Sunday, January 29, 2006

Lower the price, Ship them out

With a couple of days left to go before the window shuts, it looks as though our squad list until the end of the season has been finalised.

We must be the only premiership club ever to have nine different strikers on the books at once, and at least 6 of them (possible exceptions being Lisbie and Gislason) will be drawing pretty decent wages from the club I would have thought.

The likes of JJ and Euell have been constantly linked to other clubs over the last 12 months, and yet they are both still at the Valley, not playing football and still costing the club probably 30 grand a week between them.
£120,000 a month works out to a shade under £1.5 million a year that we pay to these two pieces of flotsam.

Evidently there have been enquiries made for both players, Euell most recently with Birmingham, Palace, and Southampton; and JJ with Norwich, Sheff Utd, and reportedly Treviso from Serie A.

So why are they not selling?

Euell's move to Birmingham has hit the skids and now it looks dead in the water. 48 hours until the deadline, and Birmingham's Karen Brady is in no condition to be finalising a transfer. (good luck with that by the way Karen).

Perhaps the club is just asking too much for its players. Drop the price by £500,000 in JJ's case, and £750,000 in Euells case, and re-offer them to the same clubs just to get them off of the wage bill. Otherwise we could find ourselves in the same situation next year, with another chunk of money paid out to players who dont play.
I can't imagine either player will ever sign another contract with Charlton, so surely thats better than letting them walk for free in the end?
Squad depth is important of course but 7 strikers is more than enough, especially seeing as I still think Curbishley will persist with 1 up front for at least 50% of the away games to come.

Then again, maybe the reason they aren't selling is because they are no bloody good. But if we don't talk about that, perhaps the buying clubs wont realise until their cheques have cleared and it's too late...

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