Shrimpsvoices

I understand that in todays football, money is tight however something is really starting to annoy me.
Why are players on such small length contracts which means they leave for nothing.
PERKINS
CARLTON
THOMSON
YATES
BLACKBURN?
All the players above have come and gone through the morecambe doors, all of whom have run out of their contracts and we have recieved no money in return for them. (Aside from carlton thanks to a tribunal)
If Yates goes onto Vale it would be another of our top players who have left the club for no money, if players want to go then thats fine however for a decent fee.

We sold Perks......at the time he was struggling to get into the team in his preferred left back position due to the arrival of Michael Howard, throwing the toys out of the pram in the process. An experiment in midfield didn't really work for us, but it has at the other clubs he has since been at. I'm glad it has worked out for him, but I feel he needed to move out of his comfort zone to progress as a player. The only think that was silly about that deal was not negotiating a sell-on fee.

Blackie was a strange one. Struck me as the sort of Chap who doesn't stick around in the same place for too long, hence never signed long-term deals. I think he was expected to sign for us the season we came up after he came back from his travels. Remember being quite shocked when it actually materialised that he'd signed for Swindon.

It is a double-edged sword signing players up on long contracts. Yes you run the risk of a player that turns out to be a gem walking away for nothing. But equally, there is a chance you have somebody who is not good enough or injury prone sat on a long-term deal running his contract down and taking money out of the club. Do you remember a certain Carl Ruffer? Even this season we had to pay up a couple of players deals to free up some budget.

How many jobs have you left to go to another?
Did any of them pay your former employer?

If a player wont sign a longer contract, the club can not force them into it.

Of the 5 players released lets just see where they end up, If any go to higher clubs than us i will be surprised, then that will prove Sammy right!

[quote="outsider"]

If a player wont sign a longer contract, the club can not force them into it.



Yeah im not saying force them. however many morecambe players seem to be on rolling one year contracts, which opens up the possibility of other "bigger" clubs poaching our decent players

I'd prefer 1 year contracts in this climate than 3 year deals irrespective of who they are.

If they prove themselves it's then up to the Board to convince them to stay. If they can't cut the mustard...get shot!

Blackie played for Aldershot earlier this season and was one of the worst players on the pitch that day, he wouldn't get in to our team now.

Keith wrote:Blackie played for Aldershot earlier this season and was one of the worst players on the pitch that day, he wouldn't get in to our team now.

its not down to whether they can play for morecambe now its the fact that we could get decent money but we done due to the lack of a longer contract

Yep - I am getting fed up too - league two football and this steady improvement is becoming such a bore.

Players leave to try and better themselves and play at the highest level they can - nobody should blame them for that. Sometime moves work - Perkins. sometimes they dont - Blackburn.

Long term contracts secure a fee but they also tie us to players and give no flexibility - for me personally short term is the way to go and you will always loose players but you will pick up others as well.

feelingguilty wrote:Yep - I am getting fed up too - league two football and this steady improvement is becoming such a bore.

Players leave to try and better themselves and play at the highest level they can - nobody should blame them for that. Sometime moves work - Perkins. sometimes they dont - Blackburn.

Long term contracts secure a fee but they also tie us to players and give no flexibility - for me personally short term is the way to go and you will always loose players but you will pick up others as well.

The most sense spoken on this message board the past couple of days.

Some of the crap posted regarding Yates, O'Carroll and length of contracts is shocking. Sammy, Mark and the board deserve more respect.

Apart from a few examples, and I struggle to think of them if I'm honest, players going from one League 2 club to another League 2 or League 1 club don't generally command large fees. If they did, the argument for longer contracts might be valid. But the fact of the matter is, League 2 players don't go for large fees anyway, so there is absolutely no point in signing someone on a long contract just in case someone wants to buy them for us to make a profit.

If an average wage is about a grand a week in League 2, then that's £52,000 per year we're paying a players salary. That's a lot of money in this league, and if Sammy wanted shot after a year because they hadn't performed, or were constantly injured, that's a lot of money to be paying off. Hence the shorter contracts.

The likes of Baker were different. They were always going to be a good prospect and therefore worth a punt. Duffy might be another one. But when you consider that Drummy cost £15,000 and Carlton about the same I think, you have to think about the practicalities of the kind of fee you would get balanced against what we stand to lose in paying off a longer contract.

Unfortunately, it means that we might miss out on some players because they want a longer deal, but the books have to be balanced, and I'd much rather us be where we are than being a club overspending and going into administration.

The Red Knight wrote:Some of the crap posted regarding Yates, O'Carroll and length of contracts is shocking. Sammy, Mark and the board deserve more respect.

So your happy for other clubs coming taking our best players for nothing!?

dford wrote:

The Red Knight wrote:Some of the crap posted regarding Yates, O'Carroll and length of contracts is shocking. Sammy, Mark and the board deserve more respect.

So your happy for other clubs coming taking our best players for nothing!?

His general point is that the vast majority of moves (over 95%) by League 2 players don't command a fee. The rare exceptions are extremely talented players who move often in the first year of a two-year contract, and to a higher league. They are increasingly rare. With clubs financial strapped they will be even less unwilling to commit to a transfer fee or even afford one.

My only concern is our lack of investment in local youth players. Not only are they cheaper but they command fees even if at the end of a contract. Players like Perks, Garry Hunter, Thommo, Wayne, Danny etc. no longer exist. Only Aaron Taylor has made the step up, even then only partially, in the last three seasons.

O Carroll only wanted a one year deal as he said he was putting himself in the shop window, for bigger clubs to look at him.

dford wrote:

The Red Knight wrote:Some of the crap posted regarding Yates, O'Carroll and length of contracts is shocking. Sammy, Mark and the board deserve more respect.

So your happy for other clubs coming taking our best players for nothing!?

'Happy' - of course not. But you have to look at what actually went on with the players you've mentioned.

PERKINS
CARLTON
THOMSON
YATES
BLACKBURN?

Carlton, Thompson and Blackburn were all on two or three year contracts during their time at Morecambe but then decided not to accept offers we made to them to sign again and stay at Morecambe and all moved on to clubs in a higher division.
Thommo in particular was offered more money than any other player in Morecambe's history to stay.

At the time we wanted them all to stay and would have been happy to give them new contracts.

Since then they have all - at best - been in and out of their new teams. Danny and Thommo have been well-paid for bit-part roles. It's not like we've stood back and happily let them drift away and then they've gone on to be superstars, which seems to be the implication.

Perks has done well and good luck to him - but I didn't hear many fans, at the time, saying we should break the bank to keep hold of him. You win some you lose some.

We also got a good deal (which will probably now be paid up by the Football League) for Baker who has since been out injured for weeks on end at Stockport. You win some, you lose some.

Sammy has, it would appear, seen our right flank as an area he wants to strengthen and I expect him to target that position.

Yatesy was pressing for an offer from the club, he apparently had another offer on the table. We could have signed him on for another season and been committed to paying him for at least another year but if Sammy is looking to strengthen in that position, why would he do that?

Not saying I agree with Sammy's judgment call - it's all about opinions.
But it's his that counts and if he wants to strengthen there anyway, then it's perfectly understandable that he wouldn't want to offer a NEW contract to Adam when he already has two who can cover and are still under contract.

The club and the manager have dozens and dozens of player decisions to make every season - they've not done too badly so far.

I'm sure we've all got differing opinions about players that have left or are leaving this summer.The harsh reality in football is that every manager has a choice of literaly hundreds of professionals, so it is actually easier to get it wrong that right. Just ask every premiership manager and they'll tell you. Considering we're probably looking at cheaper to free then those chances go up of not getting it right. we see lots of good suggestions for targets on here,but sammy doesn't have the luxury of suggesting players, he's got to sign them and then get them to play. like shrimper says you win some you lose some. All you can hope for in football is that on balance you sign more legends than turkeys and you get to keep your better players. Everything changes..

dford wrote:

The Red Knight wrote:Some of the crap posted regarding Yates, O'Carroll and length of contracts is shocking. Sammy, Mark and the board deserve more respect.

So your happy for other clubs coming taking our best players for nothing!?

No, but I fail to see what the club can do about it. Every single club in the country (apart from the very big clubs) will suffer from good players deciding they want to leave and wait for their contracts to run out before securing a move on a free transfer (and presumably a large signing on fee).

Your argument seems to be that it's the clubs fault for not offering players long contracts yet at this level players very rarely sign anything over a 3 year contract and these are only offered to players who you know are going to be first team regulars.

Carl Baker got a 3 year deal and I think I'm right in saying that the vast majority of players we signed last summer were given 2 year deals apart from O'Carroll.

Let's say we signed O'Carroll to a 3 year contract and then Sammy decided at the end of this season that he didn't want him. We would then have to pay up the remainder of his contract to get rid of him.

I think we're in that situation with Andy Parrish as I believe the only reason he is still at the club is because he has a further year on his contract, otherwise I think he would have been released as he's clearly not good enough.

The club have suffered in the past by offering long term deals to plays (Ruffer, Kelly, O'Connor etc) and I don't think they want to go through that again.

Slightly off topic but one thing that annoyed me was that we had to pay off the contract of Ryan McCann but he joined Queen of the south as soon as he left. Could we not have sold him to them, making a profit? Or even if we just sold him to them on a free transfer, that would have been preferable. Seems to me that we should only buy off contract if no other club will be willing to take the player inn question.

The Red Knight wrote:Let's say we signed O'Carroll to a 3 year contract and then Sammy decided at the end of this season that he didn't want him. We would then have to pay up the remainder of his contract to get rid of him.

I think we're in that situation with Andy Parrish as I believe the only reason he is still at the club is because he has a further year on his contract, otherwise I think he would have been released as he's clearly not good enough.

Yeah i understand what your saying but why cant we sign players on a 3-4 year contract. then the players we want rid of sell for no fee, therefore we dont need to pay up the rest of the contract. then the players who want to leave to further their career the clubs have to pay some money due to the rest of the contract!

dford wrote:[
Yeah i understand what your saying but why cant we sign players on a 3-4 year contract. then the players we want rid of sell for no fee, therefore we dont need to pay up the rest of the contract. then the players who want to leave to further their career the clubs have to pay some money due to the rest of the contract!

If it were that simple then we would. That's called 'putting them on the transfer list'. But to 'sell for no fee' you have to have another club prepared to take them on for the same wages and the player has to want to join the other club.

If someone wants them then it's fine but, more often than not, they'll stay with you and you have to pay them for the length of their contract or buy them out - which costs money.

james456 wrote:Slightly off topic but one thing that annoyed me was that we had to pay off the contract of Ryan McCann but he joined Queen of the south as soon as he left. Could we not have sold him to them, making a profit? Or even if we just sold him to them on a free transfer, that would have been preferable. Seems to me that we should only buy off contract if no other club will be willing to take the player inn question.

There's no evidence that we paid up his contract and you don't know that for definite. As far as I understand he told the club he was homesick. If he then wanted to leave we may have had to pay nothing, particularly if QoS were willing to take him back.

dford wrote:
Yeah i understand what your saying but why cant we sign players on a 3-4 year contract. then the players we want rid of sell for no fee, therefore we dont need to pay up the rest of the contract. then the players who want to leave to further their career the clubs have to pay some money due to the rest of the contract!

The management seem damned if they do and damned if they don't. There were a queue of people on here earlier in the season criticising the manager for signing players like McCann and Carr on longer contracts.

I know it's difficult, but we need to wait and see how the players that have left are replaced before we spend too much time getting our collective panties in a twist.

dford wrote:
Yeah i understand what your saying but why cant we sign players on a 3-4 year contract. then the players we want rid of sell for no fee, therefore we dont need to pay up the rest of the contract. then the players who want to leave to further their career the clubs have to pay some money due to the rest of the contract!

So for example we signed Carl Ruffer on a three-year contract and was utter sh***. Let's say he was on £500 a week. After a year we decided to get rid. We put him on the transfer list and a club says 'yeah I'll offer you 10p for him' and we bite their hand off'. He then discusses terms and they offer £300 a week. He says sod that and stays with us. That's the reality stuck with a crap player for two years with no interest in even playing for us and £50K in wages to pay.

dford wrote:

Keith wrote:Blackie played for Aldershot earlier this season and was one of the worst players on the pitch that day, he wouldn't get in to our team now.

its not down to whether they can play for morecambe now its the fact that we could get decent money but we done due to the lack of a longer contract

It very much IS about whether they can play for Morecambe now. We offered Blackie a then record breaking contract to stay but he still wanted away. Had we upped the offer even further and longer, we would now have a player on perhaps £2,500 a week or more, still having a year of their contract to go and not being good enough to play in the first team. We would only be able 'sell' him if another club were willing to take him on for wages of about £100,000+ a year. More to the point, we probably couldn't afford to bring new players in with players like Blackie on (say) £125,000 a year, so we'd still be playing him instead of having better players on lower wages.

It's a balance. If what we save when we get it right is more than we lose when we get it wrong, its good business.

I thought we payed off McCanns contract along with Carr's