Homecoming for this lad tonight. http://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/spor...arcos-alonso-time-sunderland-special-12318188 Always got the feeling the lad loved it here and this interview seems to confirm it. I wonder if he'd celebrate a goal against us? Hopefully we won't find out tonight, but I have a feeling it would be very muted. To think we could have had him for a rumoured £6m~, just another in a long line of ****-ups by the club. Pretty sure most on here could clearly see he was a bargain at the time, and indeed his name has been brought up by multiple posters in every single transfer window since... What could have been, eh? Wish the lad well, hope he gets a brilliant reception tonight.
If we had bought him at the time, he'd probably still be a Chelsea player today. Difference is we'd have pocketed a few bob.
Didn't see the match, how did the home fans treat him, we usually appreciate decent players who did their best for us on their return.
Yet the numbers I heard were £8m - £10m so I guess it depends what you believe (although we'll probably never know the truth) - very few (if any) thought he was a £10m player at the time - all wanted him but didn't want to pay silly money. Hindsight eh?
You won't stop talking about hindsight and Alonso will you, I remember the price mentioned being around six mil and loads of people wanted him for that, I'm sure they wouldn't have complained about ten million either not that I think it was that much. At the time, not in hindsight.
Agreed mate, £8-10m is too high for us, but at £6m we should have got him. Same like M'Vila, the quoted £8m is a bargain for a player of his caliber imho.
But when we'd signe PVA for around £4m (I think) he wasn't as much of a requirement at the time. Which made him much less of a £10m player. The news read that the clubs couldn't agree a fee - neither of the clubs said what the fee was though and the papers did. Mirror set the fee low iirc (around £5m) and others set it at 6m and up to £10m - we'll never actually know - but I thought there was a story where he'd decided he wanted to stay as he was going to be getting first team football? All swings and roundabouts really but, when we'd already signed a left back, we didn;t need to spend another £10m on another one
Aye a definite bargain - but not when he signs a pre-contract and, in 6 months, he's completely free transfer wise - awful business
And obviously that 'pre-contract' wasn't worth the paper it was written on. We should have signed him when we had the chance, Alonso also, look at the state we're in now.
My issue with that at the time (which I wrote on plenty of threads during the summer - no hindsight required) was that even if you got him for a free in January it is still a gamble. There's a big difference between having a player in during pre-season and for an entire season and having someone come in mid-season who may have been out of the squad in Russia. For the sake of a few million it was too big a gamble, it's not like you're a midtable team, you were always likely to be around the relegation places and a few points are comfortably worth the few million.
Yes, but now we've lost him. We've lost a £15million plus player over £8million. Tell me how a £7million loss is good business? The money men at the club are farcically ****e.
I've told you this before quite recently and I'll say it again. A lot of us were incredibly vocal about the fact we should be signing him no matter what the price was. It was quited everywhere at 6-8m. I think most of us would have been happy with 10. The lad was a very solid defender who looked our most potent attacking threat on the overlap during several games. I usually stick up for the club but that was an utter travesty. I quite like PVA but he is and always has been a shadow of Alonso as a player.
However if you did sign both, you may have just sold Alonso to Chelsea for £20m and PVA may have developed into an attacking left sided player (where he looks best) and you could have a £20m winger on your hands. Instead you've got a LB who's defensive deficiencies are overlooked on the whole because he's a threat going forward and Fiorentina have £20m in their bank. These fine lines can make a big difference, scrimping and scraping here and there to save a few quid could put you in an unenviable position... well if Bain's telling the truth it already has.
Which you only know with hindsight - we signed PVA in the season we couldn't/didn't get Alonso (couldn't I think, didn't you think - just my opinion mind). I agree he's a better player than Van Aanholt - that's why PVA is with us and Alonso is with Chelsea. Wish we had them both as PVA would be a winger now and, IMO, a bloody good one too
Sorry chief but a lot of us wanted him at the time. That's anything but hindsight. It was clear and apparent that the lad was a star half way through his loan. We saw it. Nothing to do with hindsight.
That makes no sense at all to me - how can we have lost something that was never ours? If I told you "I'll sell you my car for £5000 now or you can wait 6 months and have it for nowt with no more than 5 more miles on the clock" would you buy it now or wait 6 months? If we knew in the summer that M'Vila (who, according to the club and M'Vila, we could have forced to sign for us next month) would we have signed him? I would certainly have hoped so. I don;t know for certain but I think something would've been done. We haven't made a £7m loss at all - we've spent nothing on him and lost nothing on him so we haven't lost £7m. Not even relatively. Like saying we lost out on £10 million profit on Alonso - which we didn't as he was never ours either. You can;t have lost £7m on something you never owned
