Depends if you’re a fan or an accountant. The club have certainly got a lot wrong but as a fan I don’t think they should be criticised for not selling players earlier. We’ve been a selling club pretty much our entire existence and it was always depressing when we sold players after one good season. We didn’t sell Igahlo and Doucoure because it was believed they would benefit us more by actually being our players and playing for us rather than just taking a profit. Richarlison wanted away and to join up with Silva, unfortunately there is little value these days in holding a player against his will, we still made a pretty huge profit on him regardless. What would’ve happened if we’d kept him and he got a serious injury? You’d be complaining we didn’t sell when we had the chance.
What was the story with Ighalo? Didn't we get a £40m bid or something like that, but he turned it down?
I think the Chinese club that eventually bought him bid something crazy like £40/£50m but we turned it down because he was scoring goals at premier league level. That kind of makes sense because premier league strikers are hard to come by and not cheap. Unfortunately his form and ability fell off a cliff and we ended up selling him for about half the original offer. From memory it was all quite sad, I remember he did a video to the fans where he genuinely seemed quite sad to be going. I think we basically forced him out for the money, but at the same time he got paid a ridiculous wage by them, so he’s not a complete victim.
I'm not sure that is entirely true. I thought and of course I could be wrong,but wasn't it a question of Iggy losing a considerable amount of money? I recall the story was he was scammed and China were offering such ridiculous wages that this was the best way he could regain his loses in a short time. Could be nonsense but that's how I remember it.