Quincy Abeyie wrote:
I see posts like "If selling Willock gets us Maddison I'm okay with it". That's fair enough in itself, but that's also why you can't say "why do you care what White cost, it's not your money", "why are people obsessed with transfer fees?" etc. Because that implies that by paying what we did for White we need to sell Willock in order to afford our other targets. That's the effect of spending people care about.
But Maddison is currently a much, much better player than Willock, that is what matters. If we're essentially exchanging Willock for Maddison, that is a good thing.
More so than money, I think it's about squad places. We could probably get a loan from KSE or whatever, not a big deal, but you can't sign a striker when you have Lacazette here and earning £250,000 a week or a right back when you have Hector Bellerin earning £100,000 a week. And it's not just what they earn exactly, it's that the money they earn reflects their status in the squad. Both will scream bloody murder if they go a prolonged period not getting into the team.
I'd love us to sign Onana, for example, to come in and compete with Leno when the former's drugs ban ends in November. But neither would tolerate being on the bench, they're far too good for that. Could we afford to pay the each £100,000 a week? Probably. We paid Mustafi £120,000 a week or Kolasinac £130,000 a week and we did/are doing what was needed to get them out of the club because they are genuinely terrible footballers with almost zero value. Leno, Bellerin, Lacazette, or Xhaka as another example, are not that bad and do have some value, so unless we can find buyers, we're kind of stuck with them.
