[SIGNED perm] Yaser Asprilla

Yeah I can't imagine any potential suitors think he is ready to make the step up. £25m + decent sell-on + loaned back for the season sounds like a fair deal to me.

 

£25m seems a lot for someone like Brighton to pay for someone who won't feature for them for at least a year, anything less and I'm not sure we accept

 

Just shows how useless he is that strugglers like Brighton and Real Madrid are interested.

 

Yeah I can't see Brighton stumping up that much, but we know Gino won't settle for much less.

 

Yeah, he's really proven himself a master negotiator, old Gino...

 

He's an absolute gem, and I think the next 2 seasons he's gonna have his breakout and show just how good he is. His pass selection, weight of pass, vision, willingness to get on the ball is well beyond his years.

To come to a league like the Championship, in a new country, when you don't speak the language, and perform as he did as an 18/19 yo is massively impressive, not to mention his performances for his country.

It's no wonder clubs who know what they're doing can see what potential he has. We shouldn't be listening to anything less than £25m plus a huge sell on.

 

We've made some stinking signings and overpaid, but can you think of many occasions where we've sold a player for significantly less than he's worth?

 

How many players have we sold for peak value?

 

Or Championship ready for that matter. Not while he’s 9st soaking wet.

If we sell him for a decent fee, fine.

 

Richarlison £40M + add ons was excellent money for what he'd achieved at the time and only left Everton for a few million more at peak. Ighalo £20M, Lukebakio £18M and even Dennis for £15M were all probably over true value.

Doucoure we let go too late and Estupinan we put ourselves in a terrible position.

 

I'd say that Kamara(ha!), Dennis, Samir, Masina, Lukebakio, Richarlison, Amrabat, Ighalo, Vydra, Guedioura, Anya, Abdi were all sold for around peak value or more, looking at their subsequent careers. We got a good price for JP too, in the situation. Although I think he'll go for £60m+ within a few years.

 

We simply got relegated.

 

Estupiñan, João and now Asprilla?

What could have been...

 

I'd agree, there have been very few players who we've nurtured and sold at an optimum value. You mention Ighalo, but even he was sold too late as United did put an offer in for £30m at one time. With Pedro, we had to sell because we boxed ourselves into a hole stuck in the Championship. He would have stayed with us had we gone up, as Brighton are hardly a step-up from the level we should be at, had the owner not been lobotomised in 2019.

So many good players were not sold when they should have been. Ighalo, Pedro, Sarr and Doucoure, Dennis, Estupinan, Capoue, Deulofeo etc were forced sales because we had f&cked up. I consider only Richarlison as the only sale, where we signed for peanuts and sold on our terms when we were in a position of power.

I now think our owner is a complete moron, who is clearly struggling. How we had those 7 years prior I just do not know, but I suspect his father was heavily involved, as the drop in intelligence since 2019 has been alarming and unexplainable.

 

I don’t agree with you on many of those players. Transfer fees are very volatile. Players are only worth what a buyer will actually pay. Fans tend not to update a mental balance sheet of what players are worth.

Gino may well be a moron, but clearly not as much of one as the owners of Dennis’s previous clubs or his current one, none of whom either got the goals or the value we did. Doucoure was not as good as we thought he was or at least has not been so since. We got a reasonable fee for him. In Pedro’s case, we could not sell him at the top because we are never the top. I have a feeling we won’t regret it.

And we also buy players to play. No one can say Capoue’s fee was a waste. We got great value for many seasons.

Deulofeo was a great buy, but his injury probably relegated us. We’d have otherwise stayed up, kept him or sold him for a big big fee.

Of those, only Sarr looks a real disaster, but because we paid too much in the first instance.

The ability of the club to find and profit from talent is not in doubt. The problem is the abundance of mediocre players, from a narrow pool, we replace them with.

So anything even approaching £20m would be great business for Asprilla right now, on his current value, other than we will simply waste the money.

 

IIRC we'd received an offer which was about £10-15m bigger than we eventually received about 6 months earlier (although I think he turned it down?), it was still a good deal for us at the time, but Chinese clubs, like Saudi clubs (see Amrabat), simply had eye-watering amounts of money to burn
Lukebakio was a good deal for us, even if we didn't do much ourselves to develop him, Dennis I still think we could have got a little more from considering he'd got double figures for us (although in hindsight we've done well). I think everyone in football would have expected Doucoure to go a season or two earlier (weren't there rumours that he'd failed a medical at Everton?). For Estupiñán the cards were stacked against us, we did well to get £15m in a depressed market but his value would have soared if we'd have stayed up. The players that went to the Championship are interesting, good deals, although Derby and Sheffield Wednesday were, shall we say, less astute that Brighton are (and Vydra went for a few million more to Burnley a few years later). Not sure I'd classify those players in the same bracket as the likes of Richarlison, Sarr, Doucoure, Geri, and young starlets like JP and Asprilla, who were supposed to fetch us big fees though, Richarlison and JP aside, we've not really done that

 

Before the news about Ferria's loan I was pretty confident that we wouldnt be selling Asprilla this season unless a silly offer came in. Now, we seem to be offloading anyone and everyone

 

Makes you wonder how we are in so much debt really.

 

If we sell Asprilla, I have to agree with @hornetboy1 in that it’s a sure sign that Gino’s selling up.

We’ve barely got any players of potential value left at our club other than Asprilla and Louza.

The big story about us being “debt free” by next season is the Club selling itself to potential future owners.

All well and good until said investors look at the club closer and see that we’ve got no players and no training ground (that we own).

On the bright side, at least if a new owner comes in, the club will have essentially reset itself. A blank canvas for new ideas if you will.

 

Not sure where the legs are in this one? Why would they want him? To develop? He won’t play there this season at all, he is nowhere near ready for the prem.

 

Guess they see some long-term potential, get him in now and then loan him out somewhere. Wouldn't be surprised to see a transfer and loan back to another Championship club that isn't as much as a circus as ours.

 

The wages we needed to offer to be competitive in the PL, coupled with misjudged big-money signings (Sarr, Gray). Compounded by getting relegated at the worst possible time

 

And highly inflated "other expenses" compared to our rivals as well as highest agent fees outside top 6 in our final year and high coaching team compensation? Luckily Dux is there on his £900k per annum to keep everything under control.

 

It would be madness to sell Asprilla at this stage . If 4.5 m has been banded around then that cannot be the case.


I think Asprilla has a higher ceiling than Joao Pedro potentially . He has shown that ability to play the killer defence splitting pass and his decision making is already ahead of Joao . I think in the next few seasons he will rip the championship up . He should also

 

Please don't say that. Watford is a good place for Brighton to go shopping. I'm over the moon with Pedro but I want more gems.

Make this happen.

 

There's this guy called Kayembe, perfect replacement for Mac Allister!

 

Hopefully all this talk won't mean Asprilla downs tools like Sarr did.

 

He can't really afford to, he's not proven anything yet.

 

Plus Sarr basically wasted 3 years of his career, not sure he's the right role model in this situation

 

It's no secret that Gino has been seeking external investment for some time. Whilst we had access to Premier League money (or were in a strong position to resecure it via promotion) that may have been possible whilst also carrying £70m of external debt. But in a world of rising interest rates and increasing risk of parachute money running out before promotion can be earned, it's likely that any likely investors have been scared off.

So I think it's highly probable that Duxbury's "debt free in 12 months" claim is motivated by wanting to put the club into a position to attract outside investment. Given the club has established itself as a 'Top 30' club with a track record showing it can hold its own in the Premier League, close to London with solid infrastructure and strong commercial revenues you can see why, debt aside, it might be an attractive proposition. But to do that we need to sell.

Should we achieve a solid Championship position this season, and through that we can attract significant additional investment, then you could argue that we're actually in a stronger position to go up, stay up and kick-on than we were before after a couple of years of squad building. You have to believe that this sort of dream must have been part of what attracted Manga and co. to the club - not the simple cost-cutting, asset-stripping exercise he's been asked to oversee this window.

Problem is, to pull it all off you would have to assume that you can cut the squad back enough to reduce the debt without going too far and leaving us exposed to relegation. I agree that if we end up selling Asprilla - probably our last remaining saleable asset - for less than his potential then there is something drastic going on. But more than that, it will leave the side devoid of any creativity or spark to add to our lack of firepower upfront. It's not like we were prolific last season when we had João Pedro, Davis and Sarr in the side (on paper an exciting lineup at the start of the season). How will we fare with Sema, Bayo and Kalu? I have been pretty supportive of the bold efforts to move players on and rebuild to this point, but does feel like selling Asprilla at this point would be cutting through the fat into the bone. I'm just really struggling to see where the goals are going to come from. If a 'Grand Plan' exists I'd say selling him now to go after the mythical debt-free status rather than ensure first and foremost we have a competitive team for the division undermines the effort rather than strengthens it.

 

Certainly looks that way at the moment, the club still has around £45 million this year in PL loyalty payments, with roughly the same amount of money coming from player sales, with a reduced wage bill, looks as if they are looking to be debt free at the end of the season, as long as we stay in the championship we will be at a similar stage to where Pozzo’s started except a better stadium, if they could find someone to give them the price they paid £10.5 million they will be that in profit. I know it’s not that easy and obviously figures are estimated but letting someone else live the dream which the Pozzo’s have experienced would be the way forward!

 

Pozzo looking to sell up is not a surprise.
Selling up was one of the options open to the club due to our large debts.
Azinrocker is right. The squad is looking very weak.
Pozzo could be gambling on finding a buyer by reducing the debt, but the risk is relegation.
An alledged transfer budget of only £2m. So far, only 50k spent, Lewis the only decent loan deal. The rest of the loans are from mediocre lower European clubs.

 

Something something not that good anyway something something was never going to start for us much this season to be fair something something Livermore knows Ismael's system something something.

 

He probably won't start loads of games this season though.

And who the heck on here is defending the signing of Livermore by saying he knows Ismael's system?!?!?!?!?