RECRUITMENT PLANS ON HOLD
Millers awaiting end of season before ploughing ahead with 2020-21 squad
FOR RECRUITMENT departments everywhere, this summer will not be straightforward.
Just ask Rotherham United Head of Talent ID Rob Scott.
Without the intervention of the coronavirus pandemic which has shut down football, June would have been a period when Scott would have been working overtime on one specific list of transfer targets to boost the Millers squad with an infusion of quality ahead of the start of 2020-21.
Instead, he has two lists and there is the added complication of not even knowing when the new season starts, let alone which division Rotherham will be in.
Should the Millers be playing in the second-tier next season, opportunities may arrive to bring in players who might usually be well above their pay structure, but only if they bide their time.
Scott told
“I am busier now than I ever have been. We are having to double our attentions with the lists as we don’t know what league we will be in – added to the fact that we don’t know what the finances will be.
“For every player we watch, you can double it. You think: ‘Can he play in League One? Yes; can he play in the Championship? Probably not. Or ‘can he play in the Championship? Yes; would he play in League One? No.’
“You must also be patient. I was mentioned a player at a Championship club and made a couple of calls and found out what he was on, which was £28,000 a week.
“It was: ‘hold on, Rotherham are never going to afford that.’ He’s been made offers of half of that, but if you look at it in that context, players are going to have to look at (taking) 50 per cent of what they were earning in the Championship.
“So if you have got a player on £12,000 a week in the Championship, if he’s looking at half of that, can we afford that?
“Maybe if we pushed the boat out and sliced it up into basic and appearances and whatever else.
“It does bring better players closer, but it does mean we will have to wait longer and they won’t jump at that offer straightaway.
“For example, a lad on £15,000 may wait and say they want ten and a week before the season starts, they might be jumping at five as they have no other offers.
“The other thing is when next season will start. Is it going to be September or October, with the window open still until November and will they leave the window open until January for loans?
“The other thing is why would we sign a player who is out of the contract at the end of the season in July when the season might not start until October?
“You could pay them a few months money when you don’t need to. There will be a lot of players out of contract with no income until they know when the season is going to start.”
For clubs like Rotherham, talk of top-flight clubs waiving loan fees for players who they send out could also have implications.
Excessive demands in the past have often resulted in the Millers not being able to firm up interest in many young top-division players, with many rivals with bigger resources having an advantage.
A ending of loan fees or a cap could help, but Scott is unsure how it will work.
“Can they put a cap on loan salaries?. I don’t know,” he added.
“People say: ‘Why don’t you get better Premier League 2 loans?’ Because they are often on £25,000 per week.
“Because the parent club owns that player in terms of his contract, they can dictate what they want for them.
“If they are paying £15,000 a week and we say: ‘we want him’, they will say: ‘how much do you want to pay?’. We may say three (thousand) and they say: ‘you are not having him for that – you can have him for seven.’
“If you have a good parent club and they say: ‘look, this is about the players’ development, we want them to go out because in two years time, they will be pushing for the first team here’, then they might let that happen.
“You have to look at what they are on and if there is motivation for them to go out on loan when they are earning that sort of money and treated like lords.”
For Rotherham, exploring foreign markets where there can be genuine value is a route which they have started to tap into.
In that regard, the travel restrictions imposed across much of Europe in the spring was particularly untimely.
Scott said: “I was due to go out to Germany in the week before lockdown started and take in four games on Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday.
“You can see what a player is like on video and he is decent. But you don’t know what the atmosphere is like in the stadium, what the weather is like – is it freezing cold and blowing a gale? – and he may have a bad day.
“You have a look at all that. Do they thrive under pressure or do they crumble? All those sort of things you need to know about, to know they are suitable or not?
“When you are there, it is about meeting people from the clubs and finding out about the players. Are they good people or just talented?
“There’s loads of things to take into account.”
We don’t know what league we’ll be in, we don’t know what the finances will be.
Rotherham United head of talent ID, on the conundrum clubs face for next season.