Western United Thread

im in the wrong industry

Jason momoa is using it in the next aquaman movie

Ryan McGowan released by relegated Bradford City
after a loan spell at relegated Dundee


He’s bolted on for these guys.

I’m okay with it. I think it’s a better idea that extra marquee or visa slots.

Nah That’s silly. They’ve got enough time to sort their stuff out. That’s just ffa hoping to make them successful early on to help their brand. $400k is one very good extra player

You’re asking some top class a-league players to go to an unknown team that’s never played together before and compete against known and formed entities, you need some sort of a draw card, and that is going to be a higher salary. Good idea, although wouldn’t be against an extra visa slot for two years.

Any extra visa slots should be a league wide implementation. As the article states, for 5 years any new club is ineligible for the loyalty player concession and this somewhat offsets that.
Whether they choose it to top up wages, to buy 1 top quality player, 2 decent starters or 4 squaddies is up to them but it isn’t that much of an advantage over already established clubs.

I’m ok with a salary cap boost for the new clubs, they need to hit the ground running. Prefer that to extra visa slots.

WU look like they’ll have a decent squad, like the experience of McDonald and Gulum they added this week.

Do A-League clubs do signing bonuses? If so then this is pretty much necessary as you’re forking over extra money to players and agents just to get people to put pen to paper. With that plus the loyalty bonus, I get it and I don’t have a huge problem with it, particularly given the existing clubs are all okay with it.

Pretty sure signing bonuses are included under the cap, although agent fees aren’t. Otherwise you’d have every club rorting the system

The problem I have with the new teams having an extra $400K is that it ignores the fact that all the teams need to be allowed to spend a lot more than they currently do. I don’t want to get rid of the salary cap (there are leagues where there is no cap and one or two teams monopolise the silverware) but current teams need to be allowed to spend a lot more than they currently do - and be allowed to have two extra spots on the substitutes bench.

A whole bunch current teams already can’t afford to compete with the current cap levels.

Totally going off topic but as a strong supporter of the cap, the current iteration is such a mess that no cap would honestly be better.

The argument against only a few teams winning very year is a bit much when us and victory are at the top every year.
The cap means nothing if teams aren’t using all of it.
Getting rid of it frees up the big teams to make the league bigger

Increasing or removing the salary cap will still make no guarantee at all that clubs are making the right signings. That is what needs to improve the most. Using the Mariners as an example, less wannabe professional players like Melling and get someone who actually deserves a chance, like Murray did.

WU should get a leg up as we get Grant for free due to loyalty and similiar discounts elsewhere. It means the in cap spend for us vs WU isn’t comparable otherwise. It’s also in everyone’s interest they are competitive. I would have given them more tbh.

We’re not quite there chief.

Over this decade it’s been, Brisbane, CCM, Wanderers, Brisbane, Melbourne, Adelaide, Sydney, Sydney, Perth


Hardly a Victory/ Sydney duopoly.

What did I miss on loyalty payments? I thought it was just a % of the salary but there was a cap on total loyalty bonuses you could claim. But now we’re saying we get Grant for free?

I thought the loyalty bonus capped out at 50% of that player’s salary. But it does raise an interesting point: a new club clearly can’t have any players that have been with the club for the five years required to trigger the bonus. It’s probably fair to give them something to offset that.