Does Being In The Playoffs Hinder Early Signings?

Just sat here having my brekkie watching the now crap SSN, and I see a lot of teams have announced what players they are letting go. With us being in the playoffs does this hinder us getting some good early signings in, as players may not want to wait a week or so to find out what league we'll be in before signing, so they'll go elsewhere before then, needing to get their own futures sorted?

Interesting argument.

There’s probably a certain degree of truth in it but I’d rather be in with a chance of attracting decent players in L2 rather than finish 8th and sweep up a few players for NL.

There are so many factors here that it's almost impossible to answer eg:

If you get a definite offer from Aldershot is it better than a maybe from Grimsby?
If you get a def 1 year offer from Colchester is it better than 3 years at Grimsby?

There are obvious cases - right now the same offer from Stockport is better than one from Grimsby for example.

And a big factor now for lower division players is how far away is the club from where they live? Will they be given support for housing if they have to move or rent a place during the week? And the impact on their partners and maybe kids.

A player that we are seriously considering is not making a decision between Madrid, Milan or London. It's much more basic and fundamental.

I think it naturally does impact on it.  At this level it's still a case for most players that they're scrapping for contracts and the best possible deals they can get.    

Hurst and his team will have different targets depending on what league we're in.  Let's say for example they've got a target striker if we get back in League Two, Player A, and one if we stay in the Conference, Player B.  

We might have started discussions with Player A who is prepared to sign for us if we get back in the league but doesn't want to drop to the Conference as our wage limit at that level doesn't stretch to what he wants. Whilst he's waiting for us to effectively win 3 cup finals, he gets an offer from, let's say, Barrow.  Barrow are offering £50 a week less but it's a guaranteed contract right here and now.  Is he going to wait another two weeks and gamble on us winning those 3 cup finals and run the risk of Barrow signing someone else, therefore limiting his employment opportunities, or is he going to effectively bottle the risk and take the slightly lesser wage on offer knowing that it's a done deal?

We'll have the exact same situation with Player B.  He's waiting on us not winning 3 cup finals, now he might be prepared to see if we fall at the first hurdle.  But the more hurdles we jump, the more the clock ticks and the less options he has.  If it comes to the 6th June and we're a Football League club, we'll no longer be interested in him but he's wasted the best part of a month holding out whilst other clubs at Conference level have snapped up other signings.

This can work both ways.  If you think of someone like Danny Collins, we got him after the season had started because he'd gone under the radar a little bit.  Thinking a fair bit further back, Darren Barnard is another who was holding out for deals elsewhere and it left him without a club before arriving here.  Both players we probably didn't think we would be the market for at the start of the summer.

Torquay's extended season last year buggered them up this year as they got raided and then had a month less than everyone else to get replacements in, but also dealing with the fact that a lot of the better targets were already taken.

It's a huge risk when you're in the play-offs in my opinion.  We all know about the value of the players having a refresh in the summer, but I wonder what impact this scenario has on the management and their team.  Extended season and then cramming a summer recruitment into a reduced window of opportunity, with the pressure of repeating the previous year as a minimum.  How fresh are they going into the new season?