I’ve intentionally put the bid amounts lower than I, personally, would be happy with, this is by design to see if those who do not rate the players would be willing to accept bids below market value in order to shift them. Please assume the offers are after an extensive period of negotiations and are final offers, if you say no, the players stay on with us for another season. Anthony Patterson, lower end Premiership club, £7m + £3m in incentives. Timothee Pembele, lower Ligue One club, £250,000. Jobe Bellingham, Real Madrid, £10m + 5% sell on. Hemir Semedo, mid table Portuguese club, £150,000. Leo Hjelde, Rosenborg, £500,000. Pierre Ekwah, Marseille, £4m + 10% sell on. Nectar Triantis, Hibs, £2m.
Nothing less than 10M for Patto. Closer to 15M = sell ons for Bellingham or no deal. Hjelde hasn't even had the chance to work with a full time Head Coach yet, so no. Don't want to sell Triantis yet. The reports he's been getting from Hibs state that he is doing a great job in CM. Let's find out for ourselves before we press the exit button. I think there's a player there. The others I'd be okay with.
The amount is designed to find a wedge between an obvious and fast profit, and due to his recent good form as a DM, the potential that he could come good for us and be worth much more. The two posters below you refused the offer.
Wouldn't take any of them bids personally. No point selling Pembele/Hemir/Hjelde/Triantis for small fees when they are on long contracts, would be much more beneficial giving them a pre season with the new coach then either keeping them in the squad or loaning them. Patterson, as much as he has looked shaky recently, will get bigger bids than that. Jobe with the right management and development can be anything he wants to be. No point selling that low when in 2 years he will be worth that at minimum because of the brand, still being young and being decent and at most he will be worth so much more. Ekwah is worth persevering with. If we can get him to the level he was in the Luton semi final first leg consistently he's a top player. Again, needs the correct management and development. The model needs to be about selling players for the maximum fee, not before it.
I’d take £2M at this stage, but it’s a fact we won’t be offered anywhere near that. I hope he stays and does well here, but I don’t have a lot of hope. Same with a lot of the signings we’ve made in the last 2 years.
I agree with what you say mate about maximising profit, but I don't want a squad overclogged with players who have not shown us anything. We need to be creating space in the squad for people who are going to improve us, either new signings or kids coming through the academy. We don't want to lose some promising youngsters because they can't see a pathway to the first team. One season should be enough for the coaching team to assess whether a player is worth persevering with. Pembele and Hemir appear to be well down the pecking order. The other two I would keep. If we are going to get rid of a midfielder, Ekwah would be the one I would prefer to lose. Providing Rigg signs a pro contract, he needs to be introduced more.
Agreed I wouldn’t be selling Ekwah for that either. He needs to be playing further up the pitch where he is much more effective.
If he carries on playing well at Hibs as a DM I'd be inclined to take a look at him in that position in the preseason.
They've been pretty savvy in the market so far, on the record as getting £10m for Stewart with his recent injury history. Some of that could be performance related bonuses but still impressive. Patterson - England U21, Championship regular and 23 years old. I think he needs to leave for his sake as his development has stalled. I think he has potential to be a first team Premier League keeper, meets homegrown requirements, I'd hope £12m or above. Jobe - tin hat on but I don't like how many starts he gets. Surely a development club should give other players a run out now and again. I'm not even sure it's good for Jobe, getting worn out on the pitch, his position changing from attacking to defensive midfield. Sadly if it's in his contract the only way to sort it would be to agree with the player and his reps or sell on. i know it's controversial but I'd consider a big offer Ekwah - he looked great under Mowbray, not sure what happened there. I'd like to see if we can bring that back, if not, reluctantly cash in, hopefully for a lot more than £5m Kids that can't get game time or aren't good enough - we owe it to their development to loan them or move them on. Triantis - keep, impressive performances at Hibs, in the Dan Neil position no less. Why sell our most promising development player.
Wow I didn't think I was negative about our players, but I think I'd accept all of those (with the exception of Ekwah and Hjelde). Patterson is fine, but I think he's about at his ceiling. I'd take that money, get an experienced 33 year old for a couple of years and clear the way for Young. Jobe I like, but that's a 300% profit at least plus a sell on. No guarantee that he gets to that level. Pembele, Hemir and Triantis, I'd be happy to move on. Their moves haven't worked and whilst it's still early, if there's money on the table, I'd take it. Hjelde is too soon to judge, playing mostly out of position, been here 2 months and is rusty. He's the same age as Triantis, but playing at a higher level. Too soon to write him off. Ekwah is a good player on his day and a great personality around the club. I'd be strongly considering it if the price was double that.
I agree that we shouldn't be blocking the pathway for youngsters, that would be suicidal. But I'm not sure we can afford to offload squad players we have now. If we look at the summer upcoming I think we need at least 2 players before anyone leaves, striker and defensive midfielder. Then I think we are all expecting at minimum one of our 'star' players to leave so then they need replacing so thats 3 players already needed. If we then start discarding of 4/5 squad players who then all need replacing I think we will be doing too much. Last summer looking back I feel we did too much business, instead of buying 3/4 really good players we brought in 11 players, that's too much business.
I would not sell off players now either , only top dollar offers should be even considered , we are no longer the pushovers we once were , so loan deals for those not getting regular games is the answer at this point in time imo.
All the points you make are good ones. My way of thinking, particularly with Hemir, is that we have Watson and Kelly coming through who are both highly rated. That's 2 new additions to the squad since last summer. Fieldson and Zak Johnson too. You rightly mentioned that we signed 11 last summer plus 3 in January. That's 14 on top of the one's who were already at the club. I don't want our squad size to be bloated and some of them not get any game time at all. It's either sell to create space or loan some out. If we go down the loan route, then the squad size will be bigger again by next summer, then we have to think about what to do with them. Would we not be delaying the inevitable?
Think it just depends on the quality of the loans, if they have a loan like Triantis is seemingly having where they play and look impressive then I think them loans are beneficial, if it's a loan like Mayenda or Bennette then yeah it's a waste of time. Triantis will come back in the summer with confidence he can make the defensive midfield spot his own and thats what we need when we loan players out, not just loaning for the sake of getting them out of the squad.
