Earlier in the summer I saw some Saints fans expressing discontent at our strategy of signing young players and it seemingly blocking our own academy. Some even suggested this was responsible for two of our young players leaving for Chelsea. As usual I am mixing up comments from here and Saintsweb so there is a chance that the latter point only came from SW But I'd ask people to look at Chelsea. They are regarded at having either the best or second best academy in the country. And yet they are now signing very young players from other clubs. Not even the usual Chelsea thing of binning off their youngsters for high priced established players (which they are still doing). They have spent close to 45m on two central midfielders who are 18 and 19. One has never appeared in senior football. The other has about 300 minutes for Villa. They are linked with an enormous, record breaking bid for a 21 year old central defender despite selling three very good ones last year and loaning out one who is apparently the most highly regarded of the lot and leaving Chalobah on the bench even before this new signing (with a right back taking his place). And they are linked with a wildly overpriced bid for a 21 year old winger that might even involve them sending some of their young players in the other direction This seems crazy to me. Far crazier than what we are doing. Is Fofana really 4 times the player of Guehi or Tomori?
Sangare scored for PSV tonight against Rangers, and by the sounds of things over the past year has developed into a real talent. Wasn’t he our number one CM target the year we signed Diallo? I know not all no.1 targets will work out better than a plan B or C, but having these new owners gives us a better chance of getting our preferred targets before having to settle for the next option on the list.
Fats is all good. We message one another frequently. He has his reasons for having stepped away, but he’s all good and opinionated as ever!
Yes. I have seen two comments about why we didn't get him. One was that the new work permit rules blocked it. The other is that he didn't want to come. He is quoted as saying something about not wanting to join or us not wanting it enough in his PSV joining interview. But I take that with a massive pinch of salt given the context. He wasn't exactly going to tell the PSV press that he wanted to come here but was blocked due to a work permit. I think what it sounded like was that the work permit issue caused a delay (and maybe the need to increase a bid above what we agreed and what PSV paid. They paid 6.3m and I am sure we agreed 9m but it still wouldn't get around the permit rules.
It was no surprise that Everton now appear to want to ditch Dele Alli. A move to Turkey now looks imminent but you wonder if ths does not work out for him then this will be the end. Waste of talent.
I was shocked to here that Saints may off-load Oriel Romeu. He has been a fantastic servant to the club and I think the one bit of steel in the side. I think he would be a massive loss and surely someone you would bend over backwards to retain. I did read somewhere that Romeu was passionate about medieval history and that part of the attraction for him was moving somewhere that had loads of buildings from this era. He is also a writer. The comments compairing him to Maya are spot on. I feel the same way about Romeu too.
So glad we didn't sign him. It was worth the risk as a loan move in case he could find his old form, but spending that much on him and handing a long term contract is typical of Everton's awful recruitment.
Wouldn't have been a WP issue, as far as I can tell. One, the new WP rules weren't in place in the summer of 2020; they kicked in Jan 2021. Two, if the rumour was thereafter, he'd actually have a really easy time qualifying for a WP under the new rules, because PSV has played in Europe. You need 15 points to get a WP from their various calculations, and my back-of-the-napkin math for 2020-21 has him miles above that. I'm guessing he just wasn't sold on us which...I mean...at that particular moment in time is perfectly fair.
I'm sure I remember Semmens talking about it on TSP ages ago and saying it was WP related but I can't remember details and I'm not about to search for the pod and it doesn't really matter as the end result is he didn't come here and we bought Diallo who unfortunately hasn't really worked out.
I don't think we're "off-loading" Oriol, I think Oriol wants to go home. And with the service he's given us at this club, I think we'd be remiss to stand in his way in that instance.
He came from toulouse and not PSV. Now that I think about it - it would have been the old work permit rules I think - he was a non EU player and those always had a difficult time with them. There is a reason young African players go to france and young Brazilians go to Portugal It was reported extensively at the time as being down to a work permit. My point is that those who choose to believe Sangare’s PR interview at PSV over reporting of the work permit are those who are more inclined to disbelieve the club / take the negative view. We said he couldn’t get a work permit because the fee was too cheap. That certainly was a thing and he fee to PSV was 6m. I seem to recall all Sangare said was “we didn’t try hard enough”. That is likely what his agent said. If that means : we didn’t pay nearly double what PSV would have done and what we agreed then that is suddenly very different What is inexplicable is why we paid lots more on a very different player in Diallo. I guess down to opportunity and availability. Similar to how unless we knew at the beginning of the summer that Romeu wanted to leave then paying a fair chunk of our budget on Lavia was arguably quite surprising. But the was scope to buy him permanently and we didn’t want to miss out
There was an article that popped up on Newsnow recently about him . He has just signed a new contract with PSV despite “PL interest”. Some quotes from his agent in the article saying he had offers from the Prem before he joined PSV (Us) and some this summer (Everton). He claimed that Sangare wasn’t interested in either team as he didn’t want to join a relegation candidate.
A spurs friend of mine reckons Alli was never really very good. Said he just perfectly suited the role Poch played him and that’s when he had his great season. When asked not to play exactly that way he looked poor for Spurs and now Everton
There are two points to your post for the reason Chelsea are doing what they are doing. The first is their business model. Their academy isn't there just to produce first team players for Chelsea, it is also to produce players to sell on so they can buy expensive experienced players. The second point is, not meaning to bring politics into it, is Brexit. Chelsea and all top English clubs cannot bring in U18 players from the EU anymore because of work permit and child trafficking laws. When we were part of the EU we were all EU citizens so young players could come here with parents permission no questions asked. Rightly or wrongly that isn't the case any more so they can only get young British and Irish players under the age of 18 withoutjumpingthrough hoops legally. This means if they want to poach them from other clubs, the price has gone up because the quality young players are in much shorter supply.
Not surprising Delap went to the Championship 2 weeks to sign potentially 6 players, plus some out goings. Could be busy