With the current season not going very well, it's comforting to know that the club has taken measures to ensure the team can be competitive in years to come. This has a lot to do with the clever contract negotiations taken by club management.
With new recruits in Carle, Jamieson, Reddy and Antonis on 2-plus year deals, and the re-signing of Brosque, Bridge, Necevski, Grant, Ryall and Moriyasu on multiple year deals, it has been strongly suggested that the club has frontloaded a lot of its contracts.
What is frontloading you ask? It's a very clever way of dealing with a salary cap. An example of frontloading can be explained by the following:
A player is signed to a new deal worth $600k over 3 years. The player will only really care about the total value of the contract, not how and when it will be paid out. The act of frontloading means that the player could be paid $250k in his first year of the contract, $200k in the next year of the contract and $150k in the final year of his contract.
This helps any team competing in a salary capped league as it allows the resigning of players, using the current year's allocation of the salary cap, therefore making more room in the next year's cap without affecting the contract value of the resigned player. Frontloading key players contracts in the 2010/11 season would mean the 11/12 and 12/13 seasons won't be affected as much by the players who signed longer term deals.
As far as I know, the club still had some coin left in this year's salary cap, which allowed such frontloading to happen. It is part of the reason why the club only decided to go with a squad size of 21 out of a maximum allowed of 23.
The club decided to use the remaining portion of the cap to re-sign "key players" in the current season, frontloading their contracts and freeing up cap space in future seasons. Currently, the club has Cole and Jamieson contracted till the end of the 11/12 season, Reddy, Ryall, Moriyasu, Carle, McFlynn, Antonis, Bridge, Necevski and Grant contracted till the end of the 12/13 season and finally Brosque contracted till the end of the 13/14 season.
Stability is something most Sky Blue fans have demanded since our tumultuous origins and having a core group of 10 players signed beyond the current season goes a long way to ensure that stability. If you look at the history of the A-League, or even any other league in the world, the consistently successful clubs are usually the most stable clubs.
Whilst the club hadn't budgeted in a foreign marquee for the 10/11 season, there are strong indications that the club will go for broke for the ACL campaign and the 11/12 season. The club is also currently making contingencies for any Asian Cup call ups, particularly in Brosque by trialing two foreign strikers over the past couple of weeks. The latest triallist is a former Golden Boot winner in the Finnish league.
Whilst most comments can be made of nothing being salvaged for the Sky Blue's this season, we do have a future to look forward to. Finals football is still a possibility and I know the club won't give up until it's mathematically impossible to do so. I just hope we can do an Adelaide and perform admirably in the ACL after not doing so well in the A-League. I also hope that we can do one better and win the damn thing.
