As speculated he's gone to Huddersfield. Link to Club confirmation: http://www.fulhamfc.com/news/2017/july/05/malone-joins-terriers Again they say for an undisclosed fee but the rumours are it was £3.5m.
I suppose the club didn't want to stand in his way of playing Premier football if they got the right deal, but for me that fee is too low for a Premier club to pay us. For me he shouldn't have been sold, his goal ratio was good as well as having a high ratio of assists for a full back. Minimum it should have been is £6m. If you want to build for the future you don't sell your best players unless you have better to bring in. In my opinion Sessegnon is lacking in defensive qualities in his game that may be be exploited next season if he is the first choice leftback.
I watched the Huddesfield TV interview on his signing. He's always quite layed back when he's interviewed but I got the feeling he wanted to stay at Fulham. I suppose it makes more room for Sessegnon and give us some cash. He'll have some defending to do this season ! I was surprised he did so well for us last season. Shame, but we move on.
I've heard the fee of around £5m mentioned, which sounds like a good deal for us if it's true. I suspect that we're selling him at the right time in terms of his fee - he got a lot of positive attention last season, despite frequent moans on these pages about his defensive failings. There's every chance that his stock wouldn't have been so high in 12 months time and we wouldn't have got half as much for him. As long as he is properly replaced (Sessegnon? Ream? Someone new?) it's a good deal, but I'm sorry to see him go.
We'll never know for sure now, but reckon that a pretty fair assessment of how things might have gone, Captain. Piecing together the stories around social media sites. It seems that at the end of the season Malone, with a good year behind him and only a year left on his contract, asked the Club for a new deal. Fulham said, no deal. So, when Huddersfield came in with an offer Malone said he wanted to go .. unless ...!? The Club said, no new deal. The slight sting in the tail is that Craig Kline did the stuff with Huddersfield while Jokanovic was on holiday. That brought the conspiracy theorists out in their hoardes on Twitter .. "the analytics are yet again sidelining Jokanovic" .. "the yanks are showing their true colours" .. etc, etc. An alternative theory is that Jokanovic must have known about the 'no new deal' stand and was content to distance himself from player conflict. Whatever, the Mirror today stirred thing up (exactly as they have done in the past) saying the Gaffer is not a happy man! In fairness the paper implies it's all about transfer targets (as it has been in the past) rather than the Malone situation; saying the coaching staff are at odds with the analytics, Kline and Khan Jr. The Gaffer's "even a 10 year old would know what was needed" of course comes to mind. And naturally you can guess whose side the resulting storm on Twitter has taken.
