I’d probably rather have the £20 mill than a raw and largely still unproven talent returning from a prolonged injury tbh.
Hmm, he proved himself pretty well prior to his injury. This is a teenager who took KWPs spot in the team and never looked a step below the EPL. He was and probably still is at least Lavias level IMO. I’d happily take the 20m too but its not coming to my bank account. And I wouldn’t get much enjoyment from watching a pile of someone else’s money on a sat afternoon either so I’d still rather have the best players over the cash from selling them.
I agree. I want the player. He is worth... well £40M. The problem is that he came to us to play Premier League football and while he was injured he found himself relegated. I can't blame him for jumping at the chance to take the quick route back in. And that injury is a risk. The Prem is a lot more gentle than the Championship. I think we all wish we could have kept him, but we got a decent fee. We can only complain about how we spend that money - because none of us want to watch £20m accumulate interest in a bank account!
It's a shame we don't get a lengthy period of Tino, but we were in the odd position of having two Premier League calibre right backs while having significant needs elsewhere just to get the position up to Championship level, and that's a balance that always needed to be redressed. Not just for financial reasons, but I'd imagine it would be really difficult to convince whichever of Tino/KWP was on the bench most weeks, after dropping down a tier, to sit patiently.
Seems like Fulham are after Castanga from Leicester, so perhaps they won't sign KWP. At this time we keep him.
One thing I don't think I'd fully appreciated until the SW game was how influencial the full backs are in starting attacks and changing the tempo on the ball in this system. He'd be an absolute asset if we could keep him. I still expect him to leave though, and think we'd need someone equally capable on the ball in advanced/midfield areas to replace him.
We have Manning on the other side. He is a brilliant acquisition. Will we keep Perraud? Bree is a good player on the right. I suspect we will be okay whatever happens with fullbacks - but keeping KWP would be one of our better pieces of business.
Why are Palace not in for KWP? Makes a lot of sense for them with Clyne and Ward turning 33 and 34 this season. And he'd get to live in the London area still, which works for him.
RE the Lavia saga, my comment on the BBC site was removed because of the phrase “bin dippers”. So offensive.
