Alan Nixon is usually okay with his transfer news despite where his stories are printed. Spending so much money on one position last season was a mistake and it went a long way to making the side so unbalanced. If any money accrued during this window is spent throughout the squad - and let's face it, there are a few on the move so there will need to be incomings to compensate - I think we'll have just as good a chance of going back up than if we keep hold of Sarr and cobble a team together out of our kids and a few loans. I know you think we should gamble by keeping hold of as many of the more talented players we have to go straight back up but there's no guarantee that would happen. The gamble is we don't go up and those players we can sell for £40m or £25m now won't fetch the same fees this time next year due to their contracts having one year less to run. Their stars won't shine so brightly either after playing in a failed promotion push in the Championship. Sell for as big as we can now and reinvest in the squad in players who won't have to be replaced when we do go back up because they're all 30+ again. We've been there and it didn't work out in the long run.
Players like Sarr do not need to be sold now. He’s on a long contract and will still be worth loads especially if he rips it up in the Championship. You have to retain some of the quality. Today showed what it’s going to be like. It’s already clear none of the big stars are part of the plan and that’s hugely disappointing. Probably the only players of any note we can add from today is Hughes and Pedro, the rest are out the door. If I’m right about that, then I don’t give us too much chance of promotion. We won’t have strength in depth, a couple of injuries will hurt us greatly. I think they’ll be trimming back far too much. Sure people will defend it and try to justify it, just as they did last season. But the club got it massively wrong then and I think they’re making huges mistakes again. It’s a much bigger gamble to sell all the quality, than it is to retain them. Keeping just a few of them greatly enhances promotion prospects. Selling them greatly reduces it.
Buy them to bring them to the brink of ruin perhaps? (Just to the brink of ruin, don't want to see them go out of business, but them floundering in non-league again would be nice!)
I don't see the sense in keeping the majority of the same players who failed last season, who supposedly had too much power over the head coaches, who supposedly made the changing room atmosphere toxic and who have shown disinterest in fighting when things go **** up. If, and it's still a big if, they got us promotion at the first attempt, we already know that as a group they aren't good enough for the Premier league. We would then need a squad overhaul anyway because of age and a known lack of quality to keep us up. So by getting good prices now there's a chance to develop a better and more cohesive squad who won't need to be disbanded if and when we were to get promoted. Build something now so it needs adding to in a year or two because it'll be easier (not easy) to do that in the Championship over trying to stave off relegation with a brand new side the first year back up.
But any money we get from whatever sales are simply not going to be invested in the side this season. That's why we are stocking up on Udinese reserves and trialists.
Get a good price for Doucoure and Deulofeu sure (maybe even with a player coming in our direction too), but do everything we can to keep Sarr. Sure, I bet he'd love to keep playing in the Premier League, but I don't think he'll kick up a fuss, and whatever you think of the idea of putting all the eggs in the Sarr basket last summer, you'd never accuse him of causing any problems at the club. I mean, sure, we do need to recoup money where we can, but hopefully that doesn't mean getting rid of all of our key players. I know it's a risk to keep him when our finances are...precarious, but keeping him would give us a much better chance of going up, and even if we do cash in on him, you can bet very little of that £40-50m will go on restructuring the squad (will be all bargain-basement/loanees and returning players)
I'm not expecting everything received to be spent on transfers or loans but some will have to be ploughed back into the playing staff otherwise we won't be able to field a side come January.
The club seemed to put out a £40m price tag on Sarr pretty early so I don't think they're going to do everything they can to keep hold of him. His stock is high right now so capitalise and build again.
Can only be seriously skint if the club accept 40 million...supposed to have paid north of 30 million + wages + agent's fees + sell on (?). Can't see a decent profit in £40 million. Sent from my ONEPLUS A5010 using Tapatalk
I agreed with the principle and think overhaul is definitely required for these reasons. However, Sarr didn’t fail last season and I very much doubt he had too much power as he was a young man adapting to a new league and country. I also think he tried and put the effort in and has indicated he would play in the Championship. Gutted if he goes as he can make us special.
You just don’t understand finance do you ? You seem to assume we will definitely win promotion, assume we get to put the £135m in the bank, won’t immediately be relegated, and won’t have a problem if we keep Sarr, Caps etc and don’t go up. The parachute money is to part cover the deficit which will be >£50m first year and more in following years. Only 1 in 5 relegated teams finish in the top 2 the following season.
It’s not about whether the club is making enough profit on Sarr. It’s about ensuring we don’t go out of business in the next few years. If you can guarantee we will get more for him in 12m time if we don’t go up then maybe we hold onto him but what if he has a poor season, gets injured etc ?
The realities and implications of our financial situation are now becoming clearer. The impact of relegation and covid on our revenues, combined with the existing debts owed to third parties and in outstanding transfer fees, does not paint a pretty picture. By the end of this transfer window I am expecting us to need to make around £60m net in transfer activity, as well as shaving approx £20m off the wage bill, or approx £400k/week.
Those sort of figures were pretty obvious from the minute we got relegated. Laughable how many people were talking about holding off on sales for a season. Sarr, Deulofeu and Doucoure for 80m plus maybe loan out Capoue and Deeney and you're not far off. God knows why we turned down 135m for Gray though.
Selling our best young player who would still only be 24 if we got promoted again would mean even more would need to be done to overhaul the squad if we were to get promoted again - it will leave us with more players of lesser quality who we'd need to "disband" should we get promoted, and us desperate again to find more players of Sarr's quality to replace them with. It's the players in their late 20s/early 30s we need to focus on cashing in on/getting off the wage bill (with the exception of Capoue).
It may be obvious but I think the price is likely to be determined very heavily by other transfer outs. If we shift Doucoure, Deeney, Welbeck and Deulofeu that will bring in circa £60m while also freezing up a huge chunk of our wage bill. I struggle to see us selling Sarr unless a silly offer comes in. On the other hand if we are struggling to shift those players, I would image £40m will start to look like a pretty appealing offer.
You’re talking as if it’s easy to just build a side that’s not only good enough to go up quickly, but simultaneously be a side that’s good enough to stay there.
You keep peddling this ‘go out of business in 3 years time’ line - that’s hasn’t happened to a club coming down from the PL ever. Of course we need to be prudent to stop ourselves falling to Portsmouth type levels but again no one is saying we don’t. As far as I can see, HB1 is just saying there are certain players we should be fighting to keep whilst making an effort to offload others. I don’t see the issue with that theory - but you seem to think he’s saying we should just sell no one and to hell with the consequences?! I don’t think he is.
But it's a question of who can be sold rather than who we'd like to see sold. And for maximum reinvestment it may need the sacrifice of Sarr. Not literally of course, a transfer to another team would do.
Do you really foresee a window where Pereyra, Welbeck and Pussetto aren’t sold? Add them to the likely departure of Doucoure too. Deeney looks like he could go and potentially Capoue too. Sell Sarr for £40m and then realise you can offload the rest and the gap in finances could have been plugged without selling Sarr. The gap in finance will just need to be sorted gradually over the year, across two windows. We shouldn’t be in a blind panic about it - should we not raise what we need come the end of the window, I’m sure there will be plenty of takers for Sarr still.
Of course we will never ever know and can debate this until the cows come home but.. I really feel lockdown came at a bad time for us, and for Sarr especially. I know we’d just lost tamely at Palace and hadn’t been on a brilliant run anyway, but Sarr was in decent form, culminating with the Liverpool masterclass. When football resumed, he (like the side in general) didn’t seem as impressive. A couple more points from somewhere and we’d have stayed up, heaping plaudits on Sarr for being one of the main reasons we survived. A couple more big performances from him like the Liverpool one and I’m sure nobody would be saying that spending so much money on one position was a mistake. We’d just be happy that we’d got that one special piece of gold dust who kept us up. He’d be the player I most want us to keep. Both for ability, the havoc he could wreck in the Championship, and for his age and potential.
Even those who don't rate the Pozzo's can't think they are Venky's level of incompetent. Even they managed to get Blackburn back to the Championship. There have been some real overreactions on here, of late.
In answer to your other reply, no I don't think it's easy to replace what we have and it will likely have to be done over 3 or 4 transfer windows. And I know it comes with its own risks too but it's how I'd like us to approach the Championship. As for the players you've just listed, other than Doucoure they aren't going to be bringing in that much money. Yes wages will be reduced but I think if Sarr is sold, and that's where this has all come from, then we have a better chance to improve the squad. Sometimes it takes selling your best/most valuable player to progress and personally I think trying to forge the nucleus of a younger squad who can then be built around going forward is easier done in the Championship.
I'm not suggesting he was part of the problem or he doesn't have the ability. He is our most sellable asset though and I'm suggesting if there's any truth in Liverpool willing to meet the £40m valuation then it will give the club a better chance to find players to improve the squad.
Alan Nixon is normally spot on regarding his Watford news and he's not the only one reporting it. It's not like Richard Littlejohn or Kelvin Mackenzie reporting it. It is possible to separate various factors out when looking at information. But as you're a sharp one, I'm sure you knew all that already.
Like everybody here, I was braced for lots of big name departures. And with each other, I tried to add a disclaimer to make myself feel a bit better. Doucoure? Wanted to go anyway. Deeney? Past his best. Welbeck? Often injured. Capoue? Mind won’t be on the job in the Championship. Deulofeu? Harder to find a reason to be happy he’s off but he’s been injured and again might not be up for a season at a lower level. Etc etc. But Sarr? The whole team next season could be built around him. He could be our gold dust, the difference between us and the many good Championship sides we will encounter. I get the argument that with the £40 million we could really improve the team, but it doesn’t always work like that. Who is to say we will spend it wisely? We haven’t always. And new players will take time to shine. Even Sarr hasn’t been a 10/10 consistent performer all season. It took a while to get him up to the heights of the Liverpool game. I worry that we will start the season with a mid table looking side but blessed with a top 6 manager who will have to work his magic to get us into the promotion picture. And if we do get promotion, I really believe we need players we know are capable of performing back in the PL. Like Sarr....
As a perceived dullard, I take note of Alan Nixon and not who he writes for. His updates on twitter with transfer news are generally pretty good and that's why I posted the link in the first place. I don't read The S*n.
The June 2019 accounts are a grim picture. I suspect the real horror will dawn when the June 2020 accounts are finalised. Sarr transfer fee will be added to the creditors (net of Lukebakio). Any other new financing will be clarified. And presumably we will make another large loss with the usual poor control over other operating expenses compared to our peers. Add to that compensation for Gracia and QSF. It could be grim reading. Reduced premier league position prize money as well.
Things might not be as cut and dry as they appear from his article. This is what Nixon said this morning regarding Sarr: Liverpool will probably let one go to make space. But if they come calling it will be hard to resist. The lad is a Champions League player.
This....exactly right. Not sure why you are the only one that understands that, but then the forum does have this collective dumbness from time to time.
