Quote ="Sheldon"No it wouldn't, most players are ooc in a year or 2.
We may be paying larger salaries to tie the young talent to long deals.
In a year or 2 Tom Lineham could be one of the top players in the league and we'll have him on a good deal!'"
Yep, we have a grand total of 7 players contracted beyond 2015. 2 of those were extensions signed in the last fortnight, another a new signing (who doesn't even count on the cap) 2 or 3 weeks ago.
So of the remaining 4 signed under McRae/Gentle we have Houghton and Lineham's long-term deals, Green, and Arundel. Can't see a lot of poor cap management in those 4 tbh (obviously apart from Arundel's massive and continually increasing wedge).
My suspicion is that our possible 'over-spend' is mainly a combination of 3 things:
1. A handful of players (probably Ellis, Holdsworth and Miller) being offered bumper deals to get them here;
2. Gambling on our youth and paying several of them slightly more than market value to secure them for a while;
3. Market values of players increasing recently.
I reckon we've seen the state of the market with talent in less abundance and clubs scrabbling around over players they wouldn't have previously been interested in and placed more emphasis on not losing what we have, which is leaving less room for signings. I don't think we're alone in having a squad that doesn't look like a great use of the cap compared to others/recent years. There might be more to come for them yet, but does Wigan's squad for next year look like it will cost the same as this year's (and 2012's)? Or Warrington's? Squad strength is coming down almost across the board, but I doubt clubs are spending significantly less than the cap for them.