[SOLD] Pervis Estupinan

To me it’s all been very hit and miss, which I guess is typical of any club’s transfer dealings. And because we tend to be more active in the transfer market than almost anybody else, we’ve had more hits and more missed to reflect over.

At times the owners have seemed like geniuses, with the likes of Richarlison, Doucoure, Ighalo etc. At times too they’ve made a tidy profit on players who we hardly ever saw, Lukebakio being one, but as they hardly ever played for us, we never benefitted from them on the pitch, only the club’s bank balance. We’ve had then plenty of duds. I put these in two categories. Duds because they simply weren’t worth the outlay and then proved hard to be rid of, the likes of Gray and Welbeck (sorry to pick in these two), and the duds who came and went very fast, having only made a handful of appearances and not benefitted the long term stability of the club.

So in my opinion the owners are neither transfer geniuses or transfer flops, but somewhere in between. They’ve given us Capoue, Doucouré, Deulofeu, Richarlison, Sarr etc but an awful lot of gambles on players too that haven’t worked out for one reason or another.

 

From Transfermarkt:

20/21: 21.69m
19/20: -20.34m
18/19: 19.57m
17/18: -47.39m
16/17: -11.2m
15/16: -66.4m
14/15: -7.6m
13/14: 1.87m
12/13: 3.59m

So overall a net loss of: 106m although obviously doesn't include players still at the club. If we get 30m for Estupinan and Suarez then I don't think a loss of 70m is too bad considering we've been promoted and had 5 years of PL football as a result, pretty sure some Championship clubs will have had the same amount of losses in their transfers without any PL football.

 

If you want to talk about facts, Pozzo has borrowed against future revenue, the ground, the playing assets and future transfer fees receivable. He has borrowed against every asset available to him.

 

Yeah but we have a hospitality steak restaurant now.

 

Overall they have done reasonably.

Every club is going to have some signings that work out and some that dont. I dont really have an issue with the likes of Masina, Kabasele, Sema who on paper looked decent signings but just haven't worked out.

I suppose my question is that I just don't understand why we have hamstrung ourselves with some of these signings who were so obviously never going to be good enough.

Sporting fans were practically throwing a parade when we took Zeegelar of their hands. I spoke to a few of their fans on reddit and they were completely baffled - and it was immediately obvious why. We ended up paying the guy for months while he partied out in Dubai and embarrassed himself with out U23s.

Obbi Oulare was signed to be our back up striker, but has never managed more than 3 goals in a season in his whole career.

Jerome Sinclair brought in for £5m and on 20k a week, again as our back up striker, when to that date he had done absolutely nothing.

Dawson was brought in to be a starting player for us in a position we were desperately weak in when he had been the 3rd best centre back at a championship side the year before.

Pussetto was brought in to be cover for our wide positions but ever with multiple injuries in his position he wasn't deemed good enough to play out wide ahead of the likes of Cleverley.

 

So effectively any profit/loss is the difference between current squad value and £106m, less the value of the inherited squad, which I would suggest was minimal. I'd say we are on the right side of that by a reasonable chunk of money.

 

Yeah but he negotiated excellent rates in his borrowing spree...

(Maybe)

 

Or that the need for short-term cash flow is much more urgent than any of us had realised? I think that may be a more logical interpretation.

 

I don't see picking up players cheap and selling them after greater exposure as a sign that someone is an excellent negotiator. Sure, it's smart business and in the past, the carpet bombing technique of signing tens of promising youngsters from untapped markets, led to some inevitable successes, but that's not really evidence of Gino being a great negotiator.

Of course you can pick up young kids for a relative pittance from clubs in South America that have absolutely no money. And of course, if said young kid then plays in the Premier League, La Liga or Serie A they'll be worth many times the initial outlay. Still doesn't mean he's the world's best negotiator - that only comes into play when we are disagreeing with another party over price and we manage to shift them significantly more than we move.

 

Come on, Nath. Now you're just acting like a spoilt brat losing a quiz on a subject someone else happens to know the answers to.

 

Hardly. On one side you’ve got someone arguing Pozzo is “beat negotiator in world football”. On the other you have the accounts which shows Pozzo has borrowed against every asset and every revenue stream and we are in the Championship.

If we want to look at bare facts Pozzo has performed extremely poorly over the last few years. Lauding his performance as LouHorns seems to do is laughable as Nath says.

 

I wonder how the best negotiator in world football felt last night watching one of his players running around playing for Marseille?

 

It would be a shame if you didn't post because of the negativity although I admit some of it is quite full on. You post some interesting stuff and the forum would be worse off without it even if not everybody agrees with it

 

Whether you like the hyperbole nature of Nath’s posts or not, he was one of a very select few who saw last season coming and called it - not many people like to reference that.

 

He said it pretty much every year, hardly Mystic Meg is he

 

I’m not saying he’s Mystic Meg. Far from it! But some of you talk like you’ve never encountered him and his arguments before. If you don’t agree with what he says, then systematically dissect what he says and pull it apart. But sadly, recently, he’s been right more than he’s been wrong...that’s all I’m saying.

 

The fact we have borrowed every penny that we can doesn't mean that Pozzo is a good or bad negotiator. It just means he's been prepared to borrow what he could to fund strengthening the team against richer opponents. Whether he has always spent wisely is of course open to debate.

 

I was alluding to the petulant last line of the post to which I replied, not Nath's right to be interminably negative. He has been like this even in previous seasons when there was very low levels of justification. I'm not sure we need to have a dialectical split between "happy clappers" & "pure curmudgeons".

 

Which raises the question....would it have been more prudent not to invest at the level they have, thereby requiring the loans taken out etc, & just have accepted the likelihood of relegation maybe 2 seasons ago? What would have been the level of criticism levelled at the hierarchy in that scenario? It's obvious that the bar has been significantly raised in the PL since our season under QSF...just look at the current squads at Man City & Liverpool. Should they have stuck to the "true Pozzo way" & sold Doucs & Pereyra at the risk of imminent relegation & the predictable "no ambition" accusations.
All the tosh about becoming the "best of the rest" is what's put us in the position we are, but reading the views of many on here, there is a well of belief that we should be in that position.
No amount of even slightly prudent management will achieve that once the real financial restrictions faced by the owner are put into the equation.

 

I think we're getting promoted this season

 

I don't think we're getting promoted this season

 

I wouldn't put Masina, Kabasele and Sema in the same bracket as Oulare, Sinclair and a few others, Kabs is going to be highly used this season as is Masina and probably Sema! they are all good squad players. Oulare looked as if he had won a competition at 6 million a ticket and Sinclair got second prize!

 

I didn't intend to put them in the same bracket. Sorry if that wasn't clear.

 

Agreed. But I’d say if someone is raising “financial facts”, then the facts are we are mortgaged up for the hilt after 5 years in premier league. Whether that is due to poor value, over stretching or wasteful operating expenses is up for debate. However it wouldn’t suggest Pozzo performance has been good.

 

A sister of an anonymous health professional did tweet that COVId and/or the potential vaccine was designed by Bill Gates and the World Bank to control our minds...

So IgNoR It aT Ur PeRiL!!!

 

I think over-stretching. As I have said many times we will never become an established prem club, we just don't have the finances. Relegation will always be a matter of time. Not sure what I want anymore. Promotion seasons are superb, unforgettable, but when the following seasons are either immediate relegation or risk the future of the club .....

 

It would certainly have been more prudent !

 

I also remember that photo of Suarez and Estupinan standing back-to-back because it was so distinctive. I could not find it again when I looked, but I did discover another photo of them together which was posted by the club. I remember that people made jokes about their height because the goal behind them gives the impression that they are short. The two of them have been very prominent in the club's preseason photos.

 

Yep. I agree with you and I’ll admit I was one of those who thought it was a sign of intent from the club.

I suppose I bring it up because I think it’s the start of things really going wrong, and when Pozzo began to deviate from normal operating procedure. Whether that’s because we’d done a poor job of sourcing the next line of players to come in and develop, or because we genuinely thought their value would increase further is up for debate.

In the current context of keeping players who don’t want to be here, I think it’s worth talking about.

 

Do you remember the reasoning he gave? What others said after the cup final about what might happen and why?

Probably not. Easy to sneeringly dismiss people that saw what was coming and said why they believed that - only for it to come true and be dismissed by others as a lucky guess. By people who went in to great detail about how we would be much closer to 7th and accused anyone of disagreeing of being negative.

 

Except he didn't. Repeating myself, but none of what he said proves that "Pozzo is one of the best negotiators in world football" as a fact in whatsoever.

But it's fashionable on here to desperately try and make me out to be in the wrong in every situation.

 

No it's not.

 

Lol, if you say so. People literally can't stand me being right about anything, can they?

"oMg EvEn A bRoKeN cLoCk Is RiGhT tWiCe A dAy!". What a cop out.

 

Has this Perv gone yet?