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Summer transfer thread, AvB window wrap up pg 1527

Which player would you like to see take over from Luka Modric?

  • Total voters
    147
  • Poll closed .
What are you talking about? Llorente's price?

He has 1 year left on his deal while the buy out is only legally binding to other Spanish clubs (i.e. not us)

I still maintain (and willing to take a bet) he'd go for around 18-20M GBP when sold (which would most likely be in the next week or so.
 
Also - if Sahin doesn't go to Liverpool - can Ballague finally be proclaimed a wum as opposed to an all knowing ITK?
 
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We will sign Llorente for £15mill trust me. Thats if we sign him of course. Which i can't see happening.
 
ArcspacE said:
What are you talking about? Llorente's price?

He has 1 year left on his deal while the buy out is only legally binding to other Spanish clubs (i.e. not us)

I still maintain (and willing to take a bet) he'd go for around 18-20M GBP when sold (which would most likely be in the next week or so.
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We should be all over this, if it were indeed the case. He's not realistically going to go for much less.
 
Would Llorente really go to a non-CL side? He's already 27/28, he's going to be thinking about winning trophies not going to a club with potential. The only way I can see us attracting him would be is he was really desperate to go to the PL and the PL alone, and Arse/Chelsea decide not to go for him (the Manc clubs I assume need no more strikers). But then there's still the issue of his wages.

18-20m sounds okay at first glance, but keep in mind that he has little to no resale value. Our record signing was 16.5m (Modric, Bentley - Bent never came near 16m since it was half add-ons), but that was doable because we expected to profit thanks to their ages (and they had relatively low wages at the time, which lowered the package total). For example Modric should be yielding us +16m right now if RM weren't dingdongs. With Llorente, we're only going to be taking a hit of -18-20m, which is a swing of about 35m! Enough for two Santi Cazorlas there.

OTOH, we could just buy him for a year and then sell him on in favor of a younger striker next summer, recouping most of the fee. That would get the fans up in arms though, and we'd be right back where we started.
 
Why would we want to sell him? Surely we buy to improve our squad, not with a view to selling him on in future?

I can understand small clubs employing the tactic of buying & then selling at a profit but we're not a small club. If we sign him and he fires us in to the Champions League, higher league positions, cup success etc then that potential success in addition to shirt sales, related merchandise and higher profile perhaps in Spain and in the UK is how we afford him plus surely we buy players like a company buys tools to make us more effective and ultimately more successful.

We only seem to sell players on as they decide they want to move to a bigger club which is fair enough as they are employees and they need to focus on achieving the most personally but also for their team at all stages through their career and sometimes the two go in separate directions.
 
I dont get this whole resale value thing.

Lorente is 27 so even if we sell him when he is 30 and sell him for half what he cost us that is fine by me. You wont make money on every signing and you wont break even on every signing. You may make a loss but that is offset by the service that player has provided to the team.

My main point is this whole resale value - look at Bentley he had resale potential but now we may need to pay off someone to take him off our fudgein hands.

Ultimately not every player you will sell for or more than what you paid for but this will not only be offset by selling others for more than what we paid for but by also reaping the benefits of that players service.

If we continue to do what we are doing about resale value then lets face it we are fishing in a fudging goldfish bowl rather than an ocean.
 
I spoke to someone at a club. not Tottenham, and that they were ever getting more and more tinkled about anonymous tweeters talking in clubs names, and they were going to out them.. should they continue, apparently many clubs feel the same.
 
unknown said:
I spoke to someone at a club. not Tottenham, and that they were ever getting more and more tinkled about anonymous tweeters talking in clubs names, and they were going to out them.. should they continue, apparently many clubs feel the same.
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I see. Cheers.
 
El Guepardo said:
Why would we want to sell him? Surely we buy to improve our squad, not with a view to selling him on in future?

I can understand small clubs employing the tactic of buying & then selling at a profit but we're not a small club. If we sign him and he fires us in to the Champions League, higher league positions, cup success etc then that potential success in addition to shirt sales, related merchandise and higher profile perhaps in Spain and in the UK is how we afford him plus surely we buy players like a company buys tools to make us more effective and ultimately more successful.

We only seem to sell players on as they decide they want to move to a bigger club which is fair enough as they are employees and they need to focus on achieving the most personally but also for their team at all stages through their career and sometimes the two go in separate directions.
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I'm not advocating selling him. I'm saying that to justify a fee that would shatter our record signing, Levy would want a substantial sell-on value like he has with each of our record signings save Bent (whose transfer was broken into add-ons, making his overall package smaller). Even if he did fire us into the CL - which is not at all guaranteed considering five other clubs can outspend us - the entire CL revenue would be taken up by CL wage bonuses, which could even have awful long-term ramifications if those bonuses do not disappear once we are out of the CL. CL is useful for glamour and attracting better players, but it doesn't have a real financial dividend because we just spend it all on wages.

The fact remains that we are not financially competitive with five other clubs in this league, and in fact even the midtable clubs like Stoke, Sunderland, QPR get a little from their owners while Lewis does absolutely nothing for us. Our wages have grown substantially from the time we bought Luka for 16.5m, but our turnover has not. We're not in financial trouble, but we are at the point where we have very little left over after our annual costs (I believe we made under a million in operating profit last year?), which means we must sell to buy.

Resale value, a la Porto and Lyon, is important because it's the only way we have to grow right now. To keep up with the rising wages of our own superstars and rising oil transfer fees, we have to: 1) get better at scouting, and/or 2) increase spending every year, and the only way we have to do that right now is through selling players for higher fees. The only reason Saudi Sportswashing Machine have improved so much is by buying low and selling high, which is what we used to do.

And still do, to some extent, with the problem that we're trapped in a place where we MIGHT be able to get players that could improve us, but that transfer takes a very long time; OR we could spend that money on a bunch of riskier, crappier players who might not improve us but would be easy to get.

The fact is - we don't have the money of a top club, ergo we cannot think like a top club. We literally have to think like a midtable club with ambitions of reaching the top, which means a lot of worrying about where money goes.
 
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And yes, I know that sounds small-time and unambitious, but it's the reality of our situation. We need to aim for BOTH great service and the potential to recoup the fee, which is why Levy is so obsessed with Sporting's model (can't remember where I read this, but it was around the time we took in our new assistant manager). Of course this doesn't always happen - it's a bit like venture investment, where about 1 in 10 will become superstars while 6-7 fail - but we at least try.
 
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