Squad Development 2019/20 Part 1

[mack]

11 hours ago, Upthehill said:

I know this goes against the narrative but this simply isn’t true. We spent an almost identical amount in the season with Cejudo and Riera.

And the other seasons?

WSW haven't spent what the other three major clubs have. Our academy is no more or less expensive than the City or Victory academy projects, and everyone got free land to build them on. On the field SFC sign Del Piero, Victory sign Honda, City sign Cahill, we sign Piovaccari. The way Lederer talks about the academy it makes it sound like he's a martyr for building it, and not just doing what a football club owner should be doing.

Missing Hersi in the Mariners GF cost us that game, dud Piovaccari cost us a Premiership & Grand Final vs Adelaide, Borda, Jumpei, Adeleke etc etc all rubbish.

SFC have won 5 trophies in that time. Wellington went from 9th last year to 6th. Victory managed to jag a grand final win. Perth went from 8th to Premiership winners in one season.

We've gone backwards 3 years in a row with little more than platitudes from Lederer.

Ribery should be Lederer's apology for the garbage recruitment and performance.

[Upthehill]

3 minutes ago, mack said:

And the other seasons?

WSW haven't spent what the other three major clubs have. Our academy is no more or less expensive than the City or Victory academy projects, and everyone got free land to build them on. On the field SFC sign Del Piero, Victory sign Honda, City sign Cahill, we sign Piovaccari. The way Lederer talks about the academy it makes it sound like he's a martyr for building it, and not just doing what a football club owner should be doing.

Missing Hersi in the Mariners GF cost us that game, dud Piovaccari cost us a Premiership & Grand Final vs Adelaide, Borda, Jumpei, Adeleke etc etc all rubbish.

SFC have won 5 trophies in that time. Wellington went from 9th last year to 6th. Victory managed to jag a grand final win. Perth went from 8th to Premiership winners in one season.

We've gone backwards 3 years in a row with little more than platitudes from Lederer.

Ribery should be Lederer's apology for the garbage recruitment and performance.

The money was spent on those players, they were just absolute duds. I already addressed that in the previous post. Horrible recruitment has been our issue. 

People are ignoring the response here, we aren’t allowed to spend much less than other clubs due to the cap floor. The bracket is about 250k. 

Not spending on another marquee is inexcusable, absolutely agree. But that’s the only place SFC has outspent us. Do you believe a single marquee will make the difference when we recruit guys like Cejudo and Pio?

[mack]

Honda & Del Piero cost more than we've spent on marquees in our entire life as a club.

[Upthehill]

2 minutes ago, mack said:

Honda & Del Piero cost more than we've spent on marquees in our entire life as a club.

Del piero was 2m a season. Riera was 1.4m.

Honda reporter as 3m - he’s the expensive one. But Victory fans were happy to see the back end of him.

Adelaide, Mariners and Glory all did it without huge spend on marquees. 

We’ve historically had bigger issues than our marquee spend

[wswnick]

Honda and Del Piero didn't win anything for their teams 🤷‍♂️

[scarcev]

On 01/06/2019 at 2:58 PM, mack said:

We have four owners who collectively are worth easily half a billion dollars.

Lederer wrote that "we have not taken our eyes off the prize" in January 

Ribery comes up and they bottle it because they don't want to spend the year the club moves into a stadium that was built for free at a cost of $360 million dollars. That's money that the owners don't have to pay. Almost any other country in the world if a club wants a stadium the owners have to pay for it. Here, the Government did it.

Especially after 3 seasons of utter **** on the pitch, and the one before that ended in a choke where we didn't win anything, you'd think the owners would jump at the chance to fill the stadium and sign a player who could win games on his own.

Yet here we are watching high class players sail over our heads so that Lederer can sit in the executive box and count the membership money instead of investing like an owner should. If Lederer owned a club in Europe and did what he's done to WSW by being cheap and refusing to open his chequebook they'd have been relegated multiple times already.

Lederer talks and talks and talks and talks and uses "we built an academy" as an excuse for not signing good players.

If he and the owners don't like being called cheap they can open up their musty wallets and show some ambition. Or sell the club to someone who does.

You know why these owners are worth a collective billion dollars, because they don't throw their money away.  It is not only about playing talent it is about performance, Riera, ABJ, Roly, Dimas, Kresinger, Pioviccari, Borda, Cejudo the list could go on all had to get paid even though they didn't perform. You think the investors would be happy with their return on investment from some of those names? Playing talent alone does not win you a Premiership of any kind, motivation and hunger are just as (if not more) important, look at our ACL win, if you had said before a ball was kicked these boys we assembled at the time would win you an ACL you would of been committed to a loony bin.  When Ono come on board (easily our best, well most talented anyway player in our short history) I can guarantee you that only the absolute diehards even knew who he was, he was hardly a big name.  Honda comes along wins nothing, Del Piero wins nothing.  Football in this country is a lottery, the salary cap ensures that, sure you can buy a few more tickets in the lottery but there is no way it guarantees success.  The season after we won the ACL was always going to be a bust, it simply had to be, you cant have players in training for 18 months and expect anything else.  The following season we had players all over the place due to wanting bonuses, extended contracts and upgrades and wanting more and we got left out in the cold by Popovic at the worst possible time after that.  If you really thought that the result was going to be any different with first Gumbi and now with Babbel one season each in then you are kidding yourself.  We have a world class academy that is free for players and have already seen the success of this on the park only 2 seasons in, that costs money.  As for "If he and the owners don't like being called cheap they can open up their musty wallets and show some ambition. Or sell the club to someone who does." well who would buy us (or any A League Club) in the current climate anyway.  Be careful what you wish for because at the moment our owners actually are here not to make money (cos there is none in football in Australia) but because they love WSW, imagine how great it is going to be if we get sold to a Bakrie or someone similar.

[StringerBellend]

2 hours ago, Upthehill said:

Del piero was 2m a season. Riera was 1.4m.

Honda reporter as 3m - he’s the expensive one. But Victory fans were happy to see the back end of him.

Adelaide, Mariners and Glory all did it without huge spend on marquees. 

We’ve historically had bigger issues than our marquee spend

What Victory fans were happy to see the back of him?

I agree that our issues are wider than marquee spend, although that is a very visible sign of the failure of the last 3-4 seasons, and the lack of ambition.

Hopefully the club plan, was to set the foundations of youth system in place etc. and now we are back at Parra to address the on field. A decent marquee or two would show a sign of intent from the club, early days so we shall see what happens.

 

[StringerBellend]

3 hours ago, Upthehill said:

The money was spent on those players, they were just absolute duds. I already addressed that in the previous post. Horrible recruitment has been our issue. 

People are ignoring the response here, we aren’t allowed to spend much less than other clubs due to the cap floor. The bracket is about 250k. 

Not spending on another marquee is inexcusable, absolutely agree. But that’s the only place SFC has outspent us. Do you believe a single marquee will make the difference when we recruit guys like Cejudo and Pio?

The bracket under the cap is 250k, the bracket when you include marquees can be millions

\we have recruited badly now for years. 

A single marquee won't be the difference, to results, but two decent ones plus a couple of decent foreign under the cap would be and a couple of solid locals would be. It would also make a huge difference to the quality of football, we get to watch. Some weeks Ono was worth the ticket price alone. 

 

[Upthehill]

8 hours ago, StringerBellend said:

What Victory fans were happy to see the back of him?

I agree that our issues are wider than marquee spend, although that is a very visible sign of the failure of the last 3-4 seasons, and the lack of ambition.

Hopefully the club plan, was to set the foundations of youth system in place etc. and now we are back at Parra to address the on field. A decent marquee or two would show a sign of intent from the club, early days so we shall see what happens.

 

He had 6 good games and essentially checked out according to the victory forums. None seemed to interested in getting him to extend

[Erebus]

There's no return on investment by signing someone like Ribery for $5M with the league's current state.

We all know of the communist nature of merchandise sales and revenue. If everyone bought a Ribery jersey from Rebel and Nike, WSW get about 10% of that and other HAL clubs get a cut too. There is no prize money in the HAL, so why spend $5M on one player to win it?

ACL prize money is tiny too, and you only get a few million if you win it, that's a long slog and near 2 years (and a bunch of Opex) after you used Ribery to qualify.

We'll probably get 16k memberships again, without Ribery. His signing will merely boost away crowds - not really benefiting WSW bank account.

We were never going to get someone like Ribery, but the point of those statements were a sign of intent that we WERE looking at a high profile player. And he's 36. Everyone here complains about retirement league and yet want to splash $5M+ on a 36 year old to play in Aussie summer and hard surfaces. He could have a worse season than Honda in terms of injury and that money is gone.

 

Anyway, Montolivo and De Rossi are still available

[LeeMarvin]

10 hours ago, Upthehill said:

He had 6 good games and essentially checked out according to the victory forums. None seemed to interested in getting him to extend

I also thought Honda's contribution was underwhelming.  The Fox commentators kept talking it up, but I guess they had to promote the value of their investment.

[wswnick]

Ryan McGowan is a free agent

[Hughesy]

As much as it pains me to say, no one has come even close to nailing their marquees the way Sydney has for the last 4 years. 

When Arnie took over one of the first things he did was make it clear that players like Del Piero were no longer a target. He went and bought good players, at their peak, who would hang around for 2-3 seasons to build a team around and give them much more bang for their buck. The rest is history. Do you think they really give a **** that they didn’t get Torres last season?

So it really puzzles me why people are so hellbent on signing guys like Ribery and get so upset and accusatory of Lederer and co. when it doesn’t happen.

The marquee strategy that wins trophies is more than clear and has been proven time and time again - lower the star factor, increase the peak factor and spend wisely, not wrecklessly. 

Sometimes I wonder if people are more interested in the spectacle of watching a (once) big name than actually building a good football team...

[mack]

3 hours ago, LeeMarvin said:

I also thought Honda's contribution was underwhelming.  The Fox commentators kept talking it up, but I guess they had to promote the value of their investment.

Honda still scored 7 goals and 7 assists. Sure about 4 of those were penalties, but those still have to be scored (see: Riera). Victory's league points total would have won the league in two of the seasons with 27 games, and finished 2nd in another 5 seasons. He also had two other players scoring a ton of goals as well (Toivenen and Barbarouses getting 15 each) so he didn't necessarily need to be as offensively minded.

Victory happened to have a season that was both 'good' in terms of overall A-League history, but bad compared to their expectations and their eventual placing against the two teams who stepped up a gear. Getting destroyed 6-1 in the Semi-Final isn't really Honda's fault. Their defence let their attack down.

It's obviously it wasn't a brilliant contribution but he was still a step ahead of a lot of players. He did about as well in attack as Diego Castro while also doing a huge amount more defensive work.

As for the Victory fans who thought he'd 'checked out' that doesn't gel at all with what their players & staff had been saying about Honda.

[alexd]

11 minutes ago, hughsey said:

 

Ono was both though many hadn't heard of him. Totally agree.

Plus i would rather have 5 Polenzes than 1 Ribery

Edited June 3, 2019 by alexd

[mack]

11 minutes ago, hughsey said:

The marquee strategy that wins trophies is more than clear and has been proven time and time again - lower the star factor, increase the peak factor and spend wisely, not wrecklessly. 

Sometimes I wonder if people are more interested in the spectacle of watching a (once) big name than actually building a good football team...

Apart from Riera our foreigners have ranged from mediocre to literally some of the worst foreign players in the history of the A-League (Adeleke, Piovaccari, Borda) so we haven't been able to do either, we don't have star power, we don't have peak factor and we haven't spent wisely except for Riera who was wasted because of the rest of the team.

Can you blame people for wanting to go after a proven talent instead of Jumpei V2.0.

[Hughesy]

5 minutes ago, mack said:

Honda still scored 7 goals and 7 assists. Sure about 4 of those were penalties, but those still have to be scored (see: Riera). Victory's league points total would have won the league in two of the seasons with 27 games, and finished 2nd in another 5 seasons. He also had two other players scoring a ton of goals as well (Toivenen and Barbarouses getting 15 each) so he didn't necessarily need to be as offensively minded.

Victory happened to have a season that was both 'good' in terms of overall A-League history, but bad compared to their expectations and their eventual placing against the two teams who stepped up a gear. Getting destroyed 6-1 in the Semi-Final isn't really Honda's fault. Their defence let their attack down.

It's obviously it wasn't a brilliant contribution but he was still a step ahead of a lot of players. He did about as well in attack as Diego Castro while also doing a huge amount more defensive work.

Honda and Del Piero = 0 trophies

[Davo]

So no worse off than we're currently doing but we get more sponsors and media attention?

[Hughesy]

5 minutes ago, Davo said:

So no worse off than we're currently doing but we get more sponsors and media attention?

Does it though? It may not have been consistently but we’ve had players of that higher star power here over the years yet I wouldn’t say the HAL has ever been full to the brim with commercial opportunities and sponsors. Did Victory really benefit that much from Honda off the field? 

[Erebus]

43 minutes ago, mack said:

Apart from Riera our foreigners have ranged from mediocre to literally some of the worst foreign players in the history of the A-League (Adeleke, Piovaccari, Borda) so we haven't been able to do either, we don't have star power, we don't have peak factor and we haven't spent wisely except for Riera who was wasted because of the rest of the team.

Can you blame people for wanting to go after a proven talent instead of Jumpei V2.0.

Leandro Love says hello. MV have had a bunch of REALLY poor Visa players. So have SFC - van der Linden anyone?

Every team has had REALLY bad Visa players. You and I could probably name at least 1 or 2 bad Visas from each team off the top of our head since we've both watched the HAL since inception.

WSW's just seem worse because:

a. they're playing for OUR team

b. they seem SO MUCH MORE closer together (ie frequent) than other team's 

But let's be real here. Thus far Babbel's recruitment seems decent. AB10 was disappointing, but that was an attitude thing not an ability thing. Zeigler, the jury is out. But the new Swiss pair on paper seem good.

Duke, Yeboah = good signings.

Babbel using his contacts to even NAME Ribery as a potential = good signs.

We can debate until the cows come home, but everyone at the club KNOWS that next season needs to be massive. They are not going to have a chilled off-season.

[LeeMarvin]

7 minutes ago, Erebus said:

everyone at the club KNOWS that next season needs to be massive

For what it is worth I checked the odds yesterday and we are paying $12 to win the 2019-20 A-League and $13 the FFA Cup.

[Davo]

19 minutes ago, hughsey said:

Does it though? It may not have been consistently but we’ve had players of that higher star power here over the years yet I wouldn’t say the HAL has ever been full to the brim with commercial opportunities and sponsors. Did Victory really benefit that much from Honda off the field? 

Outside of the free promotion you get from the Fox Sports team tugging themselves raw over a top level marquee every time they do a promo/intro/outro/highlights package/talk at all, I can't see how it wouldn't increase sponsorship income. These days things like retweets, facebook likes and other social media interactions have an impact on the sponsorship dollar you can demand. I'm sure Victory suddenly got a lot of this sort of thing from Japan, AC Milan supporters, etc when they signed Honda, just like we would have picked up with Ono, certainly more than we would have picked up with a Riera or a Cejudo.

Then there's the benefit of other players wanting to sign for you when you show that sort of ambition. Victory signed Toivonen almost a month after signing Honda and I'm sure seeing that sort of signing would be a factor in making the decision.

[wswnick]

1 hour ago, LeeMarvin said:

For what it is worth I checked the odds yesterday and we are paying $12 to win the 2019-20 A-League and $13 the FFA Cup.

So if my math checks out, if I put $100 on us to win the league, then I stand to lose $100?

[THEWANDERERSPOST]

Thoughts?

Yeboah      Marquee Striker     Duke

                    Marquee AM

    Jedinak/Baccus        Schwegler

Georgevski    Spira     Ziegler    Mcgowan

                          Lopar

[Upthehill]

On 02/06/2019 at 12:52 PM, mack said:

And the other seasons?

Sorry missed that - I addressed the rest in that post. What did I miss?

[ZachMercer]

Alright then. Enough of all this logical, well contrusted dialogue. It's a cold Monday night, who's gonna heat things up with some random youtube targets.

[Upthehill]

4 hours ago, mack said:

Honda still scored 7 goals and 7 assists. Sure about 4 of those were penalties, but those still have to be scored (see: Riera). Victory's league points total would have won the league in two of the seasons with 27 games, and finished 2nd in another 5 seasons. He also had two other players scoring a ton of goals as well (Toivenen and Barbarouses getting 15 each) so he didn't necessarily need to be as offensively minded.

Victory happened to have a season that was both 'good' in terms of overall A-League history, but bad compared to their expectations and their eventual placing against the two teams who stepped up a gear. Getting destroyed 6-1 in the Semi-Final isn't really Honda's fault. Their defence let their attack down.

It's obviously it wasn't a brilliant contribution but he was still a step ahead of a lot of players. He did about as well in attack as Diego Castro while also doing a huge amount more defensive work.

As for the Victory fans who thought he'd 'checked out' that doesn't gel at all with what their players & staff had been saying about Honda.

Why are we addressing midfield players in the context of goal scoring players? I hear this constantly and it’s bogus. They play a supporting role in that spectrum, that is all.

“Getting destroyed 6-1 in the Semi-Final isn't really Honda's fault. Their defence let their attack down.” - did you see their midfield that game? Massive shambles.

”It obviously wasn’t a brilliant contribution” - probably wouldn’t raise him in the context of providing evidence as to why we underspend, then.

“As for the Victory fans who thought he'd 'checked out' that doesn't gel at all with what their players & staff had been saying about Honda.” - consummate professional... yadda yadda yadda. They spent 3 million and came up with nothing. His outout was extraordinarily short lived

This whole debate comes down to ‘does money win you trophies in the context of the restrictions of Australian football?’ - without a shadow of a doubt no, it doesn’t. Have we underspent? Absolutely. Could we have done better with the same money? Fu/ck me, we won the ACL on the budget of a homeless man.

[GD07]

Ribery would be after $5M+ easily, I doubt Lederer would be willing to go above $3M for anyone. 

Although with the shitshow that was the last 3 years plus moving into the new stadium, you’d think he might make a one off exception. 

[wswnick]

Vidosic off overseas so scratch him off any list he may have been on

[Zelinsky]

S5 keeps coming up, and rightfully so, that's when it all went downhill.

By mid July 2016 Pinatares, Borda and Jumpei had been announced, and once Clisby, Melling and Bulut had signed up a month later we were genuinely screwed. They were supposed to have been the replacements for Andreu, Alberto, Castelen, Jamo, Bridge - what a joke!

Meanwhile, in June 2019, we've signed a local defender who is worth both descriptions, a DM from the BL, a GK from the Swiss Super League. Ziegler will feel like a new addition, and when he turns into Aussie Patrick he'll free a spot for a sixth import.  Duke and Yeboah will be even more valuable with a full pre season under the belt.

And yet we are complaining that Ribery is not coming?

WSW relying on (and being vulnerable to) the interest of its owners is club's biggest risk. This has been mitigated by establishing a quality training facility and successful lobbying for a new football stadium in Parramatta. Of course it would be nice if the owners were to spend big. But it is much more important that the club can be successful without ongoing financial intervention of the owners, current and future.