City Players Contracts and Buy-Out Clauses

We only generally give players 3 year contracts, so to offer them a new deal with 2 left would mean every year.

We need to start talking in the January 18 months before the deal ends, but how many players in the second half of last season would have been signing new deals with altered release clauses even if they were offered one?

 

Yes so give them a new three year contract every year. Or we could go the Bullard route and start handing out four year contracts to all the high earners in case we get relegated (like we did).

And it still won't stop players hving relegation release clauses, so we'd be spending a load of money for **** all.

 

Or we go the case of most clubs and offer 4/5/6 year contracts but insert the same wage cut/buy out clause deals that we currently are.

What money would we be spending? What additional money do you spend to offer a player a 3 year vs 4 year contract? We would have additional future obligations, sure, but that means squat. In fact it means we'd be able to justify to the player raising their buy out clause as there would be more time left on their deal.

Why would we hand longer term deals to the high earners we may anticipate wanting to shift? I'm talking the Chesters, Elmos, etc. of the squad who we may well want to keep.

 

Do you actually think about anything before you come out with ****e?

 

I do. I think you're missing my point entirely, either deliberately or because you're dense. Hoping it's the former, even though that's still quite sad.

Bruce himself has admitted concern about allowing so many of our players to enter the last year of their contracts.

 

So you're James Chester in January this year. The club has been negotiating terms on a new deal with you since last summer and they're saying to you, you've got 18 months on your contract, but here's a new 3/4 year contract. The wages are the same but we're increasing your relegation release clause from £8M to £10M.

Knowing we're not doing well and could easily be relegated, are you signing that contract?

 

Why would we couch it to him in those terms?

I'm James Chester, we've just made the FA Cup Final, and we're about to embark on a trip into Europe. I have two years left on the deal. The club comes to me and says "James, you scored our first ever goal in an FA Cup Final, you've been here almost five years, and you're a credit to the squad. Here's a new and improved 4 year deal. We understand you want a buy out clause inserted, and we value you around 12-15m, but given the fact you'd be on lower wages if we go down, we're happy to value the buy out clause at 10m, due to the years left on the deal."

From the club's point of view, they'll have sat down and said "Right, here's a list of the players with 2 years left on their deals. We're looking in a good position to push for mid-table, so which players are likely to be targeted by those clubs in the rung above us? Well, Chester, Brady, Elmohamady, Davies, and others all have two years left on their deals. If we consolidate well, they'd only have a year left and be pretty vulnerable to bigger clubs poaching them. On the other hand, if we go down, they'd form a great nucleus of a squad to push straight back up. We can't let them get to a point where they only have a year left either way, so over the course of the next six months we should start offering them new deals."

 

You said we wouldn't be spending any more money by doing this and having longer contracts, but that you'd use the increased length of deal to justify increasing the release clause.

If you're giving him increased wages you're spending more money.

When it comes to Chester looking at the deal, he doesn't only get career advice from the club. Those around him would be saying that with 2 years left there's plenty of time to consider the deal and see where the club heads, and that if he waits until he's only got a year left he's got more control over negotiations. It would be at least January before he signd it, and by then we were obviously not going to be doing a top half finish.

 

I said we wouldn't be spending more money offering a 3 year vs 4 year deal.

Generally better performing players command better wages.

If you're seriously telling me that every club out there lets every single one of their players enter the final 12 months of their contract before negotiating new contracts because they fear relegation and/or giving players higher wages based on better performances, you're kidding yourself.

 

Sure. So Chester looks at it for 6 months, and come January he's been out injured for six months and the club says "Actually we don't want to offer you that contract anymore, here's a new one on much worse terms" whilst we cruise through the group stage of Europa and are pushing for a top 10 finish.

Yes some players will wait 6 months and assess their options, but there's two sides to the coin, and you're using hindsight to criticise the model most clubs use when it comes to offering new contracts.

Even assuming we let all players sit and decide whether to sign new deals until January, why didn't we do that? Why did we not have a chunk of players signing in January beyond just your Roseniors, McShanes and Bruces? They seemed the only three offered new deals. Davies has made it clear he's never been offered a new deal, so he didn't even get the chance to consider signing a new one after coming off a great season.

 

No, I'm telling you that most clubs (less so at established and top half clubs) try to negotiate deals during that 2nd last year, but that most players will wait and look at the situation the club is in during that season before signing it. We were in a **** situation so the players would have waited to see what happened before signing up for more time.

No player was ever going to go and increase their relegation release clause fee over the course of last season once they saw that all 4 of our creative/attacking midfielders (Snodgrass, Diame, and the two loanees) were knackered. Chester and Brady left because their relegation clauses were met, and Jelavic didn't want to be in the division and was earning too much even after his wage cut so a release clause would be irrelevent. How would new deals on improved terms have done anything other than cause us to spend more money on wages for the last 6 months or so.

 

I'm not using hindsight to criticise it at all. I'm saying even if we took the approach other clubs do it wouldn't have made a difference. Go and look at when player contract extensions are announced at unestablished PL sides.

 

So you're suggesting that all those players were offered deals at the start of the year, chose to sit on their hands, and then chose not to sign new deals at all? That's an interesting interpretation considering Davies and a few others have suggested they didn't have new deals offered.

 

Like, say, Crystal Palace, who offered a new deal to keeper Speroni after the end of last season? He waited a while to sign on: http://www.espnfc.us/crystal-palace...i-signs-new-contract-extension-crystal-palace

How about Myhill at West Brom: http://www.skysports.com/football/n...gn-boaz-myhill-to-two-year-contract-extension

Or Cattermole at Sunderland: http://www.theguardian.com/football...signs-five-year-contract-extension-sunderland

Bacuna at Villa: http://www.goal.com/en/news/9/engla...una-pens-five-year-extension-with-aston-villa

The list goes on. All signed in the May-August period during the off-season.

 

Syd and Ricardo should get a room - then they could bore each other to death

 

This thread is specifically for discussing our contract negotiations.

 

If you and Ricardo are discussing your contracts, you should do it in private

 

I'm holding out for a 5-year deal but he wants me on a rolling weekly contract.

 

Both of you should get a free transfer