Player Contracts

[Manny]

There has been some discussion in other threads about us letting players go for nothing when their contracts expire. So, I thought I'd post the names of those who will be free to leave us at the end of the season.

Goalkeepers:
Jussi Jaaskelainen

Defenders:
Gretar Steinsson
Paul Robinson
Gary Cahill
Zat Knight
Sam Ricketts
Dedryck Boyata (Loan)
Mark Connolly

Midfielders:
Martin Petrov
Ricardo Gardner
Sean Davis
Gael Kakuta (Loan Expires - Jan 1st)

Forwards:
Tuncay (Loan)
Kevin Davies
Ivan Klasnic
Robbie Blake

There are an incredible 16 names on that list. I'm not saying they will all go but if we stay up, we have one hell of a job trying to replace the number of players who could potentially leave us.

Add to that list the names of Michael O'Halloran, Josh Vela, Adam Blakeman, Joe Riley, Rhys Bennett and Jay Lynch. When their contracts expire is not yet public knowledge.

They are mainly academy and reserve team players at the moment, but if we went down and any of them left for nothing, it could be possible that we lose upwards of 20 players before the new season begins.

[H. Pedersen]

Individually, you can see why we haven't renewed these contracts.

Jussi, Robinson, Gardner, Davies, and Blake are old.

Steinsson, Knight, and Petrov haven't really justified their doubtlessly big contracts.

Ricketts, Davis, and Klasnic have had injury problems.

Connolly hasn't even played a league game as far as I know.

Cahill was never going to sign a new contract.

On top of that, our dismal collapse in the second half of last season was a strong indicator that relegation was a real possibility this season; it would be hard to convince guys like Knight or Klasnic to extend their deals when they probably only have one contract left in them.  So all things considered, it's not surprising.  But we do need to keep some of these guys, which is going to be a real struggle if we go down or even if we barely stay up.

[hjd]

Assuming all or most of these players do leave, how do we go about building an entire new team capable of either staying in the PL or challenging for promotion in the Championship with no money?

This sort of follows on from the contracts point, in our financial situation we need to maximise transfer income from our saleable assets, not let them walk away for nothing

[aarons2009]

The players I can see us keeping if we stay up or not are: -

Goalkeepers:
Jussi Jaaskelainen

Defenders:
Gretar Steinsson
Paul Robinson
Zat Knight
Sam Ricketts


Forwards:
Kevin Davies
Ivan Klasnic

And maybe Petrov depending on if we do stay up.

We will still have a very old squad and how we plan on replacing them is antother question.

[H. Pedersen]

For me what this shows is how badly Megson and Gartside screwed the club.  We rightly point out that Megson was able to spend a fortune compared to Coyle, and many of his signings were only short term solutions.

[Squidgy]

Holy Crap, we are going to be playing 5 a side next year.