An interesting view with which I have to disagree. If you can get more than you feel they are worth, then why wouldn't you sell them? If we thought Lallana was worth £15M and someone offered us £30M, we'd be mad not to take it, as if our reckoning is accurate, we'd be able to buy a replacement and have £15M in the bank to buy another player who was, in our opinion, just as good. Vin
I don't think Nic would be thinking too hard about a £30m though. If someone said £50m then we can talk, but no one will, so no point worrying about the what ifs.
Doesn't really matter what the numbers are (I just picked them out of a hat). It's the idea that you should never sell that I don't agree with. Vin
So when Lallana is in the best form of his life, he is Englands 2nd best player, but when Henderson or whoever else hit that form it's just a purple patch? That makes no sense to me! Lallana is playing well, but so are many other English players!
As I move on through my life I find that, more and more often, I don't really understand what's going on any more. I think I'm going to drink more beer and see if that helps me to comprehend the world. Vin
We may well be tested with an offer this January, but I have to say, this is the least worried I've been about it before. That sir, is good times, good times indeed.
Sensible comment from Beefy. I see there is a supposed bid of £15M being lined up by ManU which is utterly derisory. Lallana will continue to improve and will become the club's talisman when Ricky retires. One other thing. People talk about if the price is right. This of a player who has stated time and again that he wishes to play at Southampton until he retires. If anyone hasn't read that before, go and find an example. He has zero intention of leaving and Saints have zero intention of selling him. End of.
Sorry, I know, I agree with you. It's all hypothetical though really. It would take more than anyone would pay.
Adkins on Sky Sports saying how Lallana should be on the plane to Brazil. He said his ability and his attitude are amazing. He also said his enthusiasm is infectious on everybody. Can't see anybody not agreeing with him.
The idea you can replace a player who has learnt his trade here and loves the club with any amount of money is surely missing a key element of our success.
Would you say we should swap Wanyama for Drew Surman then? I'm not advocating that we sell Lallana. I'm just saying that to me, our defense and midfield (when healthy at least) are top club quality or close to it. I don't think our attackers are. I love Lallana and would be very sad to see him go. But I'd also hate to see Lambert or Rodriguez go. They might not have the same history, but I still think they are passionate about the club because 1) Why wouldn't they be, things are going great and 2) If your club is well-run and you do things the right way, EVERYONE should be passionate about the club. Lallana belongs in the England side but to be honest, that says a lot about the lack of quality in England. He might be the best attacking midfielder in England, but I wouldn't put him in the top 5 in the Premier League right now. Whon knows? Maybe he grows into a World Class type of player. But maybe he doesn't and JWP does. Or Omar Rowe. It's up to Saints to analyze both his talent and team needs and see how they fit together both in terms of the present and potential future. If things go ahead according to plan, in a few years we will have all very good players, many of them from the academy or could at least be said to have learnt their trade here in large degree, and all wanting to stay. What are we going to do then? Unless we plan to never sell a player again, which is unrealistic and moreover then how do you clear space for the next wave of academy players? Selling Lallana (or anyone else) is not a bad thing. It's a GOOD thing because it means our squad is so awesome (or we're at least striving to be) that even a player of Lallana's quality and commitment might be surplus to requirements. To me, 15 million pounds is a fair price in the abstract. Because Lallana brings some "intangibles" to the table he's actually worth more than that to us, so I wouldn't let him go. But for 18 or 20 million? Maybe. If I had a player lined up who I thought was better, why not? It would mean that at least one of Lallana, Rodriguez or JWP has to sit. Perhaps Lallana as much as he loves the club would prefer first team football so you're not exactly screwing him over. Especially if he thinks he can get it someplace like Man U where the salary won't be too shabby and he can still play in Europe and get every chance of getting into the National side.
A few things on the above. Our attack has been pretty strong, after the slow start; we have 22 goals in the past 13 games. That's 1.69 per match...for the sake of comparison, City scored 1.74 a game last year; if it was possible to combine that strike rate with the defense played in the first quarter of the year, Cortese would be looking for a good deal on a double decker bus rental. For what it's worth, the same is true for the entirety of the Prem...goals were in short supply early in the year, but things have loosened up significantly as time has gone by. Even if attack was our biggest problem, the rest of your argument is spurious at best. We should be open to selling perhaps our best player because at some point in the ill-defined future, players who are currently in the Academy might be better than them? We should sell them because, if we acquire someone really good, we may then end up in a situation where we have enough options in attacking midfield that we can rotate the squad a little? Because bringing in someone else could, at current time, lead to JWP sitting (he has not started in three games as it stands). The problems you cite are, essentially, abstractions that don't really have much bearing with the current squad. We aren't overloaded with attacking players; we neither have the depth to stand up to the loss of Lallana, nor do we have an attack that is lacking sufficiently that we should consider the current personnel expendable by virtue of their failings; we're not in a situation where it's likely that we'd need to sell Lallana to free up the funds for this as-yet-undetermined better player. And to boot, because he can play in multiple positions, we shouldn't have any concerns that bringing in a player better than he will mean his banishment to the footballing Siberia of the bench.
If funds were no object we'd be sitting on an assload of players like Borussia Dortmund or maybe Chelsea in attack. The mere fact that we don't have depth points to us lacking funds at some level. That, or mass incompetence. Because we shouldn't be short in any area if we can buy who and as much as we choose. That said, I get what you're saying. I think 18-20 million is in the range where I'd start to think about it, but maybe you think he's worth more. Regardless, I think it's unlikely that we will end up selling him for whatever the mythical price we set and I don't have a particular desire for Saints to do so. I don't think there's a market because Lallana is worth more to us due to the "intangibles" he brings to the table than he is on paper to other clubs. And other teams underrate him as well. So there's not going to be a meeting of the minds. I suppose I'm guilty of throwing out "What if?" scenarios that appear unlikely. At the same time, in January of last year we would have been saying much the same thing about Adkins. He seemed to love the club and had steered us to two successive promotions, and what more could you ask? It seemed highly unlikely that we would even want to replace him, nor that we could find a better replacement. And yet that's exactly what happened. So I'm kinda feeling now like hey, never say never. Who knows what might happen. Liverpool and Man U getting in a bidding war and we trigger Reus's 30 million release clause, I don't know. I'm really more railing against the idea that clubs can't sell their best players (and is Lallana really our best player?) or that selling means Saints are a small club or just in it for the money or that Lallana is somehow irreplaceable and we have to hold on to him. I think clubs and I guess supporters as well, should be open-minded to the possibilities out there.
There's something of a difference between having enough money to acquire a singular player, and having enough money to significantly add depth at several positions. There also is not a heck of a lot of overlap between the two populations of "will cost 25m+" and "wants to play for Southampton" right now. We could offer Marco Reus his own private planet and he likely wouldn't be keen on leaving Dortmund for Saints. Additionally, we're also restricted by the wage cap in the new domestic financial fair play regulations; we couldn't spend to our heart's content even if Cortese had the whole Liebherr fortune at his disposal, and running with a smaller squad may thus be tactical as much as financial (to avoid the problem West Ham is facing, where they may have to clear wages in a panic in order to fix their team), even if I think that we went into the year a wee bit light at a couple key positions. As for selling as a general concept, yes, there is a point at which it makes logical sense even if you aren't a small club. But 15-20m is no longer the kind of money that necessarily offsets the risk of such a transfer...not when each position in the table is effectively worth 1m, not when a 15m transfer fee of our own would be supplemented with an additional 2-3m in signing-on/agent fees, etc. And not when Lallana is an excellent fit as an attacking player in a scheme that may not necessarily be easy for your average theoretical superstar acquisition to fit into, either.
I'll try and simplify this. What is the point of selling our best player to replace him with another top player for about the same money (because that is what it would take, if not more), who may not even work out for us?
We are forgetting something- The Southampton Way. Of course every player has a price that you might sell him but that price would be by definition over the market value; Adam is a much better player than he was last season and who knows how good he will become? Are there any better players in his position who's clubs would let them go to a rival team? The club's philosophy is to build a team playing attractive football at the highest level with a squad largely comprising Academy graduates. In that context we would not sell Adam at the price that anyone in their right mind would be prepared to pay.
Studly: http://www.thefreedictionary.com/studly i.e. Get a good looker for the ladies, but he needs to be able to play football as well?
