Whilst I see your point, for a club of our size, I genuinely think the length of contract only has an impact on the fee. Take Virgil for example, for me it's about the following 2 questions: Has the buying club offered an amount that is acceptable to us(the board)? Does the player fancy the move? For me, as soon as the answer to both of those questions is a yes... then they will go. Whether they have 1 year or 10 years on their contracts... they will be gone. And that goes for any player imo.
Except that surely the player's age must also be a factor. John Stones, for example, fetched £50 million as a nipper who will hopefully get better, but it's not guaranteed. Virgil at 25 is only just getting into his prime years as a CB, and will definitely get better. Why sell him now when in a year's time we can get even more for him, or even 2 year's time? If the club's business model is buy low-sell high, then you want to sell as high as possible, which in Virgil's case is definitely not yet.
True, but he could spend another year being broke. £50m has always been a little bit high, if he had played more of the season perhaps. A top club might stretch into the 40s, which would be a realistically ok deal for us. Will someone bid that? I'll take the cop out that plenty of political journalists will use in the next 4 weeks, and say there's a 40% chance.
Purely my own feelings with no evidence, but I think it is less than 50% chance that Virgil will be here next season (unless his injury lingers on) and, if sold, the price whilst highly secret will be less than 50 Mill even with add ons. However, we may benefit from a sell on a few years later. Other theories are available....ask me tomorrow.
I put to you the examples of schneiderlin, Wanyama and Mane all wanted to leave a year before we allowed them to. As soon as they had 1 or 2 years remaining they were sold for a fair amount.
What a half that was.both teams playing some great football .shame we are going in 2.1 down but still all to play for
Yep, 'Hurty foot' and 'Save myself for Man City/Liverpool/Chelsea/Arsenal/Barcelona/Real Madrid** **Delete as appropriate
Disagree his stock goes higher and higher, if he comes back okay from injury, we should look at £60m as a minimum, he is that good
On the same page it says we are after William Carvalho, I can dream on, him next to Romeu yeees please
I would have loved the suggestion a few years ago, but why hasn't he moved to a better club, or was it all hype? He dominated that u21 tournament so surely he's a good enough player. Recently linked to West Brom.
If he's that much of a trusted insider, would he really be spilling the beans to yourself, to post on an internet forum?
