If we must sell a player and he will only go to one club there's not much we can do. If we were still in the prem of course we would have held the cards and obviously would have been able to get a better price.
Yes....much better to keep deadwood like Penaranda, Success and Sinclair around, paying their wages and never playing them. Way to go.
I don’t disagree with the wider point as I say - I just think relation significantly weakened our hand. But we folded too quick that’s all.
Maybe. We seem to be terrible at business in general. I find it hard to square the post-relegation announcement that the hierarchy intend to be in place for the next 8 years with selling all our decent players on the cheap.
You can be really pretty amusing sometimes. I'm sure they hadn't thought of pretending to walk away, that would have got another £5m. It's the first time they've ever sold a player afterall. They've made a number of bad calls over the last couple of years. This wasn't one of them. I'm sure they will have got the best price they could and I'm sure you or HH couldn't have done better. Very easy to sit on a forum not knowing any of the facts of the negotation. I guess you'd probably have brought in £20m for Troy by now and be holding out for £75m for Sarr from Liverpool....after pretending to walk away !
It did weaken our hand. Would we have got more by waiting or would we have been in a frustrating position of not knowing when/if we'd be able to sell at all and ended up folding at £15m on deadline day ? We just don't know.
I sit on a forum and pass opinion, which is what we all do. No one can say selling Doucoure for £20m is a good deal. I only hear people making up excuses for it, without a shred of evidence, apart from their own theory. You have to make conclusions from what you're allowed to know. £20m for Doucoure is a rubbish deal, whichever way you slice it.
It is. But Abdoulaye deserves a lot of blame. Had he for some mysterious reason not had his heart set on Everton we could have had a bidding war. I don't know what he thinks he will find by the dockside there. Everton are just another of the also rans now. No silverware apart from a Lancashire Cup if they are lucky. He also turned out to be a winker.
The thing is, there is a player who wants to go to Everton and no where else. Was £20m the first offer? Did anybody else even make a bid. We need to sell some players and as far as I know this is the only concrete deal there has been, all the rest is rumours. Could we have got more? Possibly, equally Everton had already signed two other midfielders so may not have gone higher. The facts are nobody knows
I agree but maybe we didn’t have much choice. When you look at our squad, the wage bill will be enormous and needs to be cut and this helps
It is likely that they are petrified of letting the market play out because they can't afford to. If the short term financial challenges are as ominous as many on here have flagged, then there may well be a very real need to get money in now, just to buy some time. In another season we could have let negotiations on Doucouré roll along, but we don't have that luxury right now. For all the interest in some players, until yesterday none seemed anywhere near as far along so there was a financial risk in waiting until nearer the windows close. Perhaps with the Doucouré (and Estupinan) money in, the club can afford to relax a bit and negotiate harder.
Send him out on loan then for a loan fee and let Everton over his wages. Don't forget Watford held the upper hand in all this. We should be calling the shots. He had three years of contract still to run. If the boot was on the other foot, you know we would have to pay over the odds to get a good player out of a club who is under a long contract. But not in this case.
We did not hold the upper hand as soon as got relegated. Our hand was forced as soon as that happened
Not really. Bournemouth didn't lose the upper hand when they sold Ake to City for £41m. Brentford didn't lose the upper hand when they sold Watkins to Villa for £33m. QPR didn't lose the upper hand when they sold Eze to Palace for £20m, Bournemouth didn't lose the upper hand when they sold Ramsdale to Sheff Utd for £18.5m. We clearly sold one of our best players for a ridiculously low figure, even when you compare it to other deals in the current market between established Championship clubs to Premier League clubs.
All of those qualified as home grown which rightly or wrongly attracts premium Interesting reading comments elsewhere that be because of covid transfer fees down about 30%. Because there is every chance of multiple outgoings we need time to source replacements so we cant afford to wait till end of window. Always thought Arsenal might have been a good fit but sadly didn't come in to create a bidding war. Still a mystery why Doucoure set on Everton move, could understand if wanted to play under Silva but not a top six team
All those players are homegrown, younger, and just off the back of very good individual seasons. Don't underestimate how much Doucoure has hurt his own value with his own horrendous performances for the last 18 months. They certainly won't have gone unnoticed.
All had better seasons, are homegrown, younger and have greater potential. Doucoures form and our relegation has affected the price greatly
They clearly went unnoticed by the only club he wanted to go to because they wanted him for 12 months+...
Two of those players are from the Championship, so it's not really comparable them having good seasons. If it's down to Doucoure's form being poor, why did a club who are apparently on the up like Everton want him then? They tried their luck and probably couldn't believe it when Watford were receptive. We turn down £35m a year before then sell for £20m. They did the exact same thing with Ighalo. United offered us £35m, we refused, then sold for £20m. I think it's fair to suggest the Pozzo's are not as good in the transfer market as their reputation has you believe.
But weren't prepared to pay the £30m+ that we were apparently after. They even reportedly bid £32m in August 2019, now after his performances last season, they were only happy to pay £20m. Please keep up!
Trust me, I’m up to date. The debate is whether if we held off, they or someone else may have been prepared to bid more later in the window as clubs became desperate. We don’t know the answer to that. I don’t and neither do you, hence why people are debating it. My point of view is the club should have taken a degree of empathy with Doucoure and his wishes. But I think we have sold the player £5m-£8m less than his worth in the current market and we have displayed too much willingness to lose money on his value just to appease his wishes. ‘I only want to join Everton’ - fine. Speak to them then and get them to match our value of you. And if our value was £20m, then the owner is undervaluing our players in my opinion.
If Doucoure had been on loan here with an option to buy for £22m/£25m, would you be happy for the club to take up that option, after the season he had? I certainly wouldn't. He was comfortably the worst player in our midfield.
Interesting on transfermarkt website his peak value £22.5m which in this depressed market is about what we have got for him
Maybe the club had a gentleman's agreement with Doucs. Who knows and who cares. He's gone for whatever money. My concern is getting in replacements.
Are we even sure it's £20m only? What happened to the add ons? Because £25m would be a pretty good result.
For argument's sake let's say it's 25m. If it's true that fees are down 30% this year, we essentially got the equivalent of 36m for him in last year's money.
We can also look at Bournemouth getting very good money for Ake but selling Wilson for £20 million which on the face of it is below market value for a home grown forward who has been around the England team in the last year. I would expect Wilson to hold a higher value than Doucoure And we got the same / slightly more for Doucoure despite the fact Bournemouth had already received £50million in transfer fees. The Ake transfer was also rumoured to be agreed before relegation was confirmed. If the player wants to move and the buying club knows that the value will drop.