Independent Leyton Orient Forum

Kent posted a question on Twitter, which was quite amusing. I wonder if he was gauging the appetite for things in future.

Anyway, with a limited amount of characters to explain it appears that most people have missed the point.

In a very literal sense, all clubs are selling clubs. Most players can and will have their head turned by others. Even Neymar left Barcelona.

But I think that isn't what is being got at. There is another definition of 'selling' club in my mind, which is someone like Peterborough. Other clubs simply buy players based largely on ability and fit. The true selling club would purchase a player with a profitable exit route already in mind. The biggest profits on players come from those who are young, exciting and attacking, and have performed well. They won't do this with every signing, as the team needs a balance of potential and experience, but they speculate to accumulate. Their errors are more than balanced out by their successes.

Peterborough have not delivered on the pitch relative to their riches, a long spell in League One is testament to that. They have had several players who have outgrew the club and had to be sold. But this readiness to sell means that players understand they will be gone. Many only last a season, if the interest dictates. None seem to put an artificially low release clause into their contracts in case the club don't get promoted to force a move like we had to with Bonne.

Why more clubs don't do it is obvious to me. They have to pay out large fees for players who are not proven, and have no idea what they might get for them in future. For most clubs, there may be no difference at all between Nicky Ajose and Lee Angol in terms of ability, but one is free and one had a £300,000 bid turned down last year. Peterborough paid £1.1m for Assombalonga after 15 goals in 46 games in League One. After one year, he was re-sold for up to £8m (and they probably got more due to sell ons). Amazing stuff for a L1 team.

It is neither a good thing or a bad thing on its own. If all the profits are going out to line the owners profits, then it is a bad thing.

So, is he saying we will continue to cash in on our assets to the detriment of the playing side?

In response to the initial posting, he's put a number of such things up in the last 4-5 days, such as best and worst of the past 2 years. It strikes me that he's creating debate to learn from.

LittleMate wrote: ↑Sun Jun 30, 2019 12:59 pm In response to the initial posting, he's put a number of such things up in the last 4-5 days, such as best and worst of the past 2 years. It strikes me that he's creating debate to learn from.

For him or us?

Disoriented wrote: ↑Sun Jun 30, 2019 1:07 pm

LittleMate wrote: ↑Sun Jun 30, 2019 12:59 pm In response to the initial posting, he's put a number of such things up in the last 4-5 days, such as best and worst of the past 2 years. It strikes me that he's creating debate to learn from.

For him or us?

He's trying to learn from us, thats why he asked us.

Great

Why is he not stimulating debate on here but hiding his posts away on obscure social media like Twitter.

The great big chicken.

Disoriented wrote: ↑Sun Jun 30, 2019 12:30 pm So, is he saying we will continue to cash in on our assets to the detriment of the playing side?

Detriment to the side ?


Oh dis you are funny at times.

No.you just identify what you are & then get very good at it very quickly .

I would prefer HIS answer TBH.

Always like situations that stimulate debate. It’s often quite surprising what evolves and generally to the benefit of all who are interested in learning. Which should be all of us. And I have no doubt Teague and Travis would include themselves.

But thinking about in there is one or two on here who know it all already. The ones that close down debate with stupid comments.

Of course all clubs sell, it’s the reasons that differ. Some sell out of financial need, others sell with the specific intent on improving the playing squad. Maybe the likes of Barcelona sell because a player just doesn’t fit into the squad and wants to move on.

I’m only interested in why we sell. In the case of Bonne and Koroma we had little choice and would guess a contract extension would have been an option if the players were agreeable. But bigger and better avenues were available and good luck to them, they go with my huge gratitude for contributing to a mega season. It’s how the club deal with it. Wilkinson seems a decent replacement. Wright too looks OK. We await further developments.

It would be nice for Kent to post on here his questions, so Mr Macklin maybe suggest this to Kent?

Anyway, I’ve no issue with selling our best players or players in general as we are not in a position of strength to stop a players development and earning potential at a club which is either higher in the pyramid than us or is able to offer substantially more money to the player concerned.

What I would like us to continue is to develop our young players who are able to make the grade in the first team, be successful for us and then be able to sell them on for profit.

Any player that we sell needs to be replaced by a player of the same level (if possible) for less money (hard I know) or has potential to “train on” to the next level and thus produce the same two conditions I mentioned earlier. Picking up young players from premier league or championship clubs who could realise that with us, but were not quite good enough at that time to crack that level, we’d benefit financially if we discover and pick the right potential.

What we don’t want to do or should look to do is replace them we weaker players or players in turn who have zero sell on potential. Sometimes you’d sign that player say Jobi for what they bring, it if you want a successful business to support the team then you need that return on investment to help move the club forwards in a cash positive basis.

We touched on this last week discussing Brentford. If Teague is thinking along the lines of being a “moneyball” club too, like The Bees and Posh, then he still needs to scratch his head some more about how this turns an overall profit.

Brentford still lose money. Posh estimate they’ve made up to £50mm income from player sales over Fry’s DoF tenure (that’s gross of paying for the player and wages for them whilst at the club), but as the chirpy Fryster has confirmed:

We make a loss every year,” Fry says. “If we budget to lose £3m, and the chairman says he’ll put £1.5m in, it’s my job to find the other £1.5m by selling players.

So maybe Teague is thinking of something else. Or he has other cunning plans that nobody else has thought of...

For a club like the Orient selling young players for profit has always been the way. Youth developement is something we should really invest in as to see talented players come through into the first team makes you feel proud of the club. Mixing that with signing young players from other clubs who improve with first team football is very exciting. In a ideal World we would keep them and reach the Premier league. Unfortunately not going to happen. Looking back over the years (50) i have great memories of players coming through the youth system.

Y'all a silly bunch of doohickies.