[SOLD] Luis Suarez

I've just remembered we signed Murray as his replacement. All seems good in the world again.....and we got him for nothing....how good is that?

 

The club had to sell once Ivic had made his stance and the player made it clear he was going to play up.


But forgive me for stopping short of saying it’s ‘very good business’ or Gino is some sort of king negotiator for getting the deals he has so far this summer. He’s undersold assets for less than I think he should have been able to get. I won’t overly criticise that because as others rightly say, we aren’t privy to the negotiations. But I will stop well short of praising him either for the same reasons!

 

i dont think anyone is saying that they are not disappointed that the club didnt get more for their assets. but all three players wanted to leave and the club have had to settle for deals with what other clubs wanted to offer. we can sit here and argue all day that we could have got 30m for doucoure or another 5m for estupinan and another 5m for suarez but its academic if other clubs dont want to pay that kinda money.

we got relegated, we need to cut our cloth. yes in an ideal world we would be getting rid of the likes of deeney, gray, welbeck, dawson, janmaat etc, but the fact is none of them seem to be generating any offers.

 

No Murray was presumably Deeney's replacement. Murray looks a bad deal and we can't shift Deeney....but it's not the end of the world....

 

If true, 13m plus a sell-on is decent for us in the end. You mention about getting the money up front, which would have been nice, but probably not very realistic, 13m would go down as one of the biggest deals in Spain this summer (taking out pre-arranged loan-to-permanent and swap deals only Estupinan would be worth more I believe)

 

Observer believes it's £13m over 3 years and a sell on fee. Whether it's 50% or less no-one knows outside of the clubs themselves.

 

Wasn't the Estupinan deal 15m up front as well? I'm sure I've heard we'll get more from that deal in the future

 

As Granada also have not officially announced it, it would seem that not all the paperwork etc has been adequately completed, so why would WFC announce it?
The fact that Granada & Suarez decided to act like little kids is not exactly WFC's fault.

 

Do we need to replace him? Gray & Deeney, although no way good enough for the Prem, are two proven goalscorer's at this level, as is Murray. Pedro we know looks a real talent and hopefully his goal against Sh*t Town will kick start a run of goals. Perica looks a handful and as soon as he's up to speed would expect him to score goals at this level. Welbeck also still on the books and would love to see us retain him. Not to mention we've not seen the best of Success & Penaranda yet.

I'm not worried about lack of goals. We've got plenty in us. I just don't get why someone who has played at a worse level than the Championship all his career had so many hopes pinned on him? Gray, Deeney, Welbeck, Pedro, Sarr, Perica, Success & Penaranda have all played at a higher level throughout their careers.

 

Good work!

 

Isn't a lot you can do when players start going on strike.

Disappointing... and should really spell out that any of the young players we sign to get work permits are there to simply sell on at profit, which we have done.

Just Cucho left.

 

Something is worth what somebody is willing to pay for it. In what world are they worth £50m?? If they were then they would’ve been bought for that. As it is they’ve only ended up at bang average middling Spanish teams.

 

Gino, you've done it again!!11

 

The thing I don’t get about Welbeck is that if he isn’t being played because of his structured play per play deal then that is terrible negotiation on the part of him/his agent.

I would’ve though and had assumed, that he would’ve been paid the higher salary on the basis of being fit for selection, rather than actually being picked.

Otherwise you get a situation like this, in theory he’s fit to play but we don’t play him to avoid paying him his higher salary. That would seem like a bizarre situation to allow yourself to get into, so it doesn’t make sense to me.

 

We have plenty of strikers - but not plenty of 'assured' goals amongst them..

Deeney - unfit, wants to leave, questionable desire/ability
Welbeck - wants to leave, won't train with main group
Deulofeu - wants to leave, fitness issues, not yet even training with us
Gray - Decent option but not guaranteed
Joao Pedro - Best hope but not a central striker
Sarr - Not a striker, will be learning on the job
Perica - Unknown, Jurys out
Success - Too many chances and clearly not motivated
Penaranada - Unknown, poor attitude, lazy?
Murray - legs have gone, certainly not going to provide many minutes or goals
Sinclair - Nowhere near good enough

Thats a lot of strikers. Best hopes in that lot are Joao Pedro, Sarr and Gray - with Perica as a possibility. The rest can be largely written off in one cap[acity or another. If we stick with what we have, we need to hope that Gray plays well in this system and finds his confidence, Joao Pedro matures beyond his years and thrives in a central role and can play lots of games at a consistent level for his age and that Sarr also takes well to playing more centrally.

 

Just going from Ivic's comments yesterday, I suspect we can lump Welbeck in with the 'don't want to be here, find me a move please Mr Agent' crew.

And as @GoingDown said in the Ivic thread - f*ck him. He more than the others IMO as we gave him a decent deal when no others would and he spends more than half his time injured - yet still feels compelled to seek an exit. Horrific attitude.

 

I'm amazed at how many are calling it a good deal, or even brilliant business.

It's not a good deal. No one can call it a good deal, but what's happening is people are using the fact that he wanted to go, and Covid as the reasons. The same type of twisting was used for Estupinan only that was because "only one year on his contract" even though that was not the case.

People should just be honest about it. We're getting our pants pulled down over every sale. We are needy and clubs know this because we advertised that by selling Doucoure for such a low fee. I knew subsequent deals would be low because of this. We need to sell and clubs are taking advantage of our situation.

But we have to be careful now. How many high ticket players do we have left? Sarr & Deulofeu.....but that's about it really. Can't see anyone else in our squad being worth more than £10m apart from them two. Because we've been selling so low, we will probably have to sell both Sarr and Geri just to cover costs.

 

WFC had no choice but to announce it due to online pressure and associated fears that retailers would run out of continence pads if it were not communicated immediately.

 

They do. At least, they do now.

I can't remember who said it, probably Richard Thomas (head of the academy at the time, not sure he is any longer), but I read it was the first thing the club looked at when signing young players.

Maybe that approach only came in relatively recently and can't be applied to Suarez but it's definitely something the club does.

 

We can stop ******* paying them and I sincerely hope that was the case for Suarez

 

Can I just ask an honest question?

What would you have done with Suarez? I'll set the scene - player refusing to play, player training alone (so not even with 'other' group), manager wants him nowhere near the team and one week of the transfer window left to go..

(As I've said above, I think we have let another player go cheaply so we shouldn't be praising the club and owner to high heaven for it - but we also HAD to sell the player....I think its a case of don't praise the owner but don't criticise either personally)

But you seem very critical so I'm genuinely interested as to what you would have done.

 

Don't make us call you a COG, you know you don't like that!

 

WOOP! WOOP! Can the first available member of staff bring a mattress protector to the checkout.

 

Who'd want to live in Granada over Watford?

His girlfriend must be really attractive to warrant that kind of sacrifice from him to leave all this to be with her.

 

I think we do. Here's why:

Players in blue are those whom I believe could make a meaningful contribution to us this season.
Players in red are those whom I believe we cannot rely on to score goals.

Deeney & Murray are proven goalscorers at this level, true. Deeney is also past it and we've seen how he drags the side down when playing alongside Sarr. He can't keep up with his runs and is never at the 6-yard box to finish those chances anymore. Unless it's a pen, I don't fancy him to do that well for us this season and that's if he stays. Murray seems past it by all accounts. I am not going to pin my hopes on a 37 year old.

Gray may actually do a job for us, but unless he's playing alongside a fellow striker we can't rely on him to score goals for us.

The jury is still out on Perica, though he didn't help himself by getting a 3-game ban. Hope he comes good though, and I have a sneaking suspicion that he will.

Joao Pedro looks a great talent, but we cannot rely on a 19-year old to be our main outlet in terms of goals. I think he will score 10/15 goals this season maybe, but it would be unfair of us to rest all our hopes on him.

Peñaranda is one who maybe, just maybe, might feature for us this season. Again though, I don't think he's regarded as a natural goalscorer and I think it would be foolish of us to pin our hopes on someone like Success, who has been contracted to the club for years but has never taken their chances wherever they have been.

Success is a lump who hasn't done anything here for 3 years. Can you honestly say to me that this guy is going to score goals for us?

Sinclair is another one who is not good enough at this level. He needs a fresh start ASAP.

Welbeck is training away from the team with a view to getting a move elsewhere, so he is out of contention.

That leaves Gray, Perica, JP and Peñaranda. There are far worse strike forces in this league, but I feel we would be taking a lot of pressure off Perica, JP and Peñaranda by signing a proven goalscorere. Even someone from League 1 perhaps who has scored goals in the league below, is young and has the potential to develop his game working alongside Ivic.

 

You ask the question as if what the club have done is totally correct. They don't always get it right.....last season is testament to that.

Send him out on loan. It's easy. Why sell for just £10m? It's a rubbish fee for someone of that quality. If he hits the ground running and scores a bucket load of goals, sell him in January for a bigger fee. Once clubs are convinced about him, they will pay a higher fee for him.

We've just sold for £10m, without knowing how good he can be in a higher league.

I don't know why people can't just accept that this is a bad deal and all players have been sold well under their true value. Everton can't believe how good Doucoure is now they've got him. They've won every match this season, and he's been a big part of that. £20m for him was a snip.

I believe this time next year we'll be regretting giving these players away as we have done.

 

I wish we could have kept Suarez and he wanted to play for us. Barring that, I wish we could have got more money for him. We didn't.

But if the rumours are true that he was refusing to train/ play for us, then there's not a lot we could do. Forcing him to stay if he refused to play wouldn't raise his value, and you have to balance his quality against his mentality and the potential impact on the squad.

The damage was done when we got relegated and had to sell players in the middle of a global pandemic.

If the rumoured high sell-on fee exists, then it's not a bad deal considering. If he sells for 10m, then he probably wouldn't have been a star for us, and 12-15m is great business. If he sells for 20m, then he would have probably been pretty good for us, but we'd receive a lot of that fee back ourselves. If he becomes a £30m player, then we'd receive 20+ million for a player who didn't want to play for us, which again is fine.

If there's no sell on fee, then it's a pretty poor deal. On the flip side, it hopefully allows us to keep players who aren't an absolute **** and might want to play for us.

I care more about Hughes, Capoue and even (despite thinking he's an appalling PL player) Gray staying than an untested Suarez.

 

We're not fractured, we're just divided between those who like the five-minute argument and those who want the full half-hour.

 

Agreed, it's a right dump.

 

When did this guy get his work permit? Do we know if he was eligible at the start of last season? If not, I don't think they could have done much in this instance, and to be fair he wasn't a shining light back then, but agree we need to ensure we integrate the ones we do have. Wasn't this the reason Javi got the kick as he wasn't playing the likes of Sarr?

Seems Ivic has done this well, be it through lack of options or his principles but Pedro is getting good game time, as is the like of TDB, Philips etc. Be interesting to see how Cucho is handled, and if Penaranda gets his head down and gets minutes.

 

Clearly that's not true and there's plenty of posts above to say as much. However, I do think you undermine the market at the moment in some (not all) of your comments. I agree with you about a loan - that's what I would have done too. We had to get the player out the building though either way, that's clear. I think the fee is underselling him so I won't 'praise' the owner or club for it. But its cheap for a number of reasons, not just because the club fancied it - at least I hope so!

But talk of getting more for him in January is reliant on so many things - finances in football are very likely to get worse before they get better.

If you want to just look at the black and white of it - Watford FC selling Luis Suarez to a La Liga club who have European money etc for £10m-£13m is a bad deal.
But there are many more moving parts just outside the 'black and white' of it.

 

I agree that the club had little choice at this moment in time for the reasons you said and time will tell on whether the finances are reasonable or not.

However, I think the reason they had little choice and had to sell for what seems a very low amount is as a result of the utter car crash that was last summer and that was all down to the Pozzos (The dreadful incoming transfers, haggling for months over 2-3m on the Sarr deal so he missed all of pre-season, keeping players who didn't want to be here, refusing to pay the players their deserved bonuses, the bizarre refusal to integrate the talented loan players).

They may well be trying to rectify the issues this summer but it does feel a bit like trying to close the door after the horse has bolted.

 

Agreed. All those Mancs and Coronation St on 24/7. Reception from Winter Hill is diabolical.

 

Not feeling too optimistic this morning Norn? I would be far more hopeful that we will get goals from some of the players listed in your post. In fact, I think we have too many still. We, I would guess, are in far better financial shape than most other teams in our league and offloading a few more, will still keep us competitive and financially secure.