Claudius wrote:Look at my matrix. We have capital tied up in the the bottom left quadrant. There are so many players who can be released and sold.
You talk about capital, Claude, but consider these two questions: 1) How many players across Europe managed to move for good fees in the summer of 2020? 2) Do you think football clubs generally will be better or worse off economically next summer than they were back in June?
You could maybe sell Auba and Partey and Saka, and Gabriel perhaps, but that's the only sort of realistic value we have in a post corona world where no one has any money. The only capital we have is tied up in players we don't want to lose. We spent this summer trying to push all the deadwood out the door but there were no takers, not even for blokes like Torreira who we easily could have gotten £20-25 million for normally. If you want a big check your only current option is to sell your good players to your direct competition in Premier League instead, and that road just leads to decline and heartbreak.
Five years ago we could maybe have done with Pepe what United did with Di Maria and flipped him to a newly rich club for £20 million less than we bought him for to recuperate most of our loss. That market is gone now. We're not going to get many cents for old players on big wages either, nor for young and unproven players.
Premier League has taken longer to feel the effect than the rest of Europe, but La Liga actually sold players for £142 million more than they bought this summer. Serie A similarly made £16 million on transfers, Bundesliga around £20 million. English clubs spent a billion more than they raked in by contrast, which tells you two things: they couldn't sell anyone unwanted, and they had outgoing spendings that are unsustainable when you factor in another 12 months of pandemic football.
