Hughton speaks on the price of keeping top players.
Posted on January 16th, 2010 | 57 Comments |
With the club having to survive on a turnover that is almost half what it was in the Premiership, Hughton defended the decision, even though it may affect the terms offered to new players joining the club.
First though, he spoke about the ongoing negotiations to keep Danny Simpson at the club, saying:
“Danny is in the right frame of mind to play on Monday night, even though it might be his last game for us.
“As part of the agreement, his last game is on Monday, but Danny is a very good professional week in, week out and I would not anticipate any problems with his frame of mind.
“It is something we are still working on. It is a normal process and the negotiations are still ongoing.
“It is always a possibility someone else could come in for him, but at the moment it is not something I’m thinking about.
“Negotiations are taking place, and they are always very private. Sometimes it does not end up that way, but the starting position has to be it is private between the player and the negotiator.
“Danny has done very well for us and we are hopeful something will happen. It is probably getting a little bit boring I suppose.
“Most people are aware there are players that we are interested in. Danny is one of them, as is Jermaine Beckford.”
On the more general situation he added:
“This club is going through a transitional period.
“We have gone down a division with players still earning Premier League wages, and that can not be sustained for years and years.
“It is where we are at the moment and, if we can continue doing what we are doing, then hopefully we will not have to sustain it in the Championship for too much longer.
“Hopefully, we can start talking about signing players on Premier League wages again. When we reached that pivotal period in the summer, and we were not really sure what was going to happen in terms of players coming and going, there was a decision to make.
“Thankfully, the decision was a lot of the players on big money would stay.
“The club could have pushed it the other way and decided to get rid of every big earner on the books, but they didn’t.
“The statement from the club was that we wanted to have a go and that in turn meant continuing to carry the massive wage bill we have.
“I would rather have the senior players in the squad and have to run a tight ship than have sold a lot more players in the summer but have a bit more money to spend.”
Hughton went on:
“Ultimately, it is the club’s decision.
“I wanted to keep everybody here. As temporary coach at the time, I would have been happy to have had Damien (Duff), Oba (Martins) and Habib (Beye) as well.
“I would have been happy to have kept every player in the squad, but that is from a coach and management point of view.
“The club have to make a decision of where they need to balance the books and they decided to keep enough of the senior players to allow us to be in the position we are today.”
Expect very little transfer activity….another window bites the dust.