Coach Grant Brown is a better judge of a player's ability than my assistant manager Curtis Woodhouse, so I take it with some weight that he believes Koroma is a better player than Matthew Barnes-Homer. I've decided to renew my efforts to reduce the wage bill so that I can bring the lad on permanently.
I sent out proposals to other managers offering my transfer listed players on free transfers—that's cheaper than releasing them, which carries a cost relative to the player's salary, bonuses, and remaining time on contract. None of them were shown any interest.
At this point I found myself in something of a quandary. I could keep the players, paying them a salary to play in the reserves and occasionally make up the numbers on the first-team bench. Or I could release them from the club, freeing up them up for first-team football elsewhere while allowing me the extra room in my budget to sign new players—the catch here being that it costs a lot and could reflect badly on my perceived ability to manage club finances.
My decision was to offer the two weakest players mutual contract terminations. Tyrone Thompson was not best pleased—most likely because he was signed under the previous regime, and had only been at the club for a month.
We had a bit of an argument, then I released him (not because of the argument, but rather because he is, if you'll excuse the horrible pop culture reference, the weakest link). The club paid him £7,000 in compensation.
Andrew Hutchinson took the news more professionally, but outright refused to even consider the thought. He had a more lucrative contract than Thompson, despite being nearly a decade his junior, so Hutchinson picked up a handy £20,000 in compensation.
We're still over the wage budget, but I closed the gap to £400.
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