For too long the upper management have let players and managers walk all over us. Here is what I would implement to combat some of the issues and get back on a good financial standing. Please note all these changes link into each other and support the functioning of each point.
1. Have a hard wage cap of say 45k with a bonus scheme for performance metrics. You want more money, prove you deserve it.
2. When scouting for players in each position, have a shortlist of 15 minimum players ranked by how much we want to sign them from #1 to #15 or more. If one is asking too much or taking too long, simply move onto the next candidate. Even if they are slightly worse in some metric. We should be setting the rules on players coming, not the other way around. We don’t want to be in the position where we are begging anyone to come here with huge bags of cash.
3. If the club wants to retain a player, they will be asked to sign a new contract when their contract reaches under 2 years left. If they refuse, they will be placed on the transfer list and become 2nd option to their counterpart, whether that’s another player or an academy graduate. We need to let them know that their game time and career will suffer by running out their contract. Yes the hardline approach may put off some players, but if we’re in the EPL that’s a big enough of a pull. There’s plenty of players good enough that would come still.
4. If anyone comes in for our manager, we let them pay us off and take him. We should have a constantly updated list of replacements that play in a way defined as the target style by the club.
All transfers will be in this style and the academy will adopt this style all the way down to the very youth.
5. Stick to our guns, if we only wanted to give vestegaard a 2 year deal for example, we should have offered it to him and then walk away with a solid deadline for his decision that gives us time to go to a second option.
6. We have a set budget that is calculated by financially savvy management that makes it impossible to fail PSR, even if we can’t offload players. Managers are made aware of this budget before signing and are told the complete truth about it.
There may be things here that would be difficult to pull off in the realities of the footballing world, but we need to have an actual plan at least and not a scattergun, reactive approach.