we had the lowest budget, so what chance did I have”. He is protecting his future by pushing the notion that we have the lowest budget.
 

Other clubs publish their accounts in different styles. Some include all playing squad and staff in the playing budget (eg physio, kit man, manager, coaches etc) so comparing like with like from published accounts is difficult. Morton seem to list only players under the playing budget. Based on league averages, that makes a difference of about £200k per year to the figures.
 

Gossip around the league is that Airdrie, Arbroath and Queens Park had lower playing budgets than Morton last season (QP have more money but chose the suicide option of playing cheap kids). Next season, the likelihood is that only Airdrie will be lower than Morton. Ayr are openly pushing the boat out to get promotion, with an owner who is prepared to accept the risks of that gamble failing. They also have a fan zone that produces significant income for the club. We were promised a fan zone by Christmas 2022 but are still waiting. Falkirk will spend like Falkirk do until administration comes knocking. Hamilton will be on a par with Morton. The rest will probably be higher than us (although some budgets have not been confirmed yet!)

 

The Airdrie model is worth considering - they play cheap youngsters across the team but pushed the boat out to sign Todorov. We tried something similar under Gus, with Gozie and Reilly being what I assume were expensive options. It worked after Imrie lit a fire under them, but not under Gus.

Hamilton have a new owner who is throwing money around. See their squad from this season.  Us and Airdrie will be the lowest

 

[TONofmemories]

11 hours ago, Jamie_M said:

There's not a single chance Livi are on that list.

And the fact you have them on there - is it because you are unconditionally accepting the unverified declarations from their manager but not ours?

Doubting T wont lie down. Wasting your breath on him 

[TONofmemories]

10 hours ago, dunning1874 said:

Livingston have the parachute payment and Martindale has openly said they'll have a "top four budget" (whether that budget survives their impending court cases is another matter). Hamilton again have a private owner willing to subsidise losses.

None of us are ever going to know exact figures of budgets at each club, but there's a point where you can take all the information in the public domain and make realistic educated guesses, and doing so allows you to see that the only possible candidates for having a smaller budget are Airdrie and at a significant push Hamilton, with any other conclusion being delusion.

It's been stated publicly by Falkirk that they're going to budget 400K losses in perpetuity as long as they're outside the top flight despite being fan owned and having an average attendance over 4K. It's also been stated publicly by board members of The Jags Foundation (Partick's MCT equivalent) that despite reducing their budget from 22/23, they still budgeted a six-figure loss this season, despite being fan owned and having an average attendance of 3.5K.

Every other club has a private owner who are, for however long, willing to support six figure losses. Dunfermline are another club with more than double our average attendance, whose owners supported a seven figure loss in 22/23 to get out of League One. Raith have had a huge influx of 'conservatory' money from the same 'businesspeople' who bankrolled Kelty to League One before deciding they'd reached their ceiling, and that was reflected in their recruitment last summer with the winning team on the park then seeing their attendances surge.

Then you come to the clubs whose attendances are around the same level or smaller than ours. Livingston as mentioned have the parachute payment, and are clearly outspending us for players as proven by Muirhead going there. Ayr's private owner is wiling to plough money in and they're clearly outspending us for players as proven by Oakley going there, with journalists willing to state as fact that their offer was a 50% increase on ours. They have been outspending us for several years as per McAdams, McGinty, Fjortoft and Salkeld making that move as well. That their private owner actually has a modicum of sense unlike the Raes and is also spending on infrastructure around the stadium that could generate revenue is to his credit and could see them move ahead of us in commercial income in future, but it's clear that they were already comfortably outspending us on the first team budget regardless.

Queen's Park are rolling in Lord Haughey's money and have been spending astronomical sums since they were in League Two. Even before our move to fan ownership, Bob McHugh and Peter Grant left us to drop two divisions to them because they got enough of a wage increase to make it worth their while. In the time since their budget has only grown, with them regularly beating other Championship clubs to players who are being chased by half the division like Paton and Savoury.

Hamilton were taken over last summer and have spent to get out of League One, there's little reason to doubt they'll continue to do so but we at least don't have the same obvious evidence of their budget dwarfing ours that we have with everyone else.

That only leaves Airdrie, which considering they were 4th and we were 5th is enough proof that the budget doesn't guarantee a relegation battle, but it's clearly the reality that we're a long way off other clubs financially and we need excellent recruitment to compete. The squads that have delivered two consecutive 5th placed finishes have contained Baird (Ayr reject), Oakley (Inverness reject), Gillespie & Quitongo (Queen's Park rejects), Crawford (Partick reject who was clubless in August), Wilson & Ambrose (Dunfermline rejects). We just need to trust Imrie to find bargains of that calibre again among players not wanted by other Championship clubs rather than the Steven Boyd level of reject.

So, in essensce, Doubting T, needs to take his banana flavored calpol and accept that everyone else is capable of educated reading between the lines, whilst he - for some weird reason - denies it. Makes sense!

[TONofmemories]

5 hours ago, Chicken_Soup said:

Dunning has done a better job than I could of illustrating just some of the information which is readily available, even to the likes of us. Given much of the evidence to support the claim is in the open, I don’t understand the degree of doubt, which itself is not based in evidence. 
 

I agree with your reasoning on why Imrie chose to say it, but to suggest he doesn’t have sufficient knowledge to make the claim is naive. There will be people involved in championship football in far less prominent roles than First Team Manager who are comfortably well enough informed to be aware of these things.

 

Oohhh friends. You've had a shocker; suck it up, champ 

[TRVMP]

16 hours ago, Cet Homme Charmant said:

Straw man argument alert! You've not done that for a while, nice to see the old Nacho back.  Of course that's not what I said, but I'm sure you know that and you're just being cheeky.  

The fact that Ayr offered Oakley more than we did is not proof in itself that they have a bigger budget. It could also be that Brown simply valued him more than Dougie did, and was willing to spend a larger proportion of his budget on him.

I'd guess Ayr's income from season tickets, gate money, and other revenue streams, is broadly similar to ours. Someone mentioned they also have a wealthy benefactor bankrolling them, but we also have Dalrada chucking in a few bob and had additional income from the trip to Ibrox and a decent Scottish cup run. So I've got absolutely no idea how Ayr's overall budget compares to ours, and how much of it has gone on Oakley. But nobody else has either, that's my whole point. I'm not the one claiming speculation as fact. 

 

 

It might not be what you meant, but it is actually what you said. You said:

"FWIW, I don't think it's outwith the bounds of possibility we actually do have the lowest budget in the league this season. For that dubious honour, I think it will be a four way battle between us, Livingston, Airdrie and Hamilton (and perhaps also Ayr if they've already spunked away a large proportion of their budget on Oakley)."

The item in question here is "budget" and the conditional you offered is "this season." The conditional wasn't what budget remains but rather what can be applied to the season.

If Ayr have signed a player, George Oakley, for the season, then that has to be taken into account for the season's budget. It can't be said that their budget is lower simply because some of it is already allocated.

If what you meant was that what Ayr have left now is perhaps the same or lower as ours, that's fine. It's still almost certainly wrong. But it's not what you said.

[TRVMP]

6 hours ago, Tink said:

Imrie has a motive for deception here. If the team does well, he is a hero for overcoming the odds of having the lowest budget. If the team does badly, he can say “I told you we had the lowest budget, so what chance did I have”. He is protecting his future by pushing the notion that we have the lowest budget.
 

Other clubs publish their accounts in different styles. Some include all playing squad and staff in the playing budget (eg physio, kit man, manager, coaches etc) so comparing like with like from published accounts is difficult. Morton seem to list only players under the playing budget. Based on league averages, that makes a difference of about £200k per year to the figures.
 

Gossip around the league is that Airdrie, Arbroath and Queens Park had lower playing budgets than Morton last season (QP have more money but chose the suicide option of playing cheap kids). Next season, the likelihood is that only Airdrie will be lower than Morton. Ayr are openly pushing the boat out to get promotion, with an owner who is prepared to accept the risks of that gamble failing. They also have a fan zone that produces significant income for the club. We were promised a fan zone by Christmas 2022 but are still waiting. Falkirk will spend like Falkirk do until administration comes knocking. Hamilton will be on a par with Morton. The rest will probably be higher than us (although some budgets have not been confirmed yet!)

 

The Airdrie model is worth considering - they play cheap youngsters across the team but pushed the boat out to sign Todorov. We tried something similar under Gus, with Gozie and Reilly being what I assume were expensive options. It worked after Imrie lit a fire under them, but not under Gus.

Imrie has a motive for deception but QP somehow benefit from having all appearances that they're spending big but actually paying peanuts to kids? Wouldn't they have the same motivation to say they're not spending big, particularly if it's actually true?

They've had experienced, well-paid players for the entire campaign. Calum Ferrie, Louis Longridge, Ruari Paton, Dom Thomas are the main four and I think I'm right in saying that Stuart McKinstry joined right after the window closed.

[Brian Skelton]

End of the day guys let see who we sign Dougie  in my opinion  has been doing a great job let him get on with it.

[Boogs49]

Greg Docherty released by Hull City. Dougie and Grant Gillespie played for Hamilton at same time as him, might seem out of our reach but it's reported that Hamilton are trying to sign him.

[Mr.Blue]

20 hours ago, TONofmemories said:

So, in essensce, Doubting T, needs to take his banana flavored calpol and accept that everyone else is capable of educated reading between the lines, whilst he - for some weird reason - denies it. Makes sense!

They make banana flavoured calpol?

[TRVMP]

53 minutes ago, Mr.Blue said:

They make banana flavoured calpol?

Mixes well with Wray & Nephew's Overproof Rum.