[Football] Selling Off The Albion Family Silver

[dazzer6666]

This.

We don’t need £115m to be sustainable. Caicedo should have been kept or replaced with very similar. Our lack of full back cover is criminal.

Criminal? Really?

 

[BadFish]

If you take into account our parameters, we recruit in a very narrow band

Our players need to be:
- young
- talented
- cheap fees
- cheap wages
- versatile
- patient (willing to wait for a move to a 'big' club - a la Ferguson)
- not dick heads
- whatever else is in Tony's magic formula.

Add to this the fact that we have been heralded as the best recruiters going around recently. This means that other clubs are swopping in on our targets (a la Kubous).

Our narrow band has got narrower.

Tis bloody hard to bring players in.

 

[Guinness Boy]

Don't need £115m! Guess you're not TB's bank manager. It would be dumb for any club to turn down such an offer especially for a player that during the January window wanted to leave.

Criminal? Really?

We play with a pivot, comfortable to be first receiver and overlapping full backs. We have not replaced Caicedo with a similar player. Should be doable with change from £115m. And we’re about to go into a must win game against an Ajax team that lie 17th in a poor division with no left back. That’s, at the very least, highly unfortunate.

I feel for RDZ. We’re in more competitions this season with a worse squad. He’s taking a water pistol to war.

That said, some problems are of his making. We need a consistent keeper that the back four can depend on. Verbruggen should be our number one with Steele playing FA Cup games. It really can’t be too physically taxing playing keeper twice a week in a team that’s constantly pushing forward.

 

[John Byrnes Mullet]

We must surely be at the stage now where we don't need to sell with record transfer fees received and Uncle Tony now a billionaire. But if the top 6 come hunting for our best players and the player decides he wants to leave what can we do?

 

[rebel51]

I’d settle for that.

With ManC/ManU/Chavs/Arse/Spuds/Saudi/Pool/Villa on a transfers/wages arms race, with sovereign funds ready to buy other clubs, any season we make Europe is a great achievement.

A question, do you think RDZ will be our manager come next September?

If he doesn’t mind that medium term project with seasons out of Europe, then imho it’s an obvious ‘yes’. If not, he’ll be off for the right job.

I dont think he will, think he'll get pissed off this season when all injuries kick in and he can't possibly achieve anywhere like last season again.

 

[dazzer6666]

If you take into account our parameters, we recruit in a very narrow band

Our players need to be:
- young
- talented
- cheap fees
- cheap wages
- versatile
- patient (willing to wait for a move to a 'big' club - a la Ferguson)
- not dick heads
- whatever else is in Tony's magic formula.

Add to this the fact that we have been heralded as the best recruiters going around recently. This means that other clubs are swopping in on our targets (a la Kubous).

Our narrow band has got narrower.

Tis bloody hard to bring players in.

Parameters are shifting as we evolve though - we’re spending more on signings that are close to ‘ready’ than we ever did (like Joao Pedro, Pervis for example) and pretty sure this will continue (and we’ll have the money to do it). The ‘swooping’ of other clubs does appear to be an issue though - much easier for them to steal our targets than do the legwork themselves. Suspect the usual parasitic agents don’t help here…….. ‘my lad has been approached by Brighton - how much would you pay him instead ?’

 

[Justice]

Shame the groundsman at Lancing probably didn't actually know

You need better contacts

 

[Lenny Rider]

As things stand we’re currently 7th, having played 1st, 3rd, 5th, 6th, 8th & 9th in our 9 games. We’re doing this whilst balancing Europe for the first time in our history. The doom and gloom seems slightly premature.

This.

Darlington at home in front of less than 3,000 is a dim and distant memory thankfully, though I get the feeling deep down the OP sometimes hankers for those days (In jest THPP old boy )

 

[portslade seagull]

Three. We sold Trossard

Four as Sanchez also left

 

[Mo Gosfield]

This.

Darlington at home in front of less than 3,000 is a dim and distant memory thankfully, though I get the feeling deep down the OP sometimes hankers for those days (In jest THPP old boy )

Are the stakes higher at the top end of elite football or when you are 20 minutes from dropping out of league football, having survived winding-up orders, being made homeless and not having a pot to urinate in.
When you transition from that to now in 25 odd years it seems churlish to be debating how many £50m + players we should keep or sell but that is now not then. We have gone from a club playing at a ground that everyone laughed at to a fine stadium and high class players. The one thing that has changed in the last 25 years is that a small group of English clubs have been allowed to develop to such a level of strength, that they now dictate what happens amongst the rest. They pay wages that are unsustainable outside these clubs and transfer fees that only they can pay. When they come calling, players move, doubling, trebling, quadrupling wages.
We are in the football food chain. We sell to bigger clubs ( generally ) We buy from the remainder ( generally ) J Pedro was part of the Watford family silver. We came calling. A few years back, it would have been roles reversed and one day it may happen again.
Selling our more valuable players has always happened....Ward, Lawrenson, Zamora, Ulloa.....but we are now victims of our own success and nothing goes unnoticed in football. We will continue to be cherry-picked at least once or twice a season. We are now a threat. We never were before. They admire the model but don't want it to get any better. You do the work unearthing and developing talent, we will dangle the carrot.

 

[dazzer6666]

Are the stakes higher at the top end of elite football or when you are 20 minutes from dropping out of league football, having survived winding-up orders, being made homeless and not having a pot to urinate in.
When you transition from that to now in 25 odd years it seems churlish to be debating how many £50m + players we should keep or sell but that is now not then. We have gone from a club playing at a ground that everyone laughed at to a fine stadium and high class players. The one thing that has changed in the last 25 years is that a small group of English clubs have been allowed to develop to such a level of strength, that they now dictate what happens amongst the rest. They pay wages that are unsustainable outside these clubs and transfer fees that only they can pay. When they come calling, players move, doubling, trebling, quadrupling wages.
We are in the football food chain. We sell to bigger clubs ( generally ) We buy from the remainder ( generally ) J Pedro was part of the Watford family silver. We came calling. A few years back, it would have been roles reversed and one day it may happen again.
Selling our more valuable players has always happened....Ward, Lawrenson, Zamora, Ulloa.....but we are now victims of our own success and nothing goes unnoticed in football. We will continue to be cherry-picked at least once or twice a season. We are now a threat. We never were before. They admire the model but don't want it to get any better. You do the work unearthing and developing talent, we will dangle the carrot.

Yep. We’re at or approaching as high as we are going to get in the food chain now, we’re never going to have the financial muscle of the ‘big six’ or however many there are. It’s fantastic that we continue to compete at the top end on a lower end budget.

 

[Nobby Cybergoat]

We are going to have to sell players in order to attract them in the first place

I just think we need to slow the rate we sell them down. One per summer is enough. I get the reason why we sold Mac and Moises (off the back of selling Leo and Sanchez) and I don't think we should have acted differently. But we're not giving our replacement players time to build up experience.

Let's limit it to a maximum of one sale next summer, even if Chelsea subsequently come in and offer us £200m for someone.

 

[dazzer6666]

We are going to have to sell players in order to attract them in the first place

I just think we need to slow the rate we sell them down. One per summer is enough. I get the reason why we sold Mac and Moises (off the back of selling Leo and Sanchez) and I don't think we should have acted differently. But we're not giving our replacement players time to build up experience.

Let's limit it to a maximum of one sale next summer, even if Chelsea subsequently come in and offer us £200m for someone.

That’s ok until you get a Caicedo situation where the player very clearly wants out and there’s a daft offer on the table.…….

 

[Nobby Cybergoat]

That’s ok until you get a Caicedo situation where the player very clearly wants out and there’s a daft offer on the table.…….

Who knows, the offer may become even dafter if we hold on for another 6 months or a year and give us time to recruit / blood the replacement.

 

[Sheebo]

Caicedo’s contract did mean something. What the club didn’t account for was Chelsea willing to make MC the third most valuable player in history!! It’s mind-bogglingly-staggering how far this club has come in such a short time. Everyone appears to be a little disoriented with trying to keep up with the journey.

Disagree - it meant he had a pay rise for a few months and we got too dolla. The club were clearly well aware he was likely to go a few months later. Arsenal had just offered a figure right up there. Not disorientated with anything other than transfers, silly money and greed of football getting worse and worse.

 

[tigertim68]

Disagree - it meant he had a pay rise for a few months and we got too dolla. The club were clearly well aware he was likely to go a few months later. Arsenal had just offered a figure right up there. Not disorientated with anything other than transfers, silly money and greed of football getting worse and worse.

From what I understand the club didn’t expect a bid of 115 million for MC , and thought he would stay for another season ,
it was Liverpool who came in with a bid that forced Chelsea hand and 115 million was too good to turn down

 

[tigertim68]

But we are still a midfielder shot of what we had last season ,
we didn’t replace Enoch M

 

[Peteinblack]

It will always be like this because Albion do not have the financial muscle of other clubs.

It is incredible that we are where we are.

I'm just enjoying it all. I know that it could slip, but that happens to all clubs in our position. Just enjoy these days and hope they last a little longer.

Yup, having seen us at the old Goldstone Ground, playing teams like Darlington, Halifax Town, Port Vale, Rotherham, and Walsall, on freezing cold Saturday afternoons when the floodlights came on at 4.pm, I still can't quite believe where we are, and how far we have come, largely due to Dick K, and Tony B.

Never in my wildest dreams did I ever envisage us comfortably beating teams like Chelsea 4-1, and Man Utd 4-0, playing the once-mighty Ajax in Europe, or selling one of our players for a British transfer record of £115 million.

I'm trying to enjoy it as much as I can while it lasts.

 

[Guinness Boy]

But we are still a midfielder shot of what we had last season ,
we didn’t replace Enoch M

True and I’ve said this on other threads.

Running through this thread like the elephant in the room is the name James Milner. I’d assumed he would be doing an occasional job as a DM while Baleba got up to speed. Instead, we’ve had to use him as a full back because we didn’t sign full back cover. And, it turns out, his legs are too shot for either.

 

[Weststander]

Four as Sanchez also left

Couldn’t wait to get out of the dump, the way he was mistreated .

Now punching strikers and passing to awaiting scorers at a big club.