O'Loughlin at centre

[Fraggle]

robjoenz posted:
Assuming we were within the salary cap last season, have some players not had their contracts upgraded? Carney has been given a new deal which in light of his current form will, I assume, involve more money. Also have the likes of Aspinwall, O'Loughlin, Hock and Robinson been given improved contracts?

You may be right, although I always thought the idea of contracts was that you negotiated a salary at the start and either that was it until you signed a new one when the previous one was finished (Carney), or you renegotiated and started again partway through the current contract (eg Briscoe had 12 months left, so he could have signed for a new, say, 2 year contract starting immediately).

But if upgrading is common, it makes a complete mockery of a fixed salary cap. There are inflation increases every year, and maybe young players are entitled to an extra amount every year based on appearances or something. £1.8m this year is worth less than £1.8mill last year. But isn't this the kind of thing clubs budget for anyway? Surely you can't have a situation whereby you sign a player for two years on the basis that you can afford to pay him this year but can't for next year.

[DaveO]

Fraggle posted:

Briscoe going may be explained by the 20/20 rule, but the only reason we have offloaded PJ must be to save money.

Why does that follow?

For example Briscoe and Hock could both now be counted as players with more than 20 games due to the number of games played by them last season.

This would mean the club had a squad of 22 players with over 20 games.

So two would have to go BUT the rule does not say WHICH two have to go.

I assume the club decided of all the "22" the two it could afford to lose were Briscoe and PJ.

Whether they were the right two is another debate but I bet that is how it worked out.

So that fact PJ went does not mean we are over the cap but that the club had to get rid of any two of 22 players and he drew one of the short straws.

Saw an article on the bbc web site about Briscoe joining Hull, said he didn't want to leave but the rules forced him to. He didn't want to go, Wigan didn't want him to leave, the fans didn't want him to leave and yet the stupid rules rob us of a young and promising player. He was not the finished artical by any means and as I said previously his positional play was not up to much at times but even if letting him go was the "least worst"option in the clubs eyes I still don't agree withg the rule that made the club do it.

Dave

[Fraggle]

Fraggle posted:

Briscoe going may be explained by the 20/20 rule, but the only reason we have offloaded PJ must be to save money.

DaveO posted:

Why does that follow?

For example Briscoe and Hock could both now be counted as players with more than 20 games due to the number of games played by them last season.

This would mean the club had a squad of 22 players with over 20 games.

Hmm, seems there's more to this 20/20 rule than I knew about. I knew about the "cannot have more than 20 players earning more than £20k/year" bit but didn't realise there was a bit about the number of games people play. That will probably explain it then, although given you need 17 players to start a game having a full-time squad of 20 does seem a bit low. Most clubs have suffered big injury crises in recent years and have to use big squads (was it last year or the year before Leeds had about 33 players in their first team squad?) so 20 seems a bit low.