Transfer Rumours Summer 2025 Transfer Thread…

Philogene was a decent deal and probably the best one under Acun but it wasn’t a bargain. We paid £5 million plus a 30% sell-on clause to get him after two average loan spells at Stoke and Cardiff.

 

I didn’t say they were all rubbish but even the ones you just mentioned all cost a fortune. We had to up our contract offer to convince Seri to come, Tufan was around £3-4 million, Philogene was £5 million, Hughes was £3.5 million plus add-ons, Belloumi was £4.68 million plus add-ons. You would expect them to be good due to how much they cost.

We’ve wasted a fortune on ****e and the few that are actually decent also cost a fortune.

 

He’s flattered to deceive wherever he’s gone.

He was undoubtably better for us than for any other team but let’s not pretend he wasn’t inconsistent when with us.

We made decent coin on him.

Can’t see how anyone can say it wasn’t a good deal.

 

That's what it took to get him. It paid off.

 

Jobe Bellingham has just gone to Dortmund for £27.8 million plus add-ons. We sold Philogene back to Villa for £13 million. Every single clause in the Philogene deal benefitted Villa at our expense. 30% sell-on clause, £15 million buy-back option if we were promoted, able to automatically match anybody else’s bid even if we weren’t promoted etc. all limited the potential profit we could’ve made from selling him. It was a decent short-term deal for the club but let’s not kid ourselves into thinking it was a massive stroke of genius signing him. Villa were the biggest winners from that deal.

 

Yes, it was a great deal for Villa. It was an okay deal for us.

 

To be fair, based on your earlier comparison to Chester and Clucas I don't think you're giving enough weight to quite how much player transfer fees and wages have increased over the last decade or so when comparing against them. Unless you can somehow keep digging up top quality players from non-league teams (which rarely happens, and how would we have the network to do it) then unfortunately in this market, you have to pay the rate to get quality in the building, or be astute overseas, or longer term have the sort of academy that we simply don't have.

The parachute payment era alongside other factors have a lot to answer for.

Aside from that, the likes of say, Tufan costing 3-4 million, especially when you consider the return we got from him, doesn't scream 'cost a fortune' to me. Good players in this league are coming and going for 10 mil plus now, regularly. The fact we've been able to see some genuinely good players come to the club for 5 mil and under, to me, is actually really good business. It's the ones that don't pan out that make us look clown college but it's the risk you have to take without splashing serious money. Even Giles, on paper, was a good signing, but we all know what happened there. I'm hoping we hold onto him and he has a blinder of a season, but the odds are against it.

 

The benefit for us was having a player of that calibre and potential for a season. We made about 8 million profit out of it as well. It doesn't become an OK deal for us because fast forward to now and Sunderland have made 20+ million out of Jobe Bellingham. If he was called Jobe Wilson then that deal frankly doesn't happen for that sort of money.

 

He wasn’t average at Cardiff he was quality.

 

It was an okay deal. I think we undersold Lewis-Potter and Greaves as well because of Acun’s wishy-washy attitude of ‘if players want to leave then I won’t stand in their way because they’re good boys’. The guy’s a crap negotiator.

 

It's debatable how much more we could have gotten for them both so I don't necessarily disagree with the comment about the fees. All depends on sell on clauses for those deals whether or not they become long term benefits to the club. I'd maybe not put too much stock into Acun's comments about letting players go though. I don't think he'd deliberately put himself out of pocket by any major amount if a player genuinely gets the chance to progress. It doesn't come across as a cutting his nose off sort of dilemma, more a happy to cash in so that player can progress to bigger and better things (providing they've warranted it a la KLP and Greaves). I see his comments more of a statement that he's happy for players to use the club as a stepping stone. In theory we attract players out of our usual remit, and the proviso is that they play well for us in order to gain the attention of a bigger club. We benefit from that.

 

I always felt that when he left us he wasn't really PL ready. His highs were brilliant but he was inconsistent and he was still improving with us, unlike Greaves who had done all the improving he could ever do at this level and really needed the step up by the time he left.

 

Lot of it was down to McCann being sacked for Shota.

 

I didn’t think it was a bargain at the time either but most this board was wetting themselves with excitement and they turned out to be correct. I couldn’t see where all the hype was coming from, he’d hardly set the league alight before coming here and nobody ever spoke about him being a danger man.

 

I was on about Philogene. Guessing you thought I meant KLP.

 

We sold him got something like 3m so surely we will be due something.

 

On the Robertson sell on clause, it would go to Ehab surely.

 

I agree, he was a standout when we played Cardiff at home.

 

On Philogene... our full backs will have him in their pocket and our forwards will turn JG inside out when Ipswich come here...

 

It was 8m wasn’t it? Stupidly cheap and they had our pants down, why could every fan see it but not the people doing the deal. Ah well.