Is there seriously anyone still willing to defend Phil Gould’s signing strategies?
He pretty much did the same thing he railed against when he got here. Unbelievable.
@Pomoz
I will defend a man who has done more for Panthers than just about anybody in the clubs history. You are basing your comments on a journalists' rumours. I like to work with facts and I have absolutely no knowledge of the contracts and the cap, just rumours and theories. Where is the detailed listing of our players contracts? All I know is Gus has has a history of success, in spite of making mistakes from time to time. I believe he can add up and find it hard to believe he would allow the club to be $1 million over the cap without already having a plan in place to offload players we don't want. Do you think his spreadsheets have formula errors? Do you believe the board have allowed the club to go $1 million over the cap?
I have no problem if Gus signed a player knowing we would be over the cap provided he knew who he was going to release to free up space. Personally, I would prefer to do the release first and then sign the player but sometimes the pressure to get a signature and not lose a player could lead to a timing issue.
The rubbish that gets spouted on this forum against a guy who has done his best to help the Panthers, given us repeated semi-final success and a junior pipeline as good as anything in our history, is hard to believe. I have heard you talk about rumoured "back ended contracts" when Gus has publicly come out and said he doesn't believe in them. We have no evidence of back ended contracts, but never mind, let's bag him off anyway. We have no fines for breaching the salary cap, but never mind, let's bag Gus off anyway because of a "rumour".
This rumour doesn't make sense. We are a million over the cap and yet we just signed Naden and Kenny and would have to increase Too's contract for match payments. Where is that money coming from? Are we saying DWZ and Blake were on more than a million between them? Aren't we supposed to be paying part of their deals as well? How can we afford this?
Dave and the CO were interviewed and didn't mention salary cap pressures, just complimented Gus on delivering the best junior development process in the NRL. I would have thought they might have mentioned the potential salary cap breach, especially to take the focus off the poor start to the season. Instead all I heard was praise. Did you listen to the podcast Herbert? Did I miss something?
Let's assume Gus was planning all along to release DWZ and Blake because he thought they were not giving us value, was that the wrong thing to do? Are we complaining that the emergence of juniors is putting pressure on the cap? I think it is a great problem to have and releasing players not delivering the right value is a good way to deal with it.
[Edit] Dave was interviewed, not Dave's mate.