[spireitematt]

Everyone is talking about the playoffs and are excited me included but I was thinking can we afford to get promotion to the Championship?

There is talk that DA is going to halve the playing budget for next season which would make things difficult if we got in the Championship and we might end up like Yeovil have back to back relegations. I think this is one of the reasons that Paul Cook is unhappy about and he was unhappy about the playing budget at the start of this season but has worked wonders to get us in the playoffs on a shoe string.

Will the squad we have now stay to play in the Championship or will they be snapped up to higher Championship clubs or even Premier League? Because there is a rumour going around that Swansea are after Clucas. If the budget is going to be halved then we will have to get experienced players who are free agents and who are not looking to play for obscene wages.

Also the other question is if Cook goes to Portsmouth who will be our manager Richardson/ Humphreys? The problem is Portsmouth think they are still a big club, well in some aspects they are attendance wise but they've ended up in the 4th division because they spent money they didn't have in the Premier League to stay up and win the FA Cup. If they had spent in their means they might still be in the Championship possibly L1. Portsmouth have no money and not a big budget and they may be in financial difficulties again in the future so why would Cook go there if they don't have a big budget? Wages? The thing is whoever goes to Portsmouth and fails to get them promoted next season will be sacked.

Its going to be an interesting summer.

No matter what happens in the summer the fans will still support Chesterfield FC. Players and managers come and go but the club and the fans will always remain.

[St Charles Owl]

I suppose the key question is how are the contracts the players are on structured?? If you can gain promotion but retain a League 1 sustainable budget, then you can enjoy the extra revenue that promotion will bring but be prepared to drop if that was to happen. At the end of the day there is no way you can hope to compete financially with the teams in the Championship, especially as about half still have parachute payments from the Prem, a situation that means we cannot compete with them normally with our attendances!!

[bluepooch]

I don't for one minute think DA will halve the budget Matt.Youve been reading those silly boys on that Bobs board again havent you.
If we do reach the promised land of the championship I think Chris Turner(In a decent interview with Karen from Chesterfield Post if anyone heard it ) said the payments went up from about 450k in League One to about 4 million so DA will definitely not be reducing the budget.
That said we do have to be careful we dont get players in on relatively big wages and long contracts because If we do come straight back down it would cripple us.
Its a difficult situation for a club of our size because there will be a limit to the size of the crowds we get and we will be the smallest club in the Championship .So do we push the boat out or be prudent and cut our cloth accordingly.

[St Charles Owl]

Unfortunately the championship is essentially the same as the prem in that the teams with the bigger budgets are the ones who are likely to succeed!! But there is always the exception to the rule!! This season if you take Blackpool out of the equation as they have been relegated due to being in a mess, then Millwall and Rotherham follwed by Brentford and Huddersfield probably have the smallest budgets and in this case two are struggling and two are not struggling. Wigan provide the alternative, a team on parachute payments who are likely to be relegated, just like Wolves were a couple of seasons ago.

As Pooch said, cutting your cloth accordingly and letting the manager work his magic with young unknown players could see you survive for a few seasons, but recognising that eventually you will be relegated, so make sure the club is on an even keel at league 1 standards has to be the way to go.

[Dancingwilldoit]

Only Jimmy Ryan has turned down a contract offer so its impossible to cut our budget by half. The retained players means at least 80% - 90% of this years budget will be spent so where the half talk comes from god knows.

[spireitematt]

At the end of the day its all rumours and we just have to wait and see what happens.

[Devongone]

Of course there is the option of impressing people with your surprise ability to play at a higher level and wait for an obscure super-rich Russian/Ukrainian/Lithuanian to emerge from Ed Miliband's attempts to tax him. I believe a club called Bournemouth have very much the same ground capacity as us ..........

In reality next season I see Humphreys in charge of a much-changed Chesterfield outfit impressing everyone in Division One (again) with another play-off finish and Mr Cook and Leam Richardson unable to recreate their magic quick enough for Portsmouth's success-starved fans sacked after just missing out on the play-offs.

If I were Mr Cook I would be looking to move on, but Portsmouth are only asking him to repeat a trick. Who wants to be a one-trick pony? I'd want to manage an ambitious Wednesday, or a Leeds after a back-room shake-up. Go the Portsmouth route and you'd be in late middle-age, marooned maybe in the Championship, but definitely wondering whether the chance of a big club had passed you by.

I don't think he'd fail because he's no good or a traitor by the way. I think Portsmouth would write in a whole realm of expectation for Mr Cook that we didn't.

[bluepooch]

Dev your second paragraph is bizarre unless you have some inside information.
If Cook leaves there could be any one of a hundred names put forward and no one would really know except for DA and CT
How many touted Paul Cook for the job before he was appointed ?He wasn't even in the betting until the day before .

[spireitematt]

How much would the club get if they won the playoff final? Yeovil got £3.1 million two season ago for beating Brentford.