Just out of interest, is there any other club in the Championship (or even all 4 Leagues) that don’t have a recognised proper striker and play with an assortment of youth or square peg strikers (like Rusyn or Jobe) If there is, how are they getting on, is it working for them? Is there a case to be made that we don’t want a striker and want to rely on Jack, Jobe and some others scoring our goals. Buying young players that may become good strikers in 3 years time is not helping us now. I don’t like loans when we just develop other teams young players. Are all of our eggs in the Mendy basket, a player we think is worth about a million. That’s a very low value for a striker. It’s ok saying sell Jack and buy 3 or 4 good players but with our lightening speed record of signing players (or managers) we wouldn’t have time unless they have somebody lined up and ready, but if they do, why not sign them now instead of Mendy who we can get for free next year if I understand the situation he’s in at Caen.
. on X: "French press reporting we've offered 800k for Caen's top scorer, who want 4 times that. Hilarious that some of our fans think it's alright though cos Caen "will just cave at the end of the window." Aye I'm sure they'll just decide to let him go cheap right at the death. #safc" / X Bit of a follow up to that from RR. . on X: "@rd_safc From @SAFCsource https://t.co/280RjTrS6K" / X I'll be surprised if we bid much more. ? Only other way is to link goals and a promotion clause. Both clubs make fair points but in our case he'll be 31 next birthday. Hope there's an alternative in the background.
I did get to thinking, if we value Mendy at a million, then clearly we don’t think he’s great. A million is ****ing peanuts. Surely a lad with 60 in 3 seasons has gotta be worth treble that.
True but he was injured for such a prolonged period through at least part of two of those windows it’s not unreasonable to think we should have prioritised a centre forward. I don’t buy the the idea we couldn’t sign a good one because they wouldn’t come whilst Stewart was here, if that were true no club would have more than one or two decent strikers. I think generally our transfer business has been good but it’s absolutely let down by failures to recruit a really good centre forward.
They aren’t really wrong though. It’s laughable that our fans demand £25m+ for players who’ve had a decent season or two in the championship but in the next breathe think a few million for Mendy is Caen being unreasonable because he’s 30 and playing in Ligue 2. Burnley had no problem spending more on Hountondji from Caen a few weeks ago, he was loaned out last season because he couldn’t get a start over Mendy..
Big 2 weeks for Speakman, if we fail to land a striker there’s no coming back, people will be calling for his head not RLB.
I think we spotted an opportunity with their situation pre Mbappe takeover whereby we could get a higher value player for less money. The goalposts have since changed so its a case of **** or get off the pot.
Think you are comparing apples and oranges mate. I reckon Clarke is worth £20m plus. He has 7 more seasons of football ahead of him than Mendy. He counts as home grown. Arguably championship is higher standard than ligue 2. We have a sell on to manage. Generally speaking youth and home grown are the factors that make our players high value.
We sold Stewart for £10m after one decent season and he was 27 iirc. Champ is defo a higher standard that’s why they aren’t asking for daft money, £3-4m for a 30 year old striker who’s scored goals regularly year after year isn’t a lot of money. Szmodics is 29, one good season at this level and he’s off to Ipswich for £8m.
Our owner is a billionaire.. we don’t have a whip round outside of the stadium to generate a transfer budget you know
Surely we could spend some of that 10m we got from Southampton ...also we may have got more due to their promotion... Unless its gone on other things
Lihadji fee was never recorded mind, if it’s the £3m rumoured then we recouped the £12m we spent. Regardless I think it’s all just waffle anyway to keep the books looking right. Deals are structured, money is always coming and going and where that money comes from isn’t always like for like in terms of transfers as long as it adds up every April it doesn’t matter. That’s my uneducated 50p anyway
I might be wrong but think Leeds under Bielsa didn't spend massively to get up? Ipswich neither. Maybe our best bet is getting lucky with a very good manager and some moderate spend. If Clarke went doubt we'd manage to invest the money this window anyway.
