CONFIRMED - Alex Pearce re-signs

[Ups and Downs]

It's true.

[GSY-Royal]

It's true.

Case closed?

[The Real Sandhurst Royal]

Pearce will probally sit out his contract with no transfer fee for Liverpool to pay at the end of the season. If this does happen, Liverpool will pay Pearce a percentage of the transfer fee that they would have paid Reading in January.

All about money at the end of the day as the deal will secure Pearce's financial future.

.

[Royal Lady]

Yeah, and how much will it cost us to bring in another defender to replace him and get him to gel with the team etc - they're cutting off their noses to spite their face here. Unless Pearce is asking stupidly high money, which I just don't think he will be, they should pay him a comparable wage to those around him (excl Pog, which is a ridiculous amount).

We will rue the day we let him go, as we did with Sig and Long imho.

And we can't be short of a few bob, what are we spending the TV revenue money on (didn't we keep getting told that getting promoted was worth £90 million to us?)

[Vision]

Yeah, and how much will it cost us to bring in another defender to replace him and get him to gel with the team etc - they're cutting off their noses to spite their face here. Unless Pearce is asking stupidly high money, which I just don't think he will be, they should pay him a comparable wage to those around him (excl Pog, which is a ridiculous amount).

We will rue the day we let him go, as we did with Sig and Long imho.

And we can't be short of a few bob, what are we spending the TV revenue money on (didn't we keep getting told that getting promoted was worth £90 million to us?)

Trouble is you could say that about every player though couldn't you? Give them what we want cos it would probably cost more to replace them. Someone mentioned it above and I asked the question a while back but I'd be interested to see if Pearce was offered parity with Karacan's deal. I'd be surprised if he was offered less so I'm not sure why he would be worth giving a better deal to. Obviously if he "knows" he can get X amount elsewhere (Liverpool?) then he's perfectly within his rights to hold out for that. To match that though means we're using Liverpool's wage structure and not ours and I'm nt sure we're in a position to do that just yet.

We didn't let Sig or Long go. We sold them both for a substantial amount of money which helped to finance campaigns which were more successful than the last one they played with. As a fan I miss seeing them play of course but as a club I can't see how we've rued the decision at all and it's a completely different case with Pearce as both Sig and Long had recently signed the deals which were put in front of them. A fairer comparison would be Sidwell and we did prove to regret not moving quick enough there but tbh Pearce isn't anywhere near as influential or important to us as he was. IMHO of course.

[Royal Lady]

I know we sold Sig and Long, but what I meant was, we didn't HAVE to, it was just about cashing in on the money for them and it was led by SJM as far as I'm aware. Neither wanted to leave, both were happy to stay - but the Mad Man saw the pounds signs and cashed in.

At least that won't be the case with Pearce, cos he'll go on a free.

[Vision]

If they "really" wanted to stay then they'd have stayed. This notion that we somehow put a gun to their head and forced them to sign for someone else seems a bit far fetched to me. Of course they made noises about being happy here (and I'm sure they were) but both bettered themselves with their moves.

You say we didn't HAVE to sell them but if we didn't then we would have had to recoup money from somewhere else. We know we run at a substantial loss in the Championship so the option then would have been to lose other players that ultimately got us promoted by not paying competitive wages.

It was sad to see both go but given that the team delivered without them what they could't with them, it's a bit rich to say we rue the decision as if it somehow sent us backwards

[Royal Lady]

Substantial loss? I thought our losses were about £4million a season - that's not SUBSTANTIAL in this game, these days!

[Cypry]

I know we sold Sig and Long, but what I meant was, we didn't HAVE to, it was just about cashing in on the money for them and it was led by SJM as far as I'm aware. Neither wanted to leave, both were happy to stay - but the Mad Man saw the pounds signs and cashed in.

At least that won't be the case with Pearce, cos he'll go on a free.

Dear God - I despair.....

Of course we HAD to sell them - if we hadn't HAD to sell them then we wouldn't.....we have run at a loss in excess of £4M a year for the last few years in order to sustain a salary budget which made us competitive at a Championship level - a strategy which has paid of handsomely with promotion to the top level.....however, the downside to that is that somehow we needed to cover that loss. Where did you expect that money to come from? The tooth fairy?

SJM? At a time when his businesses have been in difficult times and he already ad some £28M outstanding in chairmans loans to the club, on which interest was only charged at the lowest possible rate? Do you think he keeps a few £M at the bottom of his sock drawer just to throw at RFC if needed?

What about the banks? Yes, the same banks that slashed the clubs overdraft a couple of years back...of course, they'll chuck a few £M onto our overdraft every year.....

If we hadn't sold Long and Siggy, then the only other option was to reduce the wage bill by £4-6M every year, which would make it highly unlikely that we'd be where we are now.....

As for Pearce, all the indications are that he's off, whether the club like it or not.....in which case, the best case for the club is to try to recoup some of the investment we've made in the player by selling in January. In those terms, it's the last chance saloon - as you rightly say, if we don't sell in January then he'll be gone on a free come the Summer. So what do we do?

Pay him what he wants? Realistically we'd need to match anything that Liverpool might offer at least (given that the player will attach a degree of prestige to playing for one of the so called big clubs), and possibly "break" our wage structure in the process. I guarantee that if Pearce was requesting a deal that fitted with our structure, then we wouldn't be sitting here discussing this now...

Let him go for a free? We could do that, I guess it depends on how much we feel we're "owed" for developing the player, and how much we feel we need to recoup in order to replace him....

Let him go in January? Seems to me that this is the most likely option given that we're not playing him......at the end of the day, we could have already sorted a deal with Liverpool which is conditional on him not starting, or we might just consider that the risk of him becoming injured and unsellable in the upcoming window too great to risk him....yes, there's an argument that says that we should play him to increase our chance of staying up, but it's a fine balance, and I suspect the club considers that the benefit of selling in January outweighs the risk of playing him for a small number of games in the interim...

[Vision]

Substantial loss? I thought our losses were about £4million a season - that's not SUBSTANTIAL in this game, these days!

Without Parachute payments then yeah I'd say it is yes. Without selling it would be substantially more than that too.

Ok dont want this to degenerate into yet another money thread but it's worth remembering that we'd lost the parachute payments when we sold Sig and Long which is basically a 11m dent which has to be made up somewhere. With that extra income plus player sales we'd actually turned a profit the previous 2 championship seasons. However even with players sales first non-parachute championship season shows a loss of 5.4m.

The point I'm making really though is why do you think we "rue" the decision to sell them?. It's not as if we were relegated or even went backwards afterwards. As I say I would have loved to have carried on watching them and we may have gone up a season earlier had we kept Siggy but we can only speculate on that. What we do know is that we gained promotion without those two players so it's hardly the disaster you seem to want to paint it as.

[melonhead]

It's true.

i understand that you think it is.
but im not sure what it is about your opinion based on rumour thats supposed to make me believe it

[melonhead]

Yeah, and how much will it cost us to bring in another defender to replace him and get him to gel with the team etc - they're cutting off their noses to spite their face here. Unless Pearce is asking stupidly high money, which I just don't think he will be, they should pay him a comparable wage to those around him (excl Pog, which is a ridiculous amount).

We will rue the day we let him go, as we did with Sig and Long imho.

And we can't be short of a few bob, what are we spending the TV revenue money on (didn't we keep getting told that getting promoted was worth £90 million to us?)

IF he is asking for 35 K

then id say that would probably m,ove him into the stupidly high range. imo

[melonhead]

I know we sold Sig and Long, but what I meant was, we didn't HAVE to, it was just about cashing in on the money for them and it was led by SJM as far as I'm aware. Neither wanted to leave, both were happy to stay - but the Mad Man saw the pounds signs and cashed in.

At least that won't be the case with Pearce, cos he'll go on a free.

more to do with JM not being able to cope with 5-6 million pound losses in either year, rather than cashing in

cashing in sounds like he took the money, and rubbed the cash over his body while cackling maniacly
when actually it went to balance our losses

[melonhead]

Substantial loss? I thought our losses were about £4million a season - that's not SUBSTANTIAL in this game, these days!

would be for me.
was for JM
and thats the only measure that counts tbf

[melonhead]

quintuple post!

As I say I would have loved to have carried on watching them and we may have gone up a season earlier had we kept Siggy but we can only speculate on that

i think you can safely say if wed kept sig, and long

we wouldnt be in the bottom two

[Vision]

quintuple post!

As I say I would have loved to have carried on watching them and we may have gone up a season earlier had we kept Siggy but we can only speculate on that

i think you can safely say if wed kept sig, and long

we wouldnt be in the bottom two

Would we have even got promoted though?
Would Long have developed into the player he did alongside Sig and playing a different style of football.?

[melonhead]

yes.

[Ian Royal]

Substantial loss? I thought our losses were about £4million a season - that's not SUBSTANTIAL in this game, these days!

and what do you suggest we do in 10 years when we're a further £40m in debt?

[Ian Royal]

It's true.

i understand that you think it is.
but im not sure what it is about your opinion based on rumour thats supposed to make me believe it

I know who his alleged source is and unless he's actually just bullshitting, which I wouldn't put past Jay ( ) - wasn't there a highly suspicious claim about the takeover from Mr U&Ds? - then it's absolutely reliable.

But that's a big IF.

[Royalwaster]

I don't think Alex Pearce should be put in the same bracket as the Sig and Long - did well last season but that was in the Championship. Gorkss did well there too alongside most of the team. Don't think Pearce has really proved he has Premiership class, so I can understand why the club would hold out to pay him silly wages. Think if he goes to Liverpool he'll not play many games but maybe I'll be proved wrong ...