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Peter Ridsdale | Getty Images
Exclusive chat with the PNE CEO following the close of the summer transfer window
Preston North End CEO Peter Ridsdale has spoken to the Lancashire Post about transfer deadline day, the loan signing of Harrison Armstrong from Everton, last gasp links to Tom Cannon, the summer’s budget and more in an exclusive interview.
It makes sense to start with transfer deadline day... How do you reflect on it, and what you managed to do?
“Well, it was stressful in the sense that we managed to get Harrison over the line with 23 minutes to go,” said Ridsdale. “It was as much, could Everton get somebody in? It was also a lot of internal discussions at Everton as to whether they really were prepared to let him out. So, it's always up against the clock. Obviously, the clock was earlier this year than normal because it was seven o'clock.
“There were a few flirtations with, ‘Could we afford to, ‘Was there an availability of another player?’ The problem we had was we really didn't have the budget for another player and some of the names being bandied around... people don't have background detail. There were a few players people said we were favourites for that frankly weren't fully fit. There was the odd one we linked with that we didn't know we were.
“And then there's some who strategically, we might still pursue but would be very expensive subject to what their current clubs are expecting back from what they might have invested in the first place. So, the trouble with the whole of the window and particularly transfer deadline day, is there's a lot of rumour and speculation on social media.
“Some of it with a smidgen of truth, some of it gives us good ideas and some of it nonsense. And then you're judged against the rumours as opposed to factually what's happening. So, I prefer to sort of look at five past seven when it's closed and reflect and say, ‘How did the window go in its entirety?’ And I think that where I would be is, I said to you I think at the start we were trying to bring in between eight and ten players.
“We brought in 12. We brought in Lewis Gibson for money in January which was always on our radar, but we were lucky enough to get him early in January. So, over this calendar year we brought in 13 players - all of whom were the manager's picks and so, delighted with them. I'm sitting here sort of thinking we've got a stronger squad and a more balanced squad than we've probably ever had.”
Armstrong has been in and around the Everton first team. Do you view that as a coup to have got him? And was it a nervous wait?
“Well, I spoke to David Moyes last week and he said he hadn't made his mind up whether to let him out,” said Ridsdale. “We'd obviously been speaking, with Everton’s permission, to the player and there were about six clubs who wanted him. So, there were two challenges. The first of which is, would they let him out? The second is, could we get to the top of the list, were they to let him out?
“It became clear on Sunday, assuming you believe everything you've been told, that he decided on us if he was to be let out, which was great for us. But literally, up to six o'clock on Monday night, there were some people we were talking to inside Everton Football Club who were saying, ‘We don't think he should be coming out; he should be playing for us’. So, that's a testament to the lad and to his qualities. The fact we managed to get him, I think we're over the moon and having subsequently spoken to him... I mean, it was complicated because he's away with England Under-19s.
“We had to get him out of a swimming pool in Spain to Docusign the transfer agreement. He says he's very excited at the opportunity, which is fantastic because, for a lad who is in and around their first team to say he's very excited about joining us, I think, is a compliment to us. And to Paul, because Paul obviously spoke to him and persuaded him how he wanted him to play.”
You went into deadline day looking to get two in. Was it always going to be tough due to finances?
“Well, you say we went in looking to get two in,” said Ridsdale. “I think the world expected us to go in looking for two, but I didn't have the money for two in - particularly if one was from the Premier League. Let's just touch on money... because I get frustrated at people saying, ‘Where's the money gone for this player?’ we've supposedly bid for, or that player we've supposedly bid for. This is how it works...
“The start of the budget year, which is 1st of July, we are given an amount of money to spend for the whole of the 12 months and that has to cover wages, it has to pay transfer fees, loan fees, any penalties from Premier League clubs if you take a Premier League player, and any residual transfer fees that you still have to pay. So, Milutin’s a good example. We didn't pay the whole of his transfer fee up front.
“We paid over, depends on the club you're buying from and the deal you can cut, but sometimes it's two or three payments. This summer we had payments still to be paid for Mads, Milly, Stefan, Lewis Gibson, for obviously Odel who we brought in and for Thierry. So, this was probably the biggest transfer spend in a summer window we've had, but not all to do with the ones we brought in this summer.
“Now, as it happens, next summer we've got almost nothing to pay because Mads, Milly, Stefan, Lewis Gibson have all been paid for. So, when we get to next July, we've got a small amount of money to pay for Odel and a small amount of money to pay for Thierry, and that's it. But that all comes out the same pot, and then if you're bidding for players, which we did early in the window and people say, ‘Where do those transfer fees come from?’
“Obviously, we were bidding for players - we won't say who, but some have been publicised accurately or otherwise - but we weren't offering all the money up front... we were offering on a staged deal. We didn't get them, but what we have brought in is four Premier League loans and in the main, they are more expensive than a Championship or a League One loan because the wages are higher.
“Secondly, you often have to pay a loan fee and then sometimes there are penalties if you don't pay them. So, everybody thinks that loans are cheap options; they're far from cheap options, but they are often people of a quality you can't necessarily afford permanently, because of where they are in the first place, which is in the Premier League.”
I think the confusion is that it seemed all of a sudden it was, ‘We can't buy anybody, it's only frees and loans’. So, did the goalposts not move at any point? There wasn't something that happened that (meant) suddenly, we can't buy anyone?
“No, no, it's not we can't,” said Ridsdale. “It's ‘What can you get with the money you've got?’. So, if we'd have signed a player early in the window and paid a transfer fee and whatever wages went with that player, we would not have signed 12 players because I wouldn't have had the money to sign 12 players. So, it's always a balancing act between who you're trying to get in; the cost of those players.
“I read a thing this morning where it says how much we have supposedly spent in this transfer window and one of our fans has put, ‘Pathetic’. Well, actually, we've signed two players this summer for transfer fees who we already think - in terms of people expressing a comment and a view as to what they might be worth - are worth over £10million in a couple of cases. And we've paid not a lot of money, but some supporters think, ‘Oh, we haven't paid much for them, it's not very ambitious’
“Actually, it's very ambitious because what we've done is smart deals and we'll end up, hopefully, in the future with an opportunity for these players to either take us closer to the Premier League, or to the Premier League, or we'll actually reinvest the money we get for them. So, we try and work smart, we try and work smarter. On Saturday at Portsmouth, one of the outstanding performances, in my personal opinion, was Pol.
“Now, the fact we happened to get him on a free was because of the state of finances at Sheffield Wednesday, not because nobody thought he had a value - and I think that was smart business. So, sometimes you'd think we might get credit for it as opposed to criticised that we haven't spent, or overspent on players. Now, ultimately, the time will tell whether or not the players, as a total, are good enough. I think this squad is as balanced and as good as we've had for many a year.”
Was it a case then that anything you were spending on transfer fees, you had to have brought in? Because that just looks like a massive challenge...
“Or take it out of the pot,” said Ridsdale. “I've got a certain amount of cash and it's one pot of cash. There isn't a transfer pot… So, 1st of July, I get a certain amount of money to run the club for the whole of the season. Now, obviously, we do a budget based on what we think the gates will be, what the season tickets will be, what we'll get for commercial. So, we put all that together. That shows us how much we've got to spend on players.
“Players' wages, appearance fees, win bonuses, national insurance, transfer fees, loan fees, anything we might have to pay - penalties if they don't play for Premier League clubs - a pot of cash. And what I have to do is to say, ‘Within that pot of cash, if I spend £3m there, we've got £3m less to spend there’. So, we might only have, say, 10 coming in and not 12 coming in.
“But that's the balancing act. And of course, as it evolves, it updates all the time. So, you bring in somebody like Lewis Dobbin and suddenly you say, ‘Right, well, what I've got left is X now.’ When you try and get Harrison from Everton, you know what that's going to cost so you look at that cost and say, ‘Have I got enough money to do that?’ But you don't then have a separate pot for transfer fees.
“What we've tried to do is make that money go as far as it can and I think this summer we've done a very good job. But I would say that, wouldn't I? I think we've done a very good job in bringing in 12 players of real quality. As I remind you, we signed Lewis for cash in January. Part of that transfer fee had to go out this summer.”
Was there anything in Tom Cannon? Is there anything you can say on that? There were intense rumours and fans obviously lapped it up on deadline day...
“Look, it is difficult because he's contracted to another football club,” said Ridsdale. “Was there any likelihood of him coming in this window? I think there was a very small chance, but it would have been a last minute and it would have needed Sheffield United to say, ‘Look, it's not working for us and here's a deal that works for everybody’. They didn't. Is he a player we admire? He is. Would we bring him back in the future if we could, and if it worked for him and Sheffield United? Absolutely. And, do I believe that he would come back if the opportunity arose? Yes, I do.”
When it comes to strikers specifically, obviously you knew Emil Riis was leaving at the start of the summer... were the top targets to try and replace him out of reach financially?
“Well, we brought in Michael Smith who I liken his age, experience and skills to a player that's gone to one of our competitors,” said Ridsdale. “Michael came in because of Sheffield Wednesday's problems on a deal that really works for us. Somebody very similar, at the same age, went to one of our competitors for a £2m transfer fee and 2.5x wages. So, I think that was a smart move for us.
“In terms of Daniel Jebbison, it's somebody that Paul's worked with before. Again, he's come from a Premier League club, so remember they tend to pay more than Championship clubs. We brought two strikers in. We did, early in the window, look at a couple of others and again, because we didn't get them, I think it would be wrong to say who they were.
“But the transfer fees and wages, given what they've done to date and the level at which they've done it, didn't make any economic sense to us at all. Now, it may well turn out that if they do very well, we'll look back and say, ‘Really?’ But if you go back to my argument about I've got a certain amount of money to spend, I would have had to spend a disproportionate amount of that money on a gamble versus what we've done, which I think is end up with a better balanced squad.”
There hasn't been much done outside of England. Is the fact that the scouting department was revamped any factor in that? Or, better value here in everyone's eyes at the club?
“No, we actually did a lot of work and did talk to a few players outside of England,” said Ridsdale. “They became very difficult to deal with. There were claims that there were loads of other European clubs in for these players. They were very difficult to pin down. They weren't saying, ‘We want to come and play for Preston’. They were saying, ‘We want to move... we want to go to the highest bidder because we think we're better than where we are.’
“They got very complicated this summer. It's nothing to do with the scouting department. In fact, before the season ended we were talking to a striker who we thought was going to come. Then by the time we got to the end of July, his transfer fee had tripled and his wage demands were crazy. These are players earning not a lot, who are asking for more than we pay anybody that we've got in our squad.
“You think that's a heck of a gamble. They're not even playing in a league that you think, ‘Okay, you recognise the quality of that league’. They were playing in leagues that were very difficult to compare to the Championship. The scouting department have been looking far and wide. This is the hardest summer I've had to deal with agents. There's been a massive shift from, ‘The player wants to come now, let me see if I'm going to do the best deal at Preston North End’, to, ‘Stick on a piece of paper the highest bid, and we'll tell you whether or not.’
“It's almost like opening envelopes in a blind auction and seeing who's bid more. Well, you'd like to think the player wants to come to start with, wouldn't you? This has been the most complicated, complex transfer window I've ever experienced and I've been doing this a long time. There's been a massive shift of emphasis.”
Did the sales of Theo (Mawene), Jeppe (Okkels) and Jack Whatmough allow you to bring the players in you did? Would you have been able to sign the likes of Thierry without doing that?
“Well, the Thierry deal we're very pleased with,” said Ridsdale. “We've obviously done that very cost effectively, and he's going to be a superstar. Theo helped but frankly, wouldn't have stopped it. To some extent, Jack Whatmough, we always said if we're going to bring Odel in, we'd back to back with Jack if we could, and we did. So yes, his transfer fee has paid the deposit on Odel.I stress the deposit; not the rest of it.
“In terms of Jeppe, this is something that people probably don't quite realise. If you pay installments on player transfers, and we obviously only bought Jeppe last year, if you sell the player, you have to pay off the whole of the outstanding balance. Now, somebody will very quickly say, ‘Ah, but you don't have to do that on foreign transfers’. You do in the initial transfer agreement, but if the club that you buy them from agrees to change those terms when you sell, there is a chance to renegotiate that.
“There isn't with a domestic deposit. In this case, we've sold Jeppe, we've got a significant transfer fee and it now means he's fully paid off. So, before there was yet another payment to pay next summer, now there's nothing to pay next summer. So that made sense economically. A, because the manager wasn't the man who signed him and wasn't going to play him. B, we got a significant transfer fee, and we don't owe anybody any money on it. And of course, we've got his wages off the wage bill.”
On Okkels, Ridsdale added: “There were three (clubs) interested, but the only one that was a guaranteed permanent with a transfer fee was Djurgårdens. They were in right at the start of the window and then disappeared. They came back when they found out that a Danish club had got permission to speak to him, but that was a loan with an option, not an obligation.
“And the loan didn't really work, because they couldn't afford his wages. So, we would have still been paying part of his wages, whereas the Djurgårdens one is off the payroll completely, and we got a significant transfer fee back for it.”
Just flipping back to deadline day, was Cannon the only name you were trying for on loan? Or were there a few plates spinning?
“Well, again, it depended whether we got Harrison or not, because obviously he's from Everton and he's not a cheap option,” said Ridsdale. “But, did we talk about other players? We did talk about two or three others. One was, we were told not fit to start and therefore it would’ve taken some time to get him up to speed. Given he was a loan, it didn't make any sense.
“What's the point of taking a loan who is not going to be fit until halfway through the loan? A couple of other names were bandied around that, yes, they were put to us, but we had to then take a view. Do we want them versus, again, Harrison if we could get him? Because remember, we didn't get Harrison until 6.33pm on transfer deadline day. But we've also, strategically, got January in mind.
“We've got a number of ends that we're looking at in the next few weeks, which will tell us where we are with players we've got. In January, there's another transfer window so we're already starting. And part of what we've spoken about the last week has positioned maybe more conversations that will be set up for January. So we're talking to players all the time. But, I didn't have the money left on transfer deadline day to do Harrison and another, and the manager absolutely wanted Harrison.”
Osmajic... there has been plenty of talk, plenty of overseas clubs linked. Was there never an offer that came through? Nothing serious?
“I got his agent telling me on one visit he would get me an offer in the next few days, and I never got it,” said Ridsdale. “And then I had a call a week last Sunday with a team that eventually, got linked with him. So, I talked to the club and they said I would have an offer the following morning. My email address must have got jammed or blocked or something, because I haven't had one. That was it.
The manager was quite clear, ‘Not for sale’. I assume it would’ve taken something significant to move him on at that stage?
“Well, I think where we're at with all of our players at the moment is football managers will tell you somebody's not for sale, and then I’ll tell you everybody's for sale,” said Ridsdale. “Because they are, but at a price. And as we found out this summer, the market for proven strikers as opposed to gambles is expensive.
“So if we'd have had an offer for any of our players, and Milutin’s a classic example, it would’ve had to have been a bid that made us stronger, by being able to use the money to improve the squad. This wasn't about taking some cash and banking it, this was about if anybody went, we had to be able to improve the squad.
“And the market this summer was such that, as I've already said, unproven strikers - may be worth a gamble - we're going for three to five million pounds and wages more than we pay anybody at our football club, and they're unproven. So, it would’ve had to have been a knockout bid for Milutin or anybody else, and then we'd have had to have known what we were going to do with the money before we agreed to it, and we weren't put in that position. So, we are where we are.”
Hypothetically, if you were to generate a big sale would you have absolute confidence of reinvesting a decent amount of that back into the squad? That's something people talk about quite a bit in terms of years gone by...
“Yeah, total confidence,” said Ridsdale. “Look, the way it works at the moment, and I've already said it, is that at the start of each season I'm told how much cash the family are going to put into the football club to keep us competitive. That's an agreed number and that's the money. If, suddenly, I get three million from a transfer that comes in, well clearly I've got three more million to spend. It doesn't have to be sent anywhere and we go with a begging bowl to ask for it back. We are operating the club within our own financial means once we've got the injection from Craig and his family.”
Going back to Harrison, is there a recall clause Everton have got in there?
“All the Premier League loans, they automatically insert recall clauses,” said Ridsdale. “We restrict it to the first two weeks of January because we don't want to find on transfer deadline day, they disappear. So, that gives us the opportunity if we were to lose any of them, a chance to replace them.”
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