Do you really think that if we had anywhere close to £50m sitting around as you say that we would not have conducted different business last summer and this january?
No. We had assets and considerable liabilities to pay. The assets were needed to repay the liabilities. If we had sold valuable players inc Sarr at any time we would have needed to use the cash to pay debt. With promotion that delicate balance has been removed....for now.
Watford have basically never disclosed any of their transfer fees. Reports from England said Pussetto was £15m (https://theathletic.co.uk/1528417/2020/01/12/watford-ignacio-pussetto-transfer-january-window/). Italy said they were £7m. I am going with the latter because the prior report just makes me sad.
If our 1 year liabilities were in excess of £50m (after we had already shifted a number of high earners and sold Doucoure, Suarez and Estupinan for the best part of £50m) we would have gone bust even with the PL TV money and full stadiums.
We had relatively few valuable saleable assets that needed to cover liabilities < and > 1 year given we would be making losses over next couple of years due to the slashed income and challenge to reduce operating costs as quickly as possible. In a dead transfer market we were fortunate to be able to shift costs from our cashflow and obtain transfer fees through the relationship plus obtain S&TE. Muff sold Ake and Wilson & King for significant sums. How much did they reinvest in new signings ?
Muff were also in a worse financial situation than us because when both clubs were in the PL they spent more on transfers and paid significantly higher wages. Long term they are also quite a bit more reliant on the TV money than we are. I am not debating the majority of what you are saying, but I cannot believe we would have conducted ourselves differently in the transfer windows if we had received anything close to the £50m you said. No doubt our finances aren't in great shape but that would have given us sales of nearly £100m (with Doucoure, Suarez and Estupinan). Unless the club is already circling the drain, an injection of that much cash would surely cleared our debt and thus allowed us to bring in players of a better calibre than Lazaar.
Well, the situation is almost certainly not as you've presented it then. There's a chunk of combined transfer fees received left out of the equation, and that's kind of the important bit (plus the offloaded wages for GD and Pereyra, who were probably on a fair bit). Unless we know what the fees for all of the deals were (and to the best of my knowledge, we don't have those), it's virtually impossible to judge whether or not we got the short end of the stick.
Just look at the amounts Udinese have spent on transfers in recent years. Unless they blew their transfer records out of the water and none of the local press reported it, we very likely received quite a bit below market value. The wages being moved is a factor, but would also have been a factor if we had some them to a third party. SD has been pretty vocal about the amount brought in for Doucoure, Suarez, and Estupinan but Deulofeu and Pereyra are never mentioned in the same conversation. You are right we don't have the full picture, but it would take something pretty extraordinary for that equation to balance out in an even manner.
Not saying we received that much for Deulofeu and Pereyra, but how much of the Doucoure and Suarez money did we see up front? Think I heard it was £20-25m with about £10m up front, for Doucoure, an initial £15m up front for Estupinan, and not much initially for Suarez
I just don't feel there's any basis to say that with any degree of certainty. For the deals where we've known the fee between the clubs, it's always been reasonable and within the confines of fair market value. I'm not going to assume that wasn't the case this time around without some kind of evidence to that effect. I'm sure we got money for the players concerned and, given the circumstances, I'm sure we needed it too. Anything beyond that is probably fruitless, since we have no idea what the actual numbers were, and that's kind of the important bit.
You might be right and of course we’ll never know. Maybe if they’d got better prices than the “reserve” figures they had earmarked to use to cover costs and liabilities... maybe, but they would have been mindful that there was no guarantee they could convert Sarr into the value they wanted and of course they had no chance of getting £50m for RP and GD given the market and GD injury. My original point was just that I don’t think the dealings with Udinese last summer were that unkind to us.
We took out a loan against a €7.5m installment for Pereyra. Don't know what he went for, but it's unlikely that's the full amount.
With the exception of Mandragora (who was one of the fishiest transfers in a league with a history of fishy transfers). Udinese's next most expensive transfer was 9m and that was 20 years ago. Their record transfer in recent history was Pussetto (lol) who cost £7m. Udinese get £35-50m p/a from TV money (https://twitter.com/SwissRamble/status/1168775896762855424/photo/1). I can't image a world where they could pay anything close to market value for Pereyra + Deulofeu in one window, and if they did, it not being quite big news. Even if we say they were £15m and 10m due to the depreciated market / injuries - that would be 70% of their income. For context it would have been like us buying two £35m players in one window.
Just wanted to say the past page and a half has been a very interesting read this evening, thanks all for the valuable insight and healthy debate. This place is so much better when people can disagree without it descending into insults.
Spanish media claiming Saul Niguez is leaving Atletico Madrid for Bayern for £68m - this in turn will see Madrid finalise signing De Paul for £40m.
Saw that yesterday and Bayern were pissed off. Bayern strongly refuted this rumour and called it lies.
https://bayernstrikes.com/2021/06/03/bayern-munich-credited-interest-saul-niguez/ Interest by Bayern Munich (in signing Saul Niguez this summer) has been denied in various German sources, including this report written in English.
Most people on here are pretty decent. It's only a very small minority who lash out or throw insults unnecessarily.
There is simply no way De Paul is coming to us, there is no need for this thread. It would be like them transferring Di Natale to us in his prime for under the market value. Or turning down the Leicester bid for Deeney (when he was actually any good) and then flogging him to Udinese for £10m. Yes, they're business people but they're not so fixated on money they don't understand fans. Sending your talisman to the sister club for peanuts would lead to a revolt, and rightly so.
I will stop short of saying ‘no chance’ but I think it’s extremely extremely remote. They certainly wouldn’t send him here in the event of a bigger offer from outside of England or the Top 6 in this country. But if the player says he wants to move to the PL (not sure why he’d make that request mind you) and Leeds offer say £30m for instance, they would have a decision on their hands and may well think sending him here is a better choice for them. But I repeat - it’s bloody unlikely and I’d put the chances at less than 5%.
I agree, however they may consider that a good year with us in the PL would inflate his price further.
He’s not young though. He’ll be 28 in a years time. Peak of his career perhaps but not too many clubs will be wanting to pay north of £40m for a player who would be 32 at the end of his deal. And I doubt a season in the lower half of the PL, likely fighting relegation would push his price much higher anyway. I can’t think of one equivalent in the PL currently who is worth that much at that age. I think he’s very likely at his peak price now unless he moves to say a Leicester or equivalent club and destroys the PL at the top end.
Udinese have done well to hang onto him for this long. I would say his situation is similar to Zaha's at the Nigels. He won't want to stay much longer due to his age and will only go for a huge sum of money. Difference being De Paul isn't such an inconsistent, serial whiner and cheat.
In fairness, he actually just turned 27 about a week ago, but it's all quite moot as, as Burnsy says, it's basically as unlikely as it's possible to be that this is even considered without it literally being impossible.
