Unofficial FC Bayern Forum

SUBJECT: TRANSFER/CONTRACTING POLICIES

I was thinking it wouldn't be a bad idea if we can send a letter to our club managers, Uli an Co., and criticize or express our concerns regarding what we evaluate as weak transfer/signing policies of the club....
We as Bayern's largest international fan-site, kind of represent the opinions of a majority of Bayern' international fans around the world... which should be of the highest value to the club's managers..... So the reflection of our opinions would not be ineffective I believe.... The least we could achieve, besides getting some answers, is to introduce ourselves more as a serious fan-site... and who knows??? maybe next time our representative can meet Uli Hoeness in person in FCB's next annual meetings with the fans and express our concerns...

I was thinking of discussing some of the recent transfers in detail and then proposing a general conclusion about how our club's signing policies should change...
We can discuss such players in detail:
- Hummels
- Misimovic
- Knassmuelner
- Lewicki
- Kraft (why losing him for free?)
- Sahin, Oezil.... (Why didn't we sign him?)
- and some others I can't remember at the moment....

Conclusion>
Many of us, including me, think we need to sign longer contracts with our great players/talented youth products... the current system is failing... it either causes us losing our players or forces us to pay astronomical wages to extend with them....

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This is the general structure in my mind... I'm opening this thread to see whether or not the users of the forum support such an idea... and if yes, what other transfer issues/players/matters they have in mind to add to those mentioned above.... After a while, if a majority of the users support the idea and when we have gathered all interesting ideas about this letter, we can sum it up and compose a well-organized letter and send it to the club.....

I think it's important we send this because I feel we are losing one of the most important virtues of this great club: Smart Transfer Policies!

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Please share your thoughts/comments....

Fantastic idea. IMO Main focus should be why we don't sign longer contracts. Transfer policies are complicated and it's hard to beforehand predict who will fit in the squad and who not. Contract length is simple and obvious yet they fail there.

Add Ribery/Ballack as an argument.
Had we initially signed Ribery for 6 seasons then for two seasons we'd save 7M on salary. (Those 14M could've gotten us Sahin).
We signed ballack for four years and he left for free. Had we signed him for 6 years then Chelsea would've offered us many millions and we'd have the choice to let him go or not...

And yeah basically they don't learn. Later they make the exact same mistake with Ribery. He also almost left for free had he not **** a 17 year old.

I sometimes do not agree with our transfer policy...but everyone must know that every club loses a lot of money because of stupid transfers and I think that we are not among those that lose silly sums every season.

Yes we could buy Ozil, Sahin etc...but could we really do that on paper? Ozil and perhaps Sahin really wanted to go to Real Madrid and you cant argue with that. Some players will choose other clubs before Bayern and that is something we have to live with...it happens all the time.

Look at Ronaldo, Kaka, Torres, Figo, Zidane etc... Those players all played in top clubs but they still wanted a new challenge and moved on...and multibillionares like Berlusconi, Glazers etc...sold their most prized assets even if they have a lot of money to invest in the club...while our board refused to sell Ribery, Schweini, Lahm etc..when others offered huge sums of money..and that is something we need to be proud of.

But not buying some talents like Ozil, Sahin and selling Hummels is something that no one knew they would turn out to be such great players. Kroos was as good as Ozil that season and there was no need for Ozil, Hummels was on the lower level than Badstuber is at the moment when we loaned him to Dortmund and we still had top CB in Lucio and Demichelis with hoping for Breno to make breaktrough.

All in all we I hope we buy Neuer and Coentrao and maybe 1 or 2 other players so we can make this team better.

I am against the proposed idea as it was proposed.

I am in favour of expressing our concerns regarding the contract policy, extensions, duration, etc.

However, I am totally against mentioning any type of transfer or mentioning any non-Bayern player. Not at this stage, when the transfer window is about to open. We know the board is looking at reinforcements. We might have an idea at who they are looking at from the media, but we can never be sure of what exactly they are thinking. I would not criticize the transfer policy now. I would criticize it at the end of the transfer window if they fail to act. I know most of you will probably say, "But then it will be too late", but for now, the board has my trust regarding transfers.

However, yes, the contract policy needs to be revised, and maybe we should let them know that we don't like it.

FCBayernMunchen wrote:I am against the proposed idea as it was proposed.
I am in favour of expressing our concerns regarding the contract policy, extensions, duration, etc.

This thread is made for you all to express our thoughts..... What I was proposing was only a scheme, not exactly a composed letter....

FCBayernMunchen wrote:However, I am totally against mentioning any type of transfer or mentioning any non-Bayern player. Not at this stage, when the transfer window is about to open. We know the board is looking at reinforcements. We might have an idea at who they are looking at from the media, but we can never be sure of what exactly they are thinking. I would not criticize the transfer policy now. I would criticize it at the end of the transfer window if they fail to act. I know most of you will probably say, "But then it will be too late", but for now, the board has my trust regarding transfers.

We were interested in Sahin in the winter and leter signed another CDM (Gustavo) in the winter for 17M.... And now Sahin is leaving Dortmund for 10M....
It does not matter that those players are not ours now... they are gone, ok!... But we need to act faster next time.... that's the issue....
And this was not the main idea... it was just brought up as food for thought...

Our main problem is that we've lost a lot of great talents in the past decade and received almost nothing in return.... We lost the likes of Ballack, Misimovic, Hummels, Trochowski, Knassmuellner, Kraft, Lewicki, Erb, Yilmaz, .... for almost nothing! And because we sign 4-year deals at best, we have problems extending with our big stars, and are forced to pay unbelievable salaries to keep them, if we are lucky and they don't leave us.... On the other hand we sign 4-year deals with a 30 year old Toni, who becomes useless after a year or so....

This is the main problem in my eyes... and it should be completely revised IMO....

sch0ll7 wrote:But not buying some talents like Ozil, Sahin and selling Hummels is something that no one knew they would turn out to be such great players. Kroos was as good as Ozil that season and there was no need for Ozil, Hummels was on the lower level than Badstuber is at the moment when we loaned him to Dortmund and we still had top CB in Lucio and Demichelis with hoping for Breno to make breaktrough.

Yeah... I know that they had reasons to let Hummels go.... We had Lucio, Demichelis, DvB, Breno and later Badstuber.... But did we really need to sell him for 4M??? If we had a longer contract with him in the first place, we could have waited till later and then we could have get him back or sell him for much higher prices.... Why doing the same mistake over and over???...

Alaba is considered as one of our greatest talents... and we sign only a 3-year contract with him... this is obvious!! We can only loan him out for 1 more year now... and then we are forced to either sell him ( ) or take him back (he might not still be ready for Bayern by then ).... Whereas every club in Europe signs 5-year contracts with their greatest talents.... It's pretty obvious! Longer-term contracts with young players puts the club in a better strategic position, whether the club wants to use his services, or wants to sell him...

dambun wrote:This is the main problem in my eyes...

Agreed.. Losing players is a bigger problem than not getting the great players. As SilentStrike said there's a risk involved with buying players, and you also have to look at the big picture (i.e. the whole team). However, with young players, as you said, if he doesn't turn out to be good you can sell him for higher if he has a long contract.

I like the idea of sending them a letter but there are some things I don't agree with you guys. You can't just tell our board we should sign longer contracts with our players so we could have the power, that's just calling them stupid. After all these years, I think they figured that out a long time ago.

I personally like this 4 year thing. I'm sure that they could give 6 years contracts to the players but then their demands would most likely increase too. Take Ribery for example. When we signed him we gave him a 4 year contract with an annual salary of 3.75 million. He gave us 3 world class seasons for that 'little' money and then he extended because we are a big club and we are able to hold on to our stars. And now imagine we gave him a 6 year long contract. First, it would have to be around 5-6 million and we don't even know wheter he'll flop or not. Look at Kaka for example. madrid gave him a 6 year contract and now they can't do anything but give him 9 million/year for nothing.

It has its pros and cons, but there's definitely more pros. We are Bayern, and we recently showed we have no problem holding on to our stars.

I don't like that much the idea, because I don't see anything wrong with that. Every season there are new talents showing, it's football, there are players that can one day be world class, and the other day be crap. We can't just write a letter a say "Buy this one, why you bought this one?, why you didn't bought this one?". I want to believe that the lastest transfers were average/bad only because we had LVG. Gomez, Robben, Tymo, Olic have been great players, and LVG didn't chose them.

I personally don't like at all the whole Buyern or FC Hollywood thing, buying players because they play good. The thing is simple, get a GOOD coach, make a team (if already made, improve it), get the players you need to make that team better. Now, pick the best one you can get for a position, not someone that could be or a plan B. For example, getting Neuer would be a great move, because is the best choice we can get for a GK.

I think we should not send any letter. First of all Hoeness and KHR are 30 years in this business and are ones who are doing this job and only thing we know are some little details we get from the press. We can only discus transfer and contracting polices among our selfs and speculate. For example maybe they did have talks with Sahin and he didn't want to play for any BL team except B.D. Or Misimovic was probably wanted to play regular football so he was asking to go and wouldn't sign a new contract or they were thinking he is not Bayern material. We just don't know. For every player is a different situation. You must know all the facts to be able to argue with them. And also they probably don't care what fans are thinking and are sick other peoples opinion about how they should do there job. So no letter.

Of course there is a different situation with every player... and that's exact what we are talking about....

> We sign Ribery (23) who is extremely talented, on a record fee for us and for the BL, and give him a 4-year deal???.... That's ridiculous IMO.... >> Even if he does not succeed in here, which has a very low probablility, he is not a player to sit on our bench for 6 years and waste 6 of his best footballing years just to get his salary.... So we can give him a 6 year deal....

> We sign Toni (30) on a 4 year deal with a huge salary.... It's more than clear that a striker's performances decrease at that age!

> Alaba is called one of our brightest talents... why just give him a 3-year deal?

> Ekici was consistently performing in our youth ranks.... why did we sign a 2 year deal with him....? we can't loan him anymore....

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Yesss.... Signing long-term contract with young players requires paying them bigger salaries.... But that's not a big issue if we clearly see they are talented..... if we don't, we are forced to pay much more to keep them after a couple of years....

All I'm saying is that we must sign contracts based on the future of our talent... there may be some failing cases... but that's just a risk we should be willing to take.... otherwise we are either losing our starlets or paying huge sums to keep them...

What stars did we recently lose? I remember Ribery, Schweini, Lahm, Muller, Kroos and Badstuber all have long term contracts, Robben to follow. We lost Kraft for free and we might lose Ekici. This is what you are worrying about?

I agree we should have extended Alaba's or Contento's contract for more years, but you must also take in account that the player is also a human being. You must put yourself in their shoes. Would you commit 6 years of your career to a club where's just a slim chance you'll be a starter?

Seems we are selling Ekici for 2.8M....
http://www.transfermarkt.de/de/ekici-vor-wechsel-nach-bremen/news/anzeigen_62446.html

raz25 wrote:What stars did we recently lose? I remember Ribery, Schweini, Lahm, Muller, Kroos and Badstuber all have long term contracts, Robben to follow. We lost Kraft for free and we might lose Ekici. This is what you are worrying about?

Had we signed Ribery initially for 6 years then we would still be paying him that original salary of 3.8M and not 10M.

SilentStrike wrote:Had we signed Ribery initially for 6 years then we would still be paying him that original salary of 3.8M and not 10M.

4.8 not 3.8 !! ( i have the salary list of the bayern players that year at home)

and i think yes , Ribery would have agreed , because only few years before his salary was 250 thousand euros a year (something around that) with Galatasaray

Element wrote:

SilentStrike wrote:Had we signed Ribery initially for 6 years then we would still be paying him that original salary of 3.8M and not 10M.

4.8 not 3.8 !! ( i have the salary list of the bayern players that year at home)

and i think yes , Ribery would have agreed , because only few years before his salary was 250 thousand euros a year (something around that) with Galatasaray

Wow 3.8, 4.8 whatever u guys get the point. Don't deviate from the message with little unnecessary corrections.
A 6year contract would've been so much better for us financially.

Had Ribery not pedo'd around then he wouldnt have extended and he would now leave for free.
I completely agree with Dambun on the contract length bit. And yeah some of u say Theyve been in business for 30 years. Does that make then saints or something? They make obvious mistakes and they keep repeating them. It was only a year before we signed Ribery that Ballack left for free.