Blimey, another sensible comment Beef. That foot must be giving you a chance to reflect and consider Thing is, you DON'T sell your BEST players because other BEST players want to be in the same team as them. So, whether or not the price is right, it would be madness in a manager to take £20M odd for Adam because he is the first piece in the jigsaw of a better team than we currently have. When he's just another fine player in a squad of jaw dropping talent then you can look at letting him go. But not now, and certainly for the years he's going to help propel this club's profile. Honestly, I think some people would prefer we just made up the PL numbers and flirted with relegation every season.
That is sheer nonsense, and I would suggest that it is you who is thinking small. Lallana is currently the best player (if you believe that) on 9th place Premier team. Are you happy with 9th place? I would also agree that Lallana might be the 2nd best player for England, a side that is just hoping to advance past the group stage. Is that good enough for you as well? Messi is the best player on his team, Jozy Altidore may very well be the best player on the US side. Big difference. The argument to be made here is the one Schad made. As a practical matter, it's unlikely that selling Lallana improves the squad. Certain players won't sign for us regardless due to our perceived stature. And in addition, the value Lallana has to Saints is higher than the he is likely to bring to other teams. Moreover, he's young and improving so there's the matter of projecting his development. Perhaps he is legitimately a World Class player who can hold a spot in title-challenging team. Those are all good reasons to hang on to Lallana. The fact that he is our best player is not. If you can generate the maximum profit (and that's not strictly monetary, the money is a proxy for football "value" if you will) from selling a player, you sell him. End of. I don't care if it's the best player on the team or the worst player on the team. We will never reach the point where Lallana is riding the bench if we keep playing Lallana and refuse to sell him. Moreover, when he is a reserve his price is likely to be reduced. Buy low, sell high. You have to be ruthless about it if you want to compete with the best sides in the world. I will say it again-- better players than Lallana are sold by the big clubs every transfer window. And it's precisely because we don't have the money Man City or Chelsea have to throw around that we have to put sentimentality aside and be absolutely ruthless about profit-taking if we want to compete with those players. We need to juice all the value we can out of every last penny-- er, Euro. Or pence, what have you. If we refuse to sell Lallana it is us that's acting like a small club. Every player is an asset to be bought or sold if it improves the squad, regardless of their stature. This is such an odd mentality to me where selling players is deemed a sign of weakness or offers made are considered insults. If you sell them by choice, it's a sign of strength. I guess the modern "Moneyball" approach hasn't quite taken hold in England, but teams in the US routinely sell their best players if they know that the squad they have won't contend and they need to rebuild or if that player doesn't suit the side, or anytime it yields a net improvement to the team that can't be achieved another way. Having said that, I love Lallana and I'd like nothing more than for him to finish out his career in a Saints uniform.
Lallana suits our style...any other player brought in is a risk...could be a Lovren or a Forren. No point in talking about how other teams do things...just because American sides do it this way or Clough did a lifetime ago...it's only the Cortese way that concerns us. He likes value for money...hence the reluctance to sell Billy Sharp at a loss...but there is little to suggest that he is interested in realising assets. This would only change if Mauricio wants certain players that we can't afford without selling first. Even then, I don't imagine Adam is top of the list of players that MP wants off the books....be a bit like selling your car to buy new tyres.
That is what I'm saying because I think that is what would happen. Maybe there is some unknown footballing genius out there somewhere but what are the chances of us being the ones to spot him? No, to replace Lallana would mean getting someone already proven, probably from Europe somewhere and it would cost a fortune. So, stick with Lallana and allow him to do a Tiss and be an all-time legend.
Naturally my opinion differs, I see players as footballers first, human beings second, not a commodity to be treated as an assett to sold off at a whim, especially to another Club where he could damage us in the future. However we all know that football is very nebulous, nothing would surprise me these days. A bit hypocritical I suppose, but if a player leaves for whatever reason, I wish him luck, thank him for what he has done for us, and I will support whoever takes his place.
Agree. And you could spend a fortune on a European/South American star and spend a year waiting for him to settle (if ever). They don't all land running.
Fergie was often happy to let world class players go. But only when they didnt fit in with his plans. Players like Scholes and Giggs played their whole careers under him (almost). Id put Lallana in that category, thats how important he is to Saints' future.
... and the chances of them sticking around for 13.5 years is very minimal, so in fact, you have to be looking for two or three replacements, ready to replace the replacement.
You're right. And that's all part of the "value" of a player. If he'll take six months (or whatever) to get up to speed, you value him lower. If he's in the team and settled, like Lallana, that adds to his value. It still doesn't make sense if, with all that taken into account, you value a squad member at £15M then turn down an offer of £30M (don't argue the numbers; it's the principle). Equally, if you take into account the lead time for a new foreign signing and reckon he's worth £20M, you'd be mad not to pay £10M for him. Yes, they are people, but I was also a person when my former employer decided a chunk of the workforce were worth less to the company than we were being paid, so they dumped us. Why is it rational in "business" but not in football? Vin
What many have not said that I would've thought would be blindingly obvious is that when assessing the worth of a player to any team then how long they will be there is a key element of how much they are actually worth. Loyalty is not so much what I am talking of but if we remember when we were in the market for Ramirez and people were quite accepting of it being a situation where he would only be using us as a stepping stone. Accepting that we were essentially paying for a couple of years of a player like him to grace our club with his presence. His worth then as now was purely monetary with no other factors. His benefit to us if it had worked out 'as planned' would've have been very short term and we would've then turned into another 'conveyor belt' where the best players move to us and then to the next best then the next best. That is entirely opposite to Cortese's strategy of producing homegrown talent to bring into the first team. Cortese's vision is entirely about real togetherness and loyalty. This is where Lallana's value to us is way above what any other club would see his value. We know that he is not looking for an out option. We can therefore plan long term with him in mind. If another team at the next level above us like Spurs (where we could be with a little depth) were looking at Lallana they would look purely at ££. How much will he cost? How much will we get when he moves upward? So if the unthinkable happened. Adam got injured badly and had to retire or couldn't compete at this level and we needed. How much would a replacement cost. Someone with the same ability? How long would he stay? Would he have the same effect the dressing room? Would he give the whole club, fans staff and players alike that warm (false I know but it's still nice) family, loyal feel? Or would be end up like West Ham or Fulham forever accepting we are below the top clubs, forever accepting that good players always will move on from us. forever accepting the cast offs from the top clubs and forever counting the days until the combination of the aforementioned doesn't click this season? Lallana is worth £50m+ to us because we couldn't buy what he gives the team on and off the pitch. He is probably worth £15-£20m to other clubs because they are only buying the talent. Barkley is supposed to be worth £50m+ to Everton fans and many accept he will go to a bigger club. Is Adam worth less than Barkley (accepting that Barkley's age does bring a bit more value) That he will follow the path of Wayne Rooney. Does anyone think Adam will do this? Don't you think it's great that our academy players want to play for us and stay with us and not be counting the days till their big move?
This seems to me to be clearly untrue. After all, it was Cortese that bought Ramirez and purportedly, he still really likes him. Again, this to me is small thinking. We're striving to be up their with the best of them, in all facets. We've got a good manager, and good coaches, state of the art facilities, everyone who comes here seems to improve, and the goal is to win titles both domestic and European. Why wouldn't someone want to stay here? Obviously there are always a few weirdos who seem to never be happy but if we do our job scouting, we'll avoid them. We signed Osvaldo, who is quite a volatile personality and who was in as bad a situation as you can get with his old club and fans. We signed Lovren who maybe wasn't as outright crazy but was another guy who probably wanted and badly needed out. Cortese has never been shy about signing controversial players like that, because he (hopefully) has done his homework and knows that it will work out and the players will love it here. Besides, it wasn't too long ago that many members here were banging on about Ever Banega who has never been happy for long and whose work ethic is rather questionable. If we'd gotten him, he probably would have moved Lallana out of the starting lineup. As for the fans, Cortese clearly doesn't care what they think nor should he. This is after all, the man who sacked Adkins. Who's complaining now? And take a look at the players in our squad. Danny Fox seems like a good guy, he never complains, he supposedly helps out the young players and yet half the fans can't stand him and can't wait to see him gone even though he contributed a lot to get us where we are. Hooiveld is getting pretty close to that level and he seems like a nice guy. De Ridder never did anything wrong except not be good and everyone hated him. Arguably no one has given more to Saints and been as instrumental in turning us around than Kelvin Davies and the fans turned on him last season. Is there anyone more sympathetic than Billy Sharp? We kind of screwed him over and no one cares much about it. Yes, it's great that our academy players have become successful, want to stay with us and all that. But if things go to plan there will be a great many academy players like that. As far as I know, no one shed a bitter tear over Ben Reeves and Sam Hoskins. Why? Because they weren't good and Lallana is. It comes down to talent and contributions both for the club and the fans. It's not like I'm saying to totally ignore the things you mention. Obviously, you don't sell a player like Lallana lightly. I mean, he's the team captain for a reason. And yes, he is worth more to us than he likely is to other teams. It would take an overpay for us to move him which is unlikely to happen-- in part because Lallana actually isn't (for now) that good to where someone's going to break the bank. But for 50 million pounds? I'd sell him in a flash. WE HAVE TO SELL PLAYERS. Under the stupid FFP regulations, owners can't just pour money into the club anymore. You get like 105 million debt from owners or something. The rest has to come from revenue. Seeing as how it will probably take awhile before Saints have a massive worldwide income like Man U, if we want to compete we need to raise funds from selling players and then leveraging those funds to the hilt. Even if we save money by using academy products, we still have to sell. Because you get 1 or 2 JWP's/Shaw's for every 10 academy players. Even if we got 10 Shaw's there isn't enough room in the squad. So hopefully we'll be selling a lot of great, academy-grown players who love the team for lots and lots of money in the future. That is the ultimate goal. To have so many talented players who want to play for us that we can't find room for them all and we move them for loads of cash. So if selling Lallana means we're in better shape two or three years down the line then you sell, even if he bleeds Southampton red (although I suppose everyone does), even if he's the best player on the team. People have raised quite a few good points about why selling Lallana wouldn't put us in better shape a few years from now, and many of them are valid. When you look at it objectively, especially if you think Lallana can or already has improved to a top club-level then we shouldn't sell. But a lot of this is nonsense as well. When you are a great team, you have the luxury of selling awesome players. It's a good thing to be in that position. TBF, you also have the luxury of retaining who you want as well. All I'm saying is there seems to be this weird aversion to selling players like it make somehow diminishes the club stature or is some kind of insult. It's not. There's nothing wrong with being a conveyor of high-quality talent whose quality and quantity of output means that we can't fit them all in the squad. Rather than get all angry about it, we should sell off the excess for scads of cash and laugh all the way to the bank.
Hi Impsaint, if you looked 3 or 4 posts above, you'd read that I said that in mentioning trying to sign someon who'd be here for 13 years and then having to replace the replacement.
A thing I've noticed is that at no point (since Oxo) has any player agitated to leave with the possible exception of Ramirez. Either they are all happy or we are the pinnacle for them. So no one appears to be using us as a stepping stone. It makes interesting listening to hear Rickie talk about his arrival here...he had never been at a place where everything was done for him, every bit of help he needed was provided. He had never been at a top club admittedly, but we were League 1 at the time. Treating people right gets you some loyalty...and, whatever outsiders think, Nicola seems to engender loyalty as well.
Oxo is the only player in 4 1/2 years to leave the club whilst a 1st choice player. A main feature of that impressive record is the clubs general upward curve, but also the feeling of everyone buying into the ambitions of the football club and at the core of that is Adam Lallana. Selling your best players is never a good idea. The examples throughout football history are too numerous to mention, but worse than selling one of your best players is selling one of your best players who doesn't want to leave. What kind of message does that send to the rest of the squad? How can we expect others to stay loyal to the club when we sell our captain at the drop of a hat. If you look at everything from a monitory perspective then an offer of say £50m for Lallana is amazing business but it goes deeper than that. Sell him and then how can we tell Luke Shaw to stay loyal? There are many things more important than wealth
Point of order here, we haven't heard a word from Gaston himself, only agentspeak. Never once seen a picture of him in training where he wasn't laughing and joking with the rest of the team. He may want to leave but his reaction on Sunday would indicate he wants to be a part of the dream, just my rose tinted view of course.....
That's why I said possible exception of Ramirez...we only have his agents opinion to go by, though I doubt he would speak without having heard something along those lines from Gaston. As you said, he appears happy in training.
Mauricio was shown on Sky this morning (presumably postmatch) saying there was no point in bringing youngsters through, given them the opportunity to learn in the PL whilst being allowed to make mistakes, and then to sell them. He added it would make no sense. Adam is too old to be included in that group, but I'm sure Mauricio would do one of his famous 'astounded Gaucho' expressions if asked was Lallana leaving.
