I don’t think they will, especially as they got low-balled by United to an extent, but Sarr seems the type of player Dortmund should be in for. Take him for £50m and potentially make a 50% increase in a year or two. Chelsea COULD come calling if they sell Hudson Odoi. Whilst unlikely, I don’t think we should be ruling those clubs out.
I remember Troy saying with some pride that he beat Sema in the sprints and thought he was talking ******** until I saw the world's slowest winger actually play.
Sarr will never be a £75m player. He's got such gaping fundamental flaws in his technique. Whilst obviously our best player, we massively overpaid for him. His attempts at volleys make me wince, every one either sliced, row z or an air shot.
Sounds from the accounts like we actually paid £50m for him as well. As you say by far our best player and our only meaningful asset but jeez.
He’s young. And he’s been under poor/average coaches at his time with us - with poor/average teammates. Get the boy surrounded with class players and top coaches and I think those gaps in his game disappear pretty quick. He hasn’t been linked with these top clubs by mistake so no doubt they see the raw diamond they can shine - we are just pricing that raw diamond highly for our own (correct) means right now. But I think one of these top sides will eventually take him for £40m-£50m. Then, as we have seen with Richarlison, one good season and they will easily have a £75m+ rated player. I just can’t see how anyone can say definitively he will never achieve the above. He’s clearly well on the way already.
I'd say Chalobah vs Leicester is the one of the best long range strikes I've ever seen but wouldn't say that means he's any good at shooting from distance in general. I have however watched two seasons of Sarr attempting volleys that have almost all been utterly rank.
It's a prime example of Pozzo policy though. We had a side which had a gaping hole at centre back and had needed an effective no. 9 since Ighalo. So we signed a crocked punt in Wellbeck and I can't even remember if we made even a token attempt at tightening the defence. Instead, we broke into the piggy bank to sign a luxury player whose ceiling was misjudged, for the Pozzo player trading corporation. We then got relegated. Our team requirements were ignored so Gini could try and play wheeler dealer at a higher level than ever before and the club suffered.
Dortmund appear to be bringing in Donyell Malen as Sancho's replacement. Liverpool were actually linked with him earlier in the window.
Doesn't seem like a Dortmund kind of deal, they go for really young players for peanuts and then sell them for ginormous fees, whereas there's no guarantee Dortmund would ever make a big profit on Sarr
I wouldn't say 'massively overpaid' is accurate. We paid £30m - £35m which is probably about what he is. Sure it wasn't a great investment if we were hoping for profit and may not have been the best use of our resources, but we didn't overpay on his market value in my honest opinion.
So what was the exact price we paid for Sarr? Would people be happy with Wilson and Marko Gruji* plus a healthy fee?
No. Wilson is ga$h. Origi is the only player I’d take potentially in return and even then I’d be loath to do the deal.
I queried this on the Finance thread-we paid £66m for players in our last PL season (according to the audited accounts). I can only see Pedro, Dawson and Pussetto which were all reported and total £16m which leaves Sarr at .....£50m?
Except transfer payments made in that timeframe won’t just be for the players who joined in summer 2019. Every deal we make will be structured so that payments are spread over a few years.