No I don’t, You are focussing on their book value, and what their sale allows in terms of sales. I’m talking about the likelihood of being able to move our fringe players for acceptable fees.
The problem here is that while you are absolute right about the way the football clubs run their accounts, and amortise their costs over time (I’ve been saying it isn’t a game of footy manager for years), what you forget is that we are talking about human beings, and there needs to be a club willing to take them on.
Divock Origi, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, Joel Matip, Xherdan Shaqiri, Naby Keita. Five players we can accept the club are happy to move on*. Those sales create more space for signings than we acknowledge (as you’ve rightly said). However someone has to actually want to take them off our hands, and that becomes a problem. Four of the five have chronic injury problems. The other one has been available for transfer for a while and no-one has bitten.
You can say that removing Matip’s book value off the clubs account frees up x amount of money to pursue x player all you like, but it’s the removing him which is the problem.
Minamino is the most saleable asset we have, in that there are likely to be clubs interested in taking him in the summer. He has had no injury concerns, he will have had a decent loan spell under his belt, and he plays a position that clubs seem to value. We also might get 20m for him.
I actually don’t think they are as dispensable as we think. The club has just brought in a new conditioning and recovery person to sort out the injury proneness of these lads and I think the club are not ready to give up on them yet.
First For years on TIA you’ve been undervaluing based on what players have ended up going for. It’s part of your go to in regards to posts. You’ve been wrong so many times yet you still never accept it.
Second You’re confusing nobody wanting our players with clubs being unable to afford the fees we’ve demanded. We’ve developed and carefully cultivated a reputation as a side that won’t be taken to the cleaners and demand the highest fees. We don’t have to play that this way this summer we can blame accepting lower fees on the pandemic results and go back to “normal” the year after.
And this is the key part. No one knows exactly what clubs finances are going to be like when they get released for last season and this season.
The other issue, is how long the effect of 1.5 seasons without fans take for clubs to recover from? I don’t see it being a massively quick financial recovery, so whilst thre may well be some value for new targets, the likelyhood of getting decent prices for anyone we want to offload is going to be pretty slim.
Yeah, watched a few games. You’re right - he is positioned on the left wing. he does some nice things, but he is a much better player when he comes inside. Southampton not using him fully to get the best out of him.
But it’s a good learning experience for him. he is racking up the game time, and getting in positions to do something. A good loan move.
[quote=“AnfieldRdDreamer, post:268, topic:110, full:true”]
First For years on TIA you’ve been undervaluing based on what players have ended up going for. It’s part of your go to in regards to posts. You’ve been wrong so many times yet you still never accept it.[/quote]
It clearly made a big impression on you because I don’t remember undervaluing players. With Solanke and Ibe, my surprise, if anything, was that Klopp let them go rather than the fees we got. The fee for Ibe is outrageous. The fee for Solanke is understandable in the context of the market at that time and the way the player was rated.
Edwards is very, very good at selling players. But it isn’t sustainable, and you can’t translate getting good fees for promising young players pre-covid to getting good fees for older players post covid.
I don’t think I undervalued Lazar Makovic. Or Mario Ballotelli. Or Karius. Or Skrtel. Or Moreno, or Clynr or Lallana.
Every year we get a slew of fantasy football style posts full of complete delusion like funding a spending spree off the back of selling Origi, Grujic, Ox and Harry Wilson for a combined £100m or something.
Yes, in fact I think turning down £13m for Harry Wilson was a huge mistake in retrospect. I’m sure I said this at the time.
But I don’t think I’m confusing it in the way you think I am. I don’t think Matip moves because there just won’t be suitors given his wages v injury record. You might as well take 100k a week and flush it down the toilet.
Just out of curiosity, how much do you think we could get for
Looking at last summer, in a financial year in the middle of the pandemic as opposed to the start of one which won’t be, I would have thought £10m for Jakub Moder, £15m for Matty Cash, £25m for Ben Godfrey, £20m for Abdoulaye Doucoure, £10m for Anthony Knockaert, £16m for Helder Costa, £22m Timothy Castagne, Nathan Ake for £40m, Pablo More of for £9m, £35 for Donny Van Der Beek, £14m for Alex Telles, £24m for Brewster, £12m for Kyle Walker-Peters, £15m for Matt Doherty, £15m for Karlan Grant, were all delusional. You need to stop measuring other clubs transfer activities on our extremely careful, thought out and frugal activity.
Agreed. The amount the four have played the last few years would make me surprised if we got more than 30m or so for that lot.
Ox on 125K per week is worthless. Who would pay him that much? We might need to subsidize his wages to get rid.
Shaqiri might get 10m in a normal year but maybe 8m now. Matip is a wild card… you really don’t know what he could command. Could be highe or low.
Origi if it was a year ago… or he was playing a bit more. But right now can’t see him getting more than 10m. Plenty of better players to buy at that price.
Minamino, Wilson and Grujic may be our only good sellable assets that are excess to requirements.
Maybe Southampton’s gunslinger has just challenged Edwards to a duel at dawn… a who blinks first in the bluff of signing Walcott over Minamino…
I know who my money is on :0)
. Walcott has been injured half of his life. 
