Depends who we buy really, doesn’t it? If we buy players on £100k/week and we lose players on, for example, a combined £1m a week, then that’s a net £700k a week saving. Consider that you can amortise contracts over, say 5 year contracts, and you can spend over £180m just by recruiting on a lower salary - would they be good enough? Who knows. You can throw your £50m net on top of that if you want. One thing is for sure, it’s a major rebuild and we need some recruitment magic to not go backwards (a lot). Personally, I would move heaven and earth to keep VvD. Then hope Salah realises that we cannot compete with Sandi and stays anyway. Otherwise we are destined for some ‘building’ years.
Here is the issue.
A) diaz contract out in 2027. Not getting signed. Likely to be sold. One we wanted done
B) konate contract expired 2026 not getting signed. A matter of extreme urgency.
C) Robertson contract expiry 2026. Do we want to renew?
D) kelleher contract expires 2026. Will certainly not sign a new deal.
I'm not going to go into all the other 2027 contracts like jota or alisson but that is 2 years away.
In short if we want to maintain a squad but an affordable one we can either gamble on buying a lot of players willing to play for 100k or we can reward players who have proved good enough to play at the top.
I am sure salah doesn't expect us to compete with saudi.
He got 350k a week when he could have gone 3 years ago for 500k or 1mil a week if he wanted it.
He can still go for 1mik a week now. He doesn't want to. Give him 350k a week and have some confidence his dedication will carry him through to 35.
Same for vvd. Decide if he is worth 250k a week for 2 years. (Or whatever) basically what Maguire is on if utd are in cl ffs.
A little bit the same but less so for trent. Is he worth 250k a week? He will dorve the others wages more than the other 2.
If we are seriously looking at the squad
Alisson. 2027. Probably going to run down
Kelleher. Marmadashvilli replaces him.
Jaros. Out of contract nobody talking about him.
Trent out of contract.
Bradley. Worrying glass like.
Robertson..aging rapidly
Tsimiaks Nowhere near good enough and nearly 30.
Gomez. Glass.
Konate. Running down contract
Vvd out of contract.
Quansah. Good and seems to have earned a little respect.
Gravenberch. Quality
Macallister quality but slow.
Szoboszlai. Quality but inconsistent
Endo. Not rated.
Jones. Inconsistent, injury prone.
Elliott. Not rated.
Morton. Not rated.
Diaz contract running down
Gakpo. First choice.
Jota. Made of glass
Nunez not rated.
Salah out of contract
Chiesa not up to it at all. No pace.
If you are as harsh as me then you have to be thinking vvd and salah in particular simply cant be let go now via penny pinching as there's a lot of work to do to improve this side.
We ought to be pleased we got to a league cup final and are in the cl space this season. We are delighted we are top by a distance and won't even need 80 points possibly to win the thing but lets not buy the bullshit best side in Europe stuff.
When the sharp end of the season hits the big boys come on strong. We have fought hard recently and not lost but the best side in Europe would be about 20points clear right now in this league and looking to win the cl as main focus.
We've scope to improve our first team.big time. We won't do thst but losing the best two players over 50k a week apiece.
I'm delighted we've 1.5 hands on the premier league trophy for no 20. I can still see what the next stage is going to be like.
Slot will want certain things for next year and hughes needs to start ponying up.
