A new low

Quote: Mrs Barista "I'm not sure we're at that point either, but it was a response to a post suggesting we are. Not sure about scaling back squad quality. We'd have takers for Shaul and Lineham for example but without their contributions we'd probably be 4-6 points worse off - we rely heavily on individual plays as the structure's so lacking. Taking out the calibre of players who can do this might further weaken our grip on tge top flight.

Not sure about reducing the price to cut his losses. Although Sky money's gone up, most clubs lose money and will want to participate in the marquee signing market and the situation with the SMC gives a buyer a headache in terms of security and cost of tenure at the KC. I think FC was up for sale for a long time before AP bought us. Are there willing suitors our there? I haven't heard whispers of any.'"

Right, I didn’t reply when I first saw your response because this may include a bit of a rant.

I’m not surprised you’re not sure about either option, neither is appealing. However the scenario given was one of no more money to spend, and the question asked was what options would be available to Pearson in that scenario. If there is no money available to affect change, then the only 2 alternatives are to cut costs (either just to save money, or to reapportion elsewhere), or to cut his losses by selling up and moving on. Neither is pleasant, but it really is as simple as being only those 2 choices. No more money to spend = cut/redistribute spending or sell up/close down. The only possibly third option is to keep things exactly as they are, but with the dwindling crowd factor that is not within Pearson/the club’s control.

On scaling back the squad, players like Lineham and Shaul are not where I’d be looking. Those two should not be amongst our highest earners or significantly more expensive than alternatives. More sensible would be to look at the likes of Sneyd, Pryce, Ellis, Minichiello, and Westerman. All will probably be good earners, and in all honesty only Ellis really comes close to consistently offering us likely value for money compared to what we probably could get to do the same jobs. It’s almost laughable that the big criticism of Gentle was the over-expensive recruitment of overpaid players, yet 3 of those are Radford signings and a 4th was given a long-term contract by him and they probably epitomise the very same problem. We’re forking out money that is arguably unnecessary and almost definitely not delivering it’s value.

This isn’t to say I don’t think any of them are any good. In fact I think they are 5 of our most able players. The issue is that the system/style we play does not significantly benefit from spending so much money on them. The 3 forwards are just used as battering rams. They give everything to do it, but if all we want is big lumps to cart the ball up, we don’t need to be spending international-level money to do it. As for halfbacks, we needn’t (arguably don’t) bother. I really don’t know how many we need to get through before people will finally stop blaming recruitment and the individual players and realise that we play such a dour brand of non-rugby that it actually makes it harder for halfbacks to play. Our ptb is appallingly slow, so they have barely any time and space to work in. Our option runners are practically non-existent, so they are left with choices of a simple and predictable pass to the next man in the line, take on the line solo and most likely get cleaned out, or hoof it. If all we’re going to use a halfback for is as an extra pair of hands in the line and then an up & under to the corner on the last, we could save a lot of money by just picking up a pair from the Championship, like Cas did with Finn, or we actually did with Ellis, but have since seen Cas and Hudds harness better than we could.

Obviously I'm not claiming to know what our players earn, but I think it's a sensible guess that those are 5 of our (if not the exact 5) top earners. Houghton will be the other contender, but as much as he is derided on here, with the current defence-first attitude of our team he's a key figure.

As for selling the club, you will nearly always find a buyer for something, you just might not like how much they’re offering. Your example of before Pearson bought us supports that. The club was up for sale, and there were rumours of the kind of figure Kath Hetherington was demanding when people enquired. IIRC, those demands were dropped because of the tax bills on their way to SL clubs over the image rights/overseas payments, and Pearson moved in when the price was lowered. I’m pretty sure he said as much when he bought the club and talked about the first year losses that could be expected due to those tax payments.

You most likely won’t hear whispers of potential buyers if the club isn’t up for sale. Nobody will buy it at a premium price, but vultures will show interest if/when Pearson actively wants rid because they’ll then have a position to negotiate.