Thetownend.com

Lets hope that this isn't true, and that we dont cash in!!

http://www.mirrorfootball.co.uk/news/Preston-manager-Darren-Ferguson-is-lining-up-a-500-000-bid-for-Swindon-s-former-Celtic-defender-Scott-Cuthbert-article304323.html

Fuck off Fergie.

Seriously 500K is a lot of money, lets hope it being Preston his head isn't turned. If it is and he wants out I guess we'd take it

Money wise I know a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush and all that, but IF he keeps ding what he is doing then he could be worth even more in the future when bigger clubs come in.

Don't sell!

We are ready for the question Noel..............NO DEAL!

If it's true 500k is nothing in the context of our season, will be rejected out of hand.

When was the last time a story in the nationals about us actually panned out? I'm relaxed about this

True Paul, true. Though Fergie the lesser was spotted at a game or two of ours wasn't he?

Nah, that was the bloke from League of Gentlemen

They are expecting to sell Sean St. Ledger to Celtic for £2.5 mill, so they will need a replacement.  £500k is a paltry amount though!

He is worth more than 500k.

The only problem is he only has 18 months on his contract. We should get him signed up for longer asap.

More importantly he needs a decent song.

Best defender since Culverhouse maybe even Calderwood?

would be gutted if we sold him. he is crucial to our season. Scott if youre reading this dont go, we will be at the same level us them next season anyway.

We don't have to sell and I don't think we will sell his value is only going to keep rising and come the end of the season if we either reach the PO or go up automatic his value would have doubled, I'm not so sure that Preston are really any bigger than us anyway.

We will never get out of this division if we keep selling our player's,although if he want's to go i guess there's not much you can do.I think clubs still think they can come along pick up bargains from us still,the sooner these club's get the fucking message they will have to dig a lot deeper the better.

500k is a fucking joke as soon as he's a preston player is value will be worth a lot more so i really hope we tell them to fuck off.

When a team does well in the ccc or lower, other clubs will always prowl for those players. Depends if they go or not.

As for PNE being a bigger club, I'd have to say they are. Have their own stadium, just missed the playoffs last season (I think it was).

It shows how much the team has come on under DW that we have interest from other clubs for some of our players apart from Parkin and Cox in the last 10 years I can not really remember many other players being courted by others.

I'd like to think that with the board saying "your ambition matches ours" its the same with us "the boards ambition must match ours too" to sell our best players when bids start coming in, unless it is a stupid bid would be ridiculous. If we are serious about a promotion/playoff push we need to keep ahold of our best players. Our defence was shaky last year I would not feel confident we could carry on if we lost Cuthbert. The Town is talking about Swindon Town FC now and is on a high, it would be a huge step backwards to lose Cuthbert IMO, it would show a lack of ambition. If we dont make the playoffs then fair enough some playes may want to leave for pastures new but I would be more than a little bit pissed off if we start selling our players now when things finally seem to be falling into place.

My thoughts exactly!

The thing that worries me is greer came out yesterday and said don't sell our stars,which gives me an uneasy feeling about we maybe considering the offer,I hope what greer said was just an off the cuff remark and not that he actually knows something we dont.

Another factor if we did sell him surely that could harm the sale of attracting new season ticket holders.

Exactly my point about "your ambition must match ours from the board" well their ambition should match ours as well.

500,000 is woeful. Tell 'erm to do one.

didn't they sell that St Ledger bloke for a good few mill?? if he's worth that then Scottys worth at least 3X what they're offering! We must keep this team together.

why the fuck would you want to go to preston.

the place is a fucking dive and its not twinned with disney

:D

Two quick thoughts. One - always ignore the adver. Two - when was the last time there was any higher league interest in one of our defenders?

Newcastle - Tozer.

Aberdeen - Ifil

Hes' our most valuable player money wise. Need him to sign an extension in the summer.

Give him a showcase in the CCC and he'll be worth 1.5 million.

no surprised clubs are sniffing around our players.
cuthbert is our best defender by a fucking mile, and it would be a massive loss if he went.
fitton and wilson need to tie our better players up into attractive contracts quickly, or they will go elsewhere.
we are right up there, and have a massive chance of the play offs.i hope our players will at least see the season out here and try to be part of a promotion winning team.

Is everyone forgetting that we currently need to sell players to balance the books? I doubt anyone decent will leave before the transfer window closes but the chances are we'll have to sell someone, possibly Cuthbert, over the summer to offset some of the losses.

Unless we make it to the playoff final as win or lose, that would cover most of the seasons losses.

What worries me is if we don't make the playoffs or we lose in the playoffs we will lost players like Cuthbert, Douglas, McGovern and maybe a few more, We will have a great chance for auto next season if we fail to go up this year but we need to keep this team together at least until the end of next season.

Not forgetting no,but how the hell are we going to get out of this league if we sell our best players everytime someone comes knocking,all you doing is treading water all the time which is a waste of time because you're unsettling the team just as they begin to click,even if we dont make it this year we would have a great chance next season if the team are kept together.

Balancing books wont get you promoted and surely a promotion to championship would help cover the losses,whats the point of them saying we want to be in the championship when they wont take a few risks.

Gazza is spot on what he said about matching ambition earlier.

There will be circa £2m written back this year due to the cva. No idea on our cashflow, but that and the sale of Cox, we might break even profit wise

That £2m CVA thing won't show on this years profit and loss though will it, won't it just be an adjustment on the balance sheet? Obviously the Cox sale will help but we'd still be looking at selling another player for £1m plus over the summer to cover next season's inevitable loss. Unless we are promoted / make the play off final.

Its annoying but until we are breaking even we'll be selling our best players to balance the books. We should be grateful that at least we can hold out for a decent offer, rather than accepting the first offer that comes in - its progress of a sort.

Unless someone wants to pay £2m for him we should refuse any bids til the summer.  If we dont go up some of our better players may want to leave and there isnt much we can do about that

Do what we did this season. Sell a player (Cox) and use the money to attract good players out of contract ala Douglas. Players of that ilk will be available in the summer and I trust Danny and our new and improved scouting system to find and sign them.

Surely cup games against Wolves, Norwich and Fulham would have bought in some un budgeted for income?

our board are loaded and we're sat comfortably in the play off zone.flogging players to balance the books aint gonna attract season ticket holders.
speculate to accumilate.we should be flogging nobody unless they are deadwood like peacock and aljofree.their combined wages should go on a centre mid who knows where the goal is

Considering the amount of utter shite that gets printed in the nationals about transfer rumours at any level, much less about our level where the nationals notoriously know fuck all, I think people are getting a bit carried away in treating this as a real possibility.

Calm down, dears, it's just the Mirror

Si Pie's correct. It will show as a 'profit' as we paid less to creditors than we should've due to the CVA.

Selling players at a profit to help with the funding of the club is part of the business plan, Fitton has been quite open about this. We cant expect the owners to just chuck in £3 million a year for ever.

They have to be sold at a good price though, selling a player for a fraction of his true value would mean we need more cash out of the owners in the long run. £500K is nowhere near fair value for Cuthbert especially when a percentage would almost certainly have to be passed on the Celtic.

The wealth of our backers doesnt mean players wont be sold, but it does mean they wont be sold on the cheap.

why would it cost 3 mill per year?

Well it did last year, hopefully the amount will come down but until it does that`s the figure Im going by.

Even if its £1million or £2million the point stands, we`re not going to be breaking even any time soon.

And we never will unless we get championship football,crowds of 7k will not be good enough,we have the backers now,if they want us in the championship then they need to take a few risks it's not as if they cant afford to is it ?


 

That is something i totally agree with, The board need to do all they can to get us into the championship because from then on things should get even better, Crowds will obviously improve quite a lot and then there's TV money etc etc, They might need to spend some money to get there but it will be well worth it providing we can stay there when we get there!

Problem is our crowds have been shit for years. Even before the Prem days (in the old 2nd division) we were only getting 7-8k for games against Oxford, Derby and Watford and even 5k for Grimsby! All the people who have moved to the town since then have their own teams, and we lost a generation of younger fans under the old regime. Will the crowds rise that much if we got promoted? (time to hug a plastic perhaps  :soapy tit wank:) And if they didn't, I can't see the present board digging any deeper into their pockets to keep us going.

There are a lot of big clubs in the Championship now who would take a large following to away games with them.

the fans need to come out in numbers now to show the board they are there.
i dont think there are any excuses now not to get out and support the team.if fitton shows he's trying to build a promotion teamand keeps the better players,then it's up to the fans to show they will support them.

There plenty of good reasons why taking a risk by spending money you don't have in an attempt to secure a higher level of football is a really, really bad idea. Crystal Palace and Portsmouth for starters. Oh, and us a few years ago.

The board have already made it very clear they will not piss their money away and why should they?

I really don't know what there is to complain about. If the right offer is made for a player they will be sold, the difference now is that the right offer will be a decent sum of money and we won't be selling anyone on the cheap.

Are you not getting sidetracked a little bit,palace and pompey went out and brought players to buy promotion,Im talking about keeping the players we got not buying more.

What happends if leeds come in with a bid for charlie,do you think we should sell him just to keep the books balanced.I suppose one thing we can look forward to if thats the case,at least we will get cheap season tickets each season while we stagnate in league one.

WAsn't we all talking about Paynter leaving for Rovers last week - and this week it is Cuthbert to Preston.....isn't there a themse somewhere....i.e. it's all bollox

There is a huge difference between splashing cash we dont have and not selling our current players.

Unless Manchester United come in with a 7m bid we should reject all other offers!

Cuthbert is only going to get better and better, so in the long run should be worth more money. On the flip side this time next year he'll be able to talk to anyone. End of next season he will still be under 24 wont he? not that we will get fair value.

In conclusion - get him to sign an extension asap so he is contracted here till 2012.

One thing that weighs heavily in our favour is how we dealt with Simon's transfer in the summer.

Scotty knows that we will not hold him back when the right deal comes along.

Usually a move to Preston for a Town player would be a good one for the individual, but a player of Scott's ability and potential can and will aim a lot higher.

He's worth plenty more than GBP500,000 too.

How much is promotion or even just a play-off campaign to us financially?

£47.28

Technically a PO spot is more financially rewarding in the short term as you get TV cash for both legs and then obviously the final plus increased gate receipts, sponsorship and advertising

Obviously if you occupy one of the top 2 spots you don't get that financial reward but in the longer term it is more financially rewarding being in the CCC due to increased tv revenue and increased league payouts at the end of the season

I found this document on the Football League website which covers the 2006/7 play offs;

http://www.football-league.co.uk/staticFiles/ba/91/0,,10794~37306,00.pdf

Basically;

- Semi Finals: 50% of the gate receipts goes in to the pool account (which I think is shared out amongst all clubs in the division). The other 50% goes in to a pool, division by division, which is then shared out between the 4 clubs in the play offs. So each club in the play offs gets 12.5% of the total gate receipts for the 4 semi finals.

- Finals: 50% goes in to the pool account. The other 50% is shared by the 2 clubs in the final. Programme sales and perimeter advertising are viewed included in the gate receipts.

- TV Money: Looks like this is not viewed as being any part of the proceeds of the games.

So about £150k in gate receipts for the semi finals and £300k for the final (both based on 60k at £20).

I think he knows it's worth some money, but was asking "How much?".

Fuck me, I just read how much the tickets were for last seasons League 1 Play Off Final:

http://www.football-league.co.uk/play-offs/news/20090518/league-1-play-off-final-ticket-information_2246527_1661665

£30 to £84 with half price for concessions for all tickets except the £84 ones. A decent ticket was £50 minimum.

£84 to watch a League 1 match?

Shit on toast! Does that include complimentary canapes?

Better start saving!!

Bearing in mind we paid in the region of 200k for him in the summer and, as someone else noted, no doubt we'd be inclined to give celtic a 25% cut, we'd make a 125K profit. Not a chance Mr Ferguson. On a side note, I got the away shirt with Cuthbert printed on the back for my birthday last week so he better not go!

Your old mans a cunt ............Your old mans a cunt ............Your old mans a cunt ............ Darren Ferguson, your old mans a cunt ............

As long as one of the canapes is NOT shit on toast.

I was about to point that out to you. A day out at Wembley doesn't come cheap these days, seeing as the FA have a lot of money to make up. Whilst beign in the play-offs would benefit the club financially, it won't do us fans an aweful lot of good. To go to all three games you'd be looking at a bare minimum of £60 on match tickets, plus a train to London, plus travel to somewhere else (potentially all the way up to Huddersfield) for the semis. That's got to be over £100, for the cheap seats, before you even include beer money etc

I did some more checking and the £84 tickets are the "Club Wembley" ones. Which are the seats for the Wembley season ticket holders, which cost a fortune and include every match played there except for the play off finals. They get offered to the Wembley season ticket holders first, not sure what happens if they don't take them - they have remained empty for some games in the past but I think they've sorted that out now.

On the plus side you do get a padded seat and access to all the really, really expensive bars and restaurants.

But still, £84?


I reckon there would have been a good argument for the FL to tell the FA to stick Wembley where the sun doesn't shine and keep the matches at the Millennium Stadium instead. I'd laugh if the FL could use the Champions League double booking to get out of the contract and switch the venue permanently, failing that they should shaft them for as much money as possible.

Fuck off Preston!

Offer us £8m and youve got a deal but otherwise fuck off  ;)

So on the plus side, as well as getting raped for the ticket price, you get the chance to get done over again when you want a drink? Fantastic!

Rubbish story. They've taken a snippet from the Adver which said Cuthbert has been watched and just made it up.

100% correct Mr D.  Too many people, just because they see something in print, think that there has to at least be something in it. 'No smoke without fire' and all that. Well, when we get to Tuesday when the window has closed and Cuthbert, Paynter and JPM are still here, those people will see that there is indeed smoke without fire and that the tabloids just print any old shit they like. They could not give a toss if there is any truth in it or not.

We do not HAVE to sell players right now and Fitton et al want promotion. Selling players will not help that cause and I can reveal that, amazingly enough, Fitton aint stupid. Therefore, no one is going anywhere.

As the man said, calm down dears ::)

Ooooh Ooooh Barny Mcgroo Cuthbert dibble and grub.....my player of the season so far...why go to Preston when hopefully he will fulfill his dream with us......the possible Scotland call up may depend on him playing championship footy though....hears hoping its with us.

Scott Cuthbert is a footballer like any other - he'll go if we accept the offer and they offer to pay him more than we do.

Yes of course he will. If there's actually been an offer and If we accept it and If this isn't just the usual redtop shite to fill a few more inches. I can't believe people are getting their knickers in such a twist about treating this as if it's fact.

you can bet if there isn't a club about to make an offer,one will come the summer.
a clubs best players will always be wanted by another

Yes, quite probably. But that's a completely different situation isn't it - the point here is that some stringer for the nationals has made up some load of cock based on Ferguson Jr being at the CG (and let's face it, that's why this story has appeared - because stories about Fergie Jr are very saleable atm) and people are treating it as a given that Fitton's packing Cuthbert's bags for him as we speak and bemoaning our lack of ambition/status/whatever on the back of it.

Think we can safely claim our smug points now OST! :)