Dear Gareth.
I grant you that you have put your position out there in the media and that you are a well made man of solid financial advice. Here is a footballers school of economics that you might need to get learned on. Its not what you are going to want to hear but its an unfortunate reality.
Other teams have marquee players. We do not. On the whole, the majority of marquee players have been value for money. Last night, you saw just what having a marquee player can do for your team and for polarising your fans. Granted that ADP is a special player the likes that this league may not see again. For 38, you have to admit, he still has it and made a few younger players last night look like amateurs. He has earned his paycheck this year in my opinion because even when Sydney has been rank awful, he has still been pretty good, save for round 1. The flip side to this is that it did cost Sydney a bit of money. Who and how it was paid for, I can't answer you but they found the cash and made it work. They also have a Socceroo in Brett Emerton. If you have not heard of him, he was a team mate of one Ryan Nelsen (I am sure you have heard of him) and made a good name for himself in the English Premier League at Blackburn before he decided that the lights of the Opera House were more his style. Emerton is not in the same class as ADP but he is a handy footballer that performs more often than not.
Now I know you have this whole 5 year plan about developing locals and becoming a self sustaining club and thats quite admirable. If I was the man behind it the club, I 'd want that too. However if you have not also noticed, Sydney this month also signed Joel Griffiths. Joel too polarises fans but in that 'I'm a bit of a dick way'. He is still a good footballer in his own right and you saw how he went last night on his 1st game back. He happened to leave a seasoned defender for dead in the 1st 10 mins of his 1st game. Not bad aye. The amazing thing with this is that Sydney could sign him, and stay under the cap.
Where am I going with this? Well I can't profess that this is my idea. I did read it on another thread in this forum and even I went 'my god is it is that simple'. So lets play economics.
You run Gareths Fruit World, which is not a bad little store but the big bad LaPaglia Fruit World up the road has more of a market share and do a better turn over because the customers feel a bit more in the 'customer service' area than what they receive from your store. It does happen. Now you might have a wage bill at your store of $2 million. Being an ordinary world and same same industry, you would expect that LaPaglia Fruit World would have a similar budget. For the sake of semantics, lets just say $2 million as well. Now you kinda need about 20 employees to run your store so on average you would say that the average salary of an employee at Fruit World is $100k a year. Not too shabby for a Fruit World worker I must say. Now market statistics say that the average wage for Fruit World workers is higher than that. How is it that your workers are getting an average wage but the workers at other stores are above that average and make the 'market statistic' average. Well its just so happens, there is a subsidy from the Don Key government that a couple of guys can be immigrants and via some shady loop holes that a Taito-Field tiler could not cover, they seem to work for 'free'. All fruit worlds being equal you have to pay 20 guys out of $2 millions and the big bad LaPaglia Fruit World has to pay.... oh lets say 18 employees out of $2 million. Well naturally for that extra 'average' wage, LaPaglia Fruit World can attract a better class of employee than Gareths Fruit World because they are likely to want to earn a little more than you might pay them. I know right? People all over the world change jobs for more money! Who would have thunk it... Its a crazy thing. Because of the better class of employee, the customers get a little more love when they go into the LaPaglia Fruit World and hence why they rate highly in the 'customer service' section.
Can you kinda figure where I am coming from on this Gareth? A couple of marquee players (and yes I know its a dirty word to you) can actually leave you with cap space free in case someone comes onto the market in the transfer window, or, you can spread the money a little further and get in a couple of extra players, or you kind find a better class of player because you are able to offer them an extra little bit more cash.
I know its tough to swallow but you see when 9 teams are doing this, and 1 team is not, well.... I guess I don't really need to spell out what happens to that 1 team that goes it alone. And there endith the lesson.
Thank you for your attention.