Nice work, Matt. I think as Marcin alludes to below, the short-sighted nature of the approach is worrying, compared to a, getting your actual targets (Andre and Dewsbury Hall as examples of we didn't), b, getting a balanced deal which as your analysis shows is not really evident as the only reason you get a 'deal' last minute is if a club is desperate to sell and that tells its own story, but also c, now Fulham have been doing this for such a long time all the agents and clubs know what we are trying to do.
The sums also do not add up. I did a simple analysis of 4 players, at varying wages from 40k to 100k a week, signed on Jun 15, July 15 and August 15 and the savings versus signing on September 1st:
Weekly Wage Jun 15. July 15. Aug 15
Player A £50,000 £555,616 £341,918 £121,096
Player B £40,000 £444,493 £273,534 £96,877
Player C £75,000 £833,425 £512,877 £181,644
Player D £100,000. £1,111,233 £683,836 £242,192
Total Wages £2,944,767 £1,812,164 £641,808
So if we signed all 4 on June 15th the total savings is indeed "millions" and that's 1-2 places in the table. I am ignoring interest costs on transfer fees and agents fees. The 25-26 season each place was worth 3-4 million (it's complicated as it's not a fixed amount but other than Forest each team received 3-4 million more than the team one place below) so by signing everyone we need by July 15 is paid off by one place in the table. So TK has been sold a pup by someone and I agree with you that the most likely person doing this is Ali Mac, to justify his inflated salary.
We have already spent so much time trying to sign 2 young players from Real Madrid and we still haven’t actually signed them,we also need other signings for different positions so I hope we are doing something to address this before the transfer window closes.
I know this is more difficult to measure, but if you were to believe that having a complete team sooner in the window leads to better results due to more training time, integration etc., then those “few million saved” on fees, could be made up with a better league table position at the end of the season. Finishing 8th as opposed to 11th - that’s roughly £10M. Are Fulham saving significantly more than that by waiting?
It’s a really interesting question and good point. And, I don’t think the “savings” we gained by waiting come anywhere close to getting to 8th vs. 11th. I also think that the downside risk is probably substantial for waiting as giving up losses for no reasons in the PL can be very, very dangerous (wins are expensive so to speak). Under Marco, that first season up we did the business we needed, 28 days before the deadline, the fastest in all the seasons we were up and then always had a ready core able to enable us to stay up. I worry that the situation and Marco’s ability to get the most out of players allowed our mediocre management team (i.e., Ali Mac) to get away with not closing deals and then claiming that doing so was not a negative but was really a positive (!) (because they saved that few million) all the while ignoring and not “paying for” the very real negative (expected value - also millions) cost of behavior (because of increased risk of losses), if that makes sense. To me the most salient point I came up with is that do we really think Alistair Mackintosh is better at understanding markets, market pricing, expected value (cost and benefits) than Matthew Benham and Tony Bloom (and their teams).
Wouldn't the idea that 'later signings hurt team performance' also mean that the team gets worse results to start the season, while hurriedly signed players are still adjusting, and then get more points from the games at the end of the season once they've figured everything out? This is not how I've seen the PL seasons playing out under Silva. FFC's performances after the final international break in April always dropped off - including this recent season where the drop was actually the *smallest* decline in PPG performance we'd had in the Marco/PL era. Still a decline, but not as steep.
I'm not arguing in favor of later signing, I'm just not sure how 'provable' my desire to get players in earlier actually is. I see the biggest obstacle created by last minute signings is that AliMac and the team's "front office" (warning, US sports term) simply don't have the bandwidth to get everything done during the last 72 hours.
That’s a great point. I think the biggest issue, problem with the strategy is that the team is effectively giving away negotiating days and, most importantly, alternate signings by waiting (because those players are moved off the board) and all for gains that I think are probably hard to prove (that they saved money by waiting to move and haggling). It’s performative (for Ali Mac) not strategic. I think the costs are much much higher than any gains. To use a technical term about the strategy, it’s stupid - ha!
I think one things that is better when waiting until the last moments is teams trying to unload players. So big 6 cast offs, may get their price dropped at the very end. I don’t really think we are targeting those types of players at this point so waiting doesn’t seem better. Just a thought about the situation, though I love the data.
I don’t know if it’s been factored in but if you sign several players early in the window you would of of course be carrying their wages for 2-3 months, which in the great scheme of things would not be inconsiderable.
Fulham came up with Bournemouth and Forest, neither of which is in the comparison group. Seems to me most accurate part here is the NYC subway story. Or “sell stocks in the morning and buy in the afternoon.”
Didn’t include Bournemouth because they went down (and changed ownership). That’s a good point about Nottingham Forest. They are wild with transfers (because of Marinkas and owning Olymipakas). Might look into it. The other team I wished I had included was Aston Villa (similarish wage bill). Glad you liked the subway story :)
Nice work, Matt. I think as Marcin alludes to below, the short-sighted nature of the approach is worrying, compared to a, getting your actual targets (Andre and Dewsbury Hall as examples of we didn't), b, getting a balanced deal which as your analysis shows is not really evident as the only reason you get a 'deal' last minute is if a club is desperate to sell and that tells its own story, but also c, now Fulham have been doing this for such a long time all the agents and clubs know what we are trying to do.
The sums also do not add up. I did a simple analysis of 4 players, at varying wages from 40k to 100k a week, signed on Jun 15, July 15 and August 15 and the savings versus signing on September 1st:
Weekly Wage Jun 15. July 15. Aug 15
Player A £50,000 £555,616 £341,918 £121,096
Player B £40,000 £444,493 £273,534 £96,877
Player C £75,000 £833,425 £512,877 £181,644
Player D £100,000. £1,111,233 £683,836 £242,192
Total Wages £2,944,767 £1,812,164 £641,808
So if we signed all 4 on June 15th the total savings is indeed "millions" and that's 1-2 places in the table. I am ignoring interest costs on transfer fees and agents fees. The 25-26 season each place was worth 3-4 million (it's complicated as it's not a fixed amount but other than Forest each team received 3-4 million more than the team one place below) so by signing everyone we need by July 15 is paid off by one place in the table. So TK has been sold a pup by someone and I agree with you that the most likely person doing this is Ali Mac, to justify his inflated salary.
We have already spent so much time trying to sign 2 young players from Real Madrid and we still haven’t actually signed them,we also need other signings for different positions so I hope we are doing something to address this before the transfer window closes.
I know this is more difficult to measure, but if you were to believe that having a complete team sooner in the window leads to better results due to more training time, integration etc., then those “few million saved” on fees, could be made up with a better league table position at the end of the season. Finishing 8th as opposed to 11th - that’s roughly £10M. Are Fulham saving significantly more than that by waiting?
It’s a really interesting question and good point. And, I don’t think the “savings” we gained by waiting come anywhere close to getting to 8th vs. 11th. I also think that the downside risk is probably substantial for waiting as giving up losses for no reasons in the PL can be very, very dangerous (wins are expensive so to speak). Under Marco, that first season up we did the business we needed, 28 days before the deadline, the fastest in all the seasons we were up and then always had a ready core able to enable us to stay up. I worry that the situation and Marco’s ability to get the most out of players allowed our mediocre management team (i.e., Ali Mac) to get away with not closing deals and then claiming that doing so was not a negative but was really a positive (!) (because they saved that few million) all the while ignoring and not “paying for” the very real negative (expected value - also millions) cost of behavior (because of increased risk of losses), if that makes sense. To me the most salient point I came up with is that do we really think Alistair Mackintosh is better at understanding markets, market pricing, expected value (cost and benefits) than Matthew Benham and Tony Bloom (and their teams).
Wouldn't the idea that 'later signings hurt team performance' also mean that the team gets worse results to start the season, while hurriedly signed players are still adjusting, and then get more points from the games at the end of the season once they've figured everything out? This is not how I've seen the PL seasons playing out under Silva. FFC's performances after the final international break in April always dropped off - including this recent season where the drop was actually the *smallest* decline in PPG performance we'd had in the Marco/PL era. Still a decline, but not as steep.
I'm not arguing in favor of later signing, I'm just not sure how 'provable' my desire to get players in earlier actually is. I see the biggest obstacle created by last minute signings is that AliMac and the team's "front office" (warning, US sports term) simply don't have the bandwidth to get everything done during the last 72 hours.
That’s a great point. I think the biggest issue, problem with the strategy is that the team is effectively giving away negotiating days and, most importantly, alternate signings by waiting (because those players are moved off the board) and all for gains that I think are probably hard to prove (that they saved money by waiting to move and haggling). It’s performative (for Ali Mac) not strategic. I think the costs are much much higher than any gains. To use a technical term about the strategy, it’s stupid - ha!
I love the article and the comments.
I think one things that is better when waiting until the last moments is teams trying to unload players. So big 6 cast offs, may get their price dropped at the very end. I don’t really think we are targeting those types of players at this point so waiting doesn’t seem better. Just a thought about the situation, though I love the data.
Looks like I did not read the post below 🤭
I don’t know if it’s been factored in but if you sign several players early in the window you would of of course be carrying their wages for 2-3 months, which in the great scheme of things would not be inconsiderable.
Fulham came up with Bournemouth and Forest, neither of which is in the comparison group. Seems to me most accurate part here is the NYC subway story. Or “sell stocks in the morning and buy in the afternoon.”
In the end the issue is not when, it’s whom.
Didn’t include Bournemouth because they went down (and changed ownership). That’s a good point about Nottingham Forest. They are wild with transfers (because of Marinkas and owning Olymipakas). Might look into it. The other team I wished I had included was Aston Villa (similarish wage bill). Glad you liked the subway story :)