If we're going to spend that kind of money I'd rather have Maddison I think.

Maddy’s so good. Leicester would rinse us though. Given their track record on Mahrez, Maguire, Chilwell, Kante, Drinkwater, etc. The list is endless.

Our biggest sale Overmars was over 20 years ago and in nominal terms is only as much as their 4th biggest deal. Jon Rudkin’s been their DoF these past 7 years. Doesn’t get enough credit. All those big sales? Except Mahrez, replaced for much cheaper.

Claudius wrote:

Maddy’s so good. Leicester would rinse us though. Given their track record on Mahrez, Maguire, Chilwell, Kante, Drinkwater, etc. The list is endless.

Our biggest sale Overmars was over 20 years ago and in nominal terms is only as much as their 4th biggest deal. Jon Rudkin’s been their DoF these past 7 years. Doesn’t get enough credit. All those big sales? Except Mahrez, replaced for much cheaper.

Shows you how undesirable our players are. No one's willing to pay anything for them. 

Our ownership has been inept. We constantly throw away the chance to make to make money. We can allegedly make money on Nketiah now and could’ve made money on AMN last summer. Together that could be £40-45m. I bet together they never sell for more than that in the future. We are poor at timing sales and creating a market for our players. We will also lose Xhaka, Laca and Mustafi for probably a combined £30-40m at best when we should’ve made 2-3x that by selling them a lot earlier. Ozil, Sanchez, Ramsey. Just value evaporating everywhere.

The purchase are a different story. They’re only wasteful because there is no overall plan. I highly doubt that this Garlick solves this. It will probably be more dicking around as we have been since Law took over from Dein

Sancho might be gettable particularly if Dortmund would entertain Pepe in part exchange

And they’ll do that because?

tell us, Dules
same agent as Balogun, Nelson, Nketiah and our defender from Spurs btw

Dortmund would need a replacement and could revive Pepe. He is talented.

@lorddulaarsenal wrote:

Dortmund would need a replacement and could revive Pepe.  He is talented.

Dortmund are the ultimate speculators. What spread do you think they would need between Sancho and Pépé - £50m?

Claudius wrote:

Our ownership has been inept. We constantly throw away the chance to make to make money.

I think you're missing the point slightly though Claude. Our main function isn't to make money off player sales, it's to win trophies. I'm sure we could get decently paid for Saka, Tierney and Martinelli right now for instance, but we don't want to sell those players, do we. Leicester get picked clean by the big teams every time they have a good season and the anticipation of it has become their main revenue stream. A sign of a big club is that they don't need to haul their good players.

Clrnc wrote:

You have a point but we haven't been acting like big club for a long time now.

We've won four FA Cups in, what, the last 6 years? That's more than Leicester have won since they were founded 136 years ago.

Clrnc wrote:

You talk about Leicester but they have been keeping whoever they want and only sell for really over valued bids because they are replacing them easily without any drop off in quality.

They won the league and within 12 months half of the team was gone. They keep selling players for high value and pick up smart signings like Soyuncu and Maddison and Tielemans because they know they're going to sell them too for a high market price, not because they're going to use them to win the league again. This is what keeps them in the upper half of the table.

Klaus wrote:

Claudius wrote:

Our ownership has been inept. We constantly throw away the chance to make to make money.

I think you're missing the point slightly though Claude. Our main function isn't to make money off player sales, it's to win trophies. I'm sure we could get decently paid for Saka, Tierney and Martinelli right now for instance, but we don't want to sell those players, do we. Leicester get picked clean by the big teams every time they have a good season and the anticipation of it has become their main revenue stream. A sign of a big club is that they don't need to haul their good players.

Actually, no. 
Notice that nowhere have I said sell Saka, Martinelli, ESR and Tierney. 

Our main objective is to build a squad that is capable of winning trophies! That means having a very good squad plan that clearly articulates the playing ethos and the qualities required for each position, and then employing the best possible players for those positions. Beyond that, we should be looking to keep squad value high by selling superfluous players - over-the-hill veterans and non-essential academy graduates. That is what I want. 

Claudius wrote:

Klaus wrote:

I think you're missing the point slightly though Claude. Our main function isn't to make money off player sales, it's to win trophies. I'm sure we could get decently paid for Saka, Tierney and Martinelli right now for instance, but we don't want to sell those players, do we. Leicester get picked clean by the big teams every time they have a good season and the anticipation of it has become their main revenue stream. A sign of a big club is that they don't need to haul their good players.

Actually, no. 
Notice that nowhere have I said sell Saka, Martinelli, ESR and Tierney.

You're talking about getting big money for players. The reason we don't is because we - generally - don't sell the ones that are worth big money. Don't you think Leicester would rather have kept their best players if they could? Instead they've seen Kante, Mahrez and Drinkwater win the league for other clubs, and Maguire looks like he might do it at United this year. Only Vardy is left because he decided to play for a statue outside King Power Stadium.

This is like people being envious of Dortmund for collecting all that youth talent, when an investment scheme is all they're ever going to be as a club.

Klaus wrote:

Claudius wrote:

Actually, no. 
Notice that nowhere have I said sell Saka, Martinelli, ESR and Tierney.

 

You're talking about getting big money for players. The reason we don't is because we - generally - don't sell the ones that are worth big money. Don't you think Leicester would rather have kept their best players if they could? Instead they've seen Kante, Mahrez and Drinkwater win the league for other clubs, and Maguire looks like he might do it at United this year. Only Vardy is left because he decided to play for a statue outside King Power Stadium.

Please do not misrepresent what I said. 
I mentioned selling Nketiah and AMN. And then also Lacazette, Mustafi, and Xhaka. These are players who I do not think are going to add value to our project going forward. I'm happy to sell them. 

Here's the thing. We both mentioned Martinelli, Tierney, and Saka. Because they are super quality. Worth building around. The reality is that just as in any other profession, in football there are a few players who are extremely valuable and worth building around. And then everybody else is relatively exchangeable. If I walk into any top organisation, I could probably go into the market and easily replace the bottom 80% of staff. It's the top 20% that you will struggle to improve on. And this is where we need to focus on. Getting the best possible top 20%. Because these are the guys who move the needle. Your AMNs and Mustafis will easily come again next year whether by our academy or from the Bundesliga. If we can make money from them sooner, we should so we can build up the kitty to get more Tierneys

You can't force these sales. Wolves were the only ones who wanted Maitland-Niles and they refused to go over £15m. There's no point saying we should have sold him for £25.

The reality is the players who can't get in the side of a mid table team are not high on the agenda.

Claudius wrote:

Please do not misrepresent what I said.

You said: "Our biggest sale Overmars was over 20 years ago and in nominal terms is only as much as their 4th biggest deal."

I'm just commenting on why we don't generally sell players for big money. The rest is semantics and I don't really care for it.

Klaus wrote:

Claudius wrote:

Please do not misrepresent what I said.

You said: "Our biggest sale Overmars was over 20 years ago and in nominal terms is only as much as their 4th biggest deal."

I'm just commenting on why we don't generally sell players for big money. The rest is semantics and I don't really care for it.

Oh. That is just a reflection of the fact that we sell extremely badly. That’s all. We spend a lot of money acquiring players. Yet don’t sell players for a lot of money. Simple example: Xhaka, Lacazette and Mustafi are 3 terrible buys we acquired for over £110m. We will be lucky to get half of that for the 3 of them when they each leave at least 2 years too late.
And then there’s Ramsey and Sanchez who left for balls.

I assume you adjusted for inflation, because if not Overmars is not our biggest sale.