Garry Kelly coming Home!

[galwayhoop]

and with ken bates saying he was on £5 million a year surely he could now come and play free of charge :D

[jebus]

I read he was retiring somewhere.

Heard that too, apparantly he's done with football, on the playing side of things at least

[drummerboy]

Just wondering if it was Kelly who leaked the team against Crystal Palace back in January, Wise said the player in question would never play for Leeds again and Kelly hasn't played since then. Its a pity he is retiring, he would have been a great addition to his home town team.

[jebus]

Just wondering if it was Kelly who leaked the team against Crystal Palace back in January, Wise said the player in question would never play for Leeds again and Kelly hasn't played since then. Its a pity he is retiring, he would have been a great addition to his home town team.

Could have been, but I think Leeds didn't play him again because of some clause in his contract, as in he would have been in line for a bonus after one more game

[neville neville]

£5 million a year for the bottom of the championship. thats criminal...........

[galwayhoop]

£5 million a year for the bottom of the championship. thats criminal...........

yeah but he signed his contract when they were top-ish of the premiership, in regular european competitions and all looked rosy in the garden!! the fault really lies with the club for not safe-guarding themselves by putting relegation and non-european qualification clauses into the contract. all clubs do this nowadays after what happened to leeds!

[superfrank]

http://www.eleven-a-side.com/acrossthewater/irish_soccer_detail.asp?newsid=27614

I don't think he'll be getting another club anytime fast with that attitude. £5 million ayear is about £96,000 a week. In euros is about €140,000 a week. No way any Irish club would pay that much.

[galwayhoop]

In euros is about €140,000 a week. No way any Irish club would pay that much.

i think shelbou ... oh sorry, no, you are right no-one could match it :D :D

[TonyD]

Unfortunately, every league in the world bar the Italian, Spanish and English is in the same boat of having to sell their best players. As it stands the players aren't staying until 22/23 because they believe that the only way to get to play in the Premiership is to move to England age 16 or 17. This means that many players go who don't make it but end up at the lower levels of English football. If we can create a situation where it can be seen that the best players in the league are scouted by English clubs, then it might prompt more kids to stay in Ireland to play football when they leave school.
We're always going to lose the best players across the water, the challenge for us is to firstly hold on to those players as long as possible and thus keep the financial rewards within the league here, and secondly to hold on to those players who might not be good enough for top level but are still good players. It's all too easy for a player who doesn't make it at a big club to let his head drop and drift down in to the lower reaches of the league, or perhaps out of football, despite the fact that he might actually be a very good player, in the right environment.
In my opinion, it's a better situation for clubs to sell their best players in their early twenties than to lose them completely when they're 16.

Spot on. That's what we should be aiming for, realistically. Problem is that the best kids are very rarely at our top league clubs. It's not a case of Pats, Bohs, Cork, Derry, etc losing kids at 16. They've never had them to begin with. This is probably the first area where clubs need to improve. Schoolboy clubs are really just breeding the players for export. (They've banned exports of live cattle, but not of schoolboy footballers)