I understand the reported asking price is a bit high, but it isn’t that high.
In a market where Max Kilman is being rejected at 35 million, or James Maddison is going for 40 million, or Mason Mount 55, we have one of the best young midfielders in the game supposedly available for 50. Lavia blows them out of the water for talent, and his current level is already very high.
yeah the price is only an issue if it stops us getting another player that we need. i think it will be something like £40m plus 10m add ons
havent seen enough of him (or mount for that matter) but is he really that much more talented?
Hes obviously not as experienced as Mount, so for him to be trading at around those numbers (excluding whatever the wages calcs are) he really must be legit.
im onboard.
No matter how good he is, or could be, there is no way in hell Southampton will get anywhere close to that sort of price considering they are a Championship club having just been relegated.
Us signing Gini from Newcastle is the 10th highest transfer fee received by a Championship club at £27.7M and there is no way Saints will get that sort of price as an upfront fee. Including add ons and stuff then I think you would say that is possibly reasonable for a teenager that has less than 1 season of Premiership football experience
Really? He’s a kid who had barely played senior football this time last year and went to Southampton pretty much without challenge for £10m. He then had a decent season for them but he was hardly transformative or without plenty of rough edges.
Sure he’s promising but ‘best young midfielders in the game’, nah. Not unless we’re setting the bar for ‘young’ at under 20.
Yeah, I’d say so.
An athletic, ball winning midfielder who is that good at resisting the press?
Quite a unique combination, one I haven’t seen in a player at that age before.
Of course he has areas to improve, but a serious talent nonetheless.
You seem very confident that he is the next big thing and I have no way of disagreeing with you on the basis that I have not seen him much and I suppose you have seen enough to think that way. My genuine question was that another player who had one great season (not even a full one back then when the first bid came in) in the PL was Caicedo and he was the subject of a big bid. Is Lavia anyway near the level of Caicedo to warrant 50m? I am not sure, so just throwing out a question to everyone. Would 50m get us someone who is already more proven than Lavia? I suspect there will always be but who then? Ultimately, its the club and Klopp who will decide. I am personally indifferent to Lavia but the club has never shy away from making big bids for players who only supposedly have one big season at a high level i.e. Nunez so its interesting whether the supposed interest translate to anything concrete
I don’t think anyone has said anything about it having to be a one off up front payment have they?
Not sure how fair the comparison with Wijnaldum is. There has been substantial inflation in player prices since then, and the price for Lavia is as much about his potential talent as it is his current ability.
Ok, so if we want to go down the road of potential, Jude was sold by Birmingham City for £30M after playing +40 games for them, so would you say Lavia has greater/more potential than Jude as that is what Saints valuation is suggesting
Wasn’t JB 16? £30 million was crazy money but that was 3 or 4 years ago. JB would have probably gone for £40 million if it’s this season. RM is 19? 3 years older, and has played a season in the premier league. So yeah, in this day and age of crazy prices. £50 million or there abouts is probably right.
Personally, i dont know but @Limiescouse and i think @sweeting have commented on his high reputation before going to Southampton. Add in a season of topflight football, and the inflation i referred to earlier, and that sort of pricing is understandable (at least as a negotiating starting point).
The rumours still don’t go away, do they? Even Pearce hasn’t dismissed the rumours around Lavia.
Having just read this, I’m onboard. Bring him in! £50m these days are almost nothing. (gulp…)
He moved to City as a 16 year old, In his first year his U21 side won the youth league and he was PotY playing in a position that pretty much never gets individual recognition. He was elevated to the first team (albeit without playing) the following season and then moved on to Southampton the following summer.
Wish I have 10% of nothings
Agreed that he probably does not directly get into the first team as of this moment, but as for the two points you make:
That said, after Thuram, and generally seeing how we’ve done our transfer business, I won’t be entirely surprised if Lavia is just another bait and switch. Scouting using data analytics is still quite nascent in football, and we are very probably at its forefront. I think there is a genuine possibility that other clubs are targetting our targets, which is why we have always been staying so quiet on our actual targets until the last moment.
Not seen him much either, but apparently he wasn’t selected by City’s scouts. Pep personally identified him as a target while the kid was playing for Belgium U21s. Its why they added a buy back clause for him. As an armchair fan, I’ll gladly bow down to Pep’s knowledge (and that of our scouting team too!) if we see the potential in him to be our next main no.6.
We have just bought two
Pep does scouting? All I’ve seen is him spending £50-100 twice for each position.
Rest of post interesting re the bait and switch. Does seem to have happened a lot!
Not really, but the story is that he showed up to a youth tournament in Belgium at the request of KdB who wanted him to see this kid who was already known to be the nuts. By the end of the tournament they’d decided they were going to try to sign him as soon as he turned 16
Quite
I did predict we would see this within a week and here we are. People prefer the chase more than actually signing someone.
We don’t often play the chase, we go in and do it, Dom was a week, Nunez rumoured was very quickly done.
One man’s scouting is another man’s meeting an ‘Uber’ in the local Lidl carpark.
Same same.