Imagine a summer transfer window of - Johnstone Pau Torres Maehle Perisic Milenkovic Savic. Eriksen Martinez. We can dream can't we.... .
The thing is with a lot of our transfer business for a long time is that we're bringing in players on the basis of them being assets a season or so down the line, and have been doing that since Arnesen was with us - and the issue there is that when we need players ready to go immediately, which Ndombele is the most obvious example of, we still had one foot in the camp of waiting for them to really blow up sometime down the line It has to be said that Paratici isn't blameless either, with Gil and Sarr are a couple more examples of this, but Romero balanced that out in the summer before Deki and Bentancur were brought in during the January window
In the last few years we’ve barely had an approach. It’s been scattergun-esque with regards to just buying players who’ve had a good season somewhere or looked like a cheap deal. Been very little direction until Conte came to where we now know how we’re gonna set up, we know our style and judging by January signings we know who can fit that style. No more Lo Celso’s or Ndombele’s or taking punts on players who’ll never play and we should be sweet under the current people. Lot of reasons for optimism, more so if we do secure 4th.
Finishing 4th will mean we can dine at a higher quality restaurant. Perhaps not at the level of mega spending clubs but many players will want to have a stab at CL football thus opening the market for us. Getting the right players who will buy into Conte's vision and methods is essential as we can't afford the cock ups of recent years. Can Paratici do it? The signings of the last year are a cause for optimism.
I can only dream of what's to come but first we have to get shot of Ndombele and Dele ,current value £20 million if we are lucky , Dele could be worth more if we sold his organs , who is going to go near Ndombele? GLC we can get a deal with a part ex on pau Torres if we are lucky , £10million for CCV if Celtic are feeling flush but most likely £ 8 million , Capt Crab might get us £ 25 million , that leaves Lucas, Stevie B and Reggie if Conte thinks he can get a better lwb Let the good times roll .......COYS
Dele’s already gone, mate. He’s at Everton on a permanent deal, they have to pay us £10m once he’s played 20 games though, few other bonuses involved too apparently. I’ll take anything for Ndombele just to get him out. Sell Lo Celso to the highest bidder unless a Torres deal can be done. £15m for Winks. £20m for Bergwijn. £6m-10m for CCV. £20m for Lucas. £3m for Clarke. £15m for Rodon - I like Joe but it ain’t happening for him here. If an offer of £25m+ for Sanchez comes in I’d take it, albeit more than happy to keep him (to a degree, still gives me heart attacks). Sell two WBs, one from each side, to the highest bidders. We could raise well over £100m, add that to the money available to spend and we’ve got a very nice budget for Paratici to work with in order to get Conte his players and push on. Good times.
The thing is we have already earmarked £80m on Kulu and Romero, which is well over 50% of the highest summer budget we've ever had. I'd imagine a focus on free agents plus loan-to-buys to offset further expenses, but ultimately this underscores why CL revenue is so important. Just getting to the group stages and winning a few games in it lands close to £20m and that's before all the added gate money and matchday revenue etc.
Lo Celso pays for Kulu and likely has some change left over. Bergwijn and Winks likely covers two thirds of the Romero fee too.
Transfer fees are usually not immediately payable all up front (will probably be spread over 3-4 years) .
I'm reasonably sure that we partitioned off a section of last summer's transfer budget so that we had a portion of Romero's eventual transfer fee ringfenced in advance so we'd be able to pay it no matter what scenario we had at the end of the season Realistically, it wouldn't surprise me if we had half of Romero's fee set aside, as the fees for Toby, Foyth and Sissoko would be enough to cover that on their own, and when you consider we negotiated down Metz's asking price for Sarr with a loan-back it wouldn't surprise me if making sure we had a chunk of Romero's fee covered in advance was why
Agree with all this but i think we would be looking for more than £20m for Bergwijn. I'd say £25 - £30m
There is a difference between accounting for and paying for. As an asset, the fee will be depreciated over the life of the contract, but that doesn't men that it is paid over the same time.
My understanding is that it usually is both accounted for in that way on the club’s books and paid in that way. Sometimes a bit more up front as an initial payment but generally the majority of the payments are spread. You’re probably aware of this but Swiss Ramble on Twitter has done a great job of explaining this in the past, far better than I ever could. It’s an accounting trick and a practical thing too of course - if a club wants a big fee up front then there are ways around that, but it’s not ideal.
In the event of getting the required result on Sunday, when do we think the club would announce the signings of Romero and Deki? I'm going to suggest the first week of June
We'd probably sign him on a new loan for 2 months then complete the signing with 5 minutes to go. Levy loves a midnight fax.