Jaydon Stockley

Can't compete now. If we would have bid the £750,000 in the summer though, we might have got him before Championship clubs came knocking.

Ageed

We received £750k for a striker who came from our academy over the summer its worth saying.

Obviously that doesn't compete with Exeter and their great academy but they are a bit an exception, most L1 and L2 clubs have made far less.

With respect, I believe Stockley started with Bournemouth & Exeter got him from Aberdeen. They don't seem to have done much developing with him. Good business though.

It's to do with the length of contract that we have been giving our players, under DC we have been offering 2 year contracts out which means that if the player does well in the first year of his contract, we then have to offer them a new contract in the second year of the original contract when their stock is high and that gives the player time to shop around and have the upper hand in negotiations and if these do not work, we are forced sell with 6 months left on their contract which means we get a fraction of their true value. Peterborough and a lot of other clubs give 3 or 4 year contracts to players they believe will command value in the future and also add extension clauses in. This means when they have a good season, the club's are not forced into to selling them which means they can set big valuations on the player and have them for longer.

There is benefit to having shorter contracts as it keeps every player on their toes and fighting to earn a new contract, which is probably a good thing for a squad as a whole and it also means that clubs can easily get underperforming players off their wage bill as they won't be tied into 4 years contracts (imagine if Nichols and Payne had 4 year contracts on good money but didn't want to leave) however I've always argued that if you think a player will have value down the line ie they are young and performing to a high standard or they come with an impressive reputation, I would rather the player was given a 3 or 4 year contract so we could properly reap the reward of having good players representing our club later on.

Even the lambert fee was awful, he was easily worth double that, at the least. We received 2 million for Gareth Taylor, ten years previous. Barry Hayles, last player to get a decent fee for.

You can't just say "apart" to exclude the person that I was referring to. My point being that in the FUTURE, if we signed or possessed a talented 18-25 year old who we thought was going to be worth something in the future, I wouldn't be opposed to breaking this 2 year contract thing that we have had at the club for a while now and offering a 3 or 4 year deal.

And to answer your point about Harrison, most of us would have gladly offered him a long term contract in the summer before last as he had a lot of potential and we all knew he was capable of scoring goals.

Lee Brown a great servant for Gas but he was Jo average in L1 for previous 2 seasons. Suddenly, Portsmouth are top and loads on here are writing what a brilliant player he is !??

The fact that he was so average was the reason we really miss him. He had that consistency that none of our other fullbacks have had, Kelly has been decent but in truth we have struggled to replace him. On of those scenarios where we didn't truly realise how important he was to the team until he was gone.