You know this kid is a France youth international right? We haven't just plucked him out of the French system randomly. He's a genuine talent.
Yeah I do. I have no issue with bringing him in. Just think that it should have been £1m tops. He’s only just 18, and this is a massive fee for the French third division AND the biggest factor of the lot, we are buying from ourselves. He is rated as €800k from what I can see. If we want low risk, high reward this is the type of player we should be bringing in. But at £3m you’re increasing the risk in the same way that Mara was ‘low risk, high reward’ but we massively overpaid for him and we were lucky to just about break even in the end.
Yeah tbf, I did start this off by saying that I didn't know where £3m came from and if true it's a lot.
Peanuts these days really, especially for an U19 national team captain. I don't know why people are getting so worried on the price.
Sure, but you gotta take a punt sometimes. It'll work on occasion, on occasion it won't. They'll know this guy well though, and if it even is £3m, it's still nothing in today's terms, other than a gamble worth taking.
Definite pointless - he cost £3m so we don't exactly have much to lose. Lavia alone has made back the majority of what we have spent on teenagers under SR. Then you still have Charles, Edozie, Bazunu (not great but could still sell) and Fernandes. We have lost a few million on Larios and Mara, but other than them, youth talent we have signed has looked like a good investment. The issue is wasting loads on Onuachu, Sulemana, Stewart and also some poor contract extensions still costing us now.
They’ve saved a lot of money by not having to pay win bonuses and to players hitting their scoring and defending targets (if they exist). Probably doesn’t amount to £3 million but a saving nonetheless.
I really like that we are investing in young talent and I think it will start coming into fruition maybe as early as next season with some the kids we've been signing. My point re: Mara though, is that you can't simply rely on a player's youth international caps as a sign of his quality.
The price is probably slightly inflated to give the French club a decent budget to mount a promotion push, but it’s hardly an outrageous price, especially when you consider some of the PSR dodging academy signings made between premier league clubs in the summer. I guess he’ll play u21 this season and maybe he’ll be out on loan next season.
If indeed the £3m is true, I'm not sure why this causes such alarm. Morgan cost us £1.2m 17 years ago this summer and he was also an 18 year old French youth international. Can't remember much about him but I'm sure he did ok for us! £1.2m in today's money in real terms is just over £1.9m, in football terms we all know it would be a lot lot higher than £3m! Add the fact that we are essentially buying from ourselves and we have access to everything about him so he is a known entity rather than a hopeful punt on a player we have limited data on and I can't see how so many people are questioning the purchase. I think people's hatred of SR cloud a lot of things. If you can separate your feelings about them, then this is about as good a purchase as you could expect for us in our situation and will hopefully be the first of many where this Multi Club Model actually works in our favour. We got relegated at the end of Morgan Schneiderlin's first season with us and then for the next 7 seasons we never looked back. If by some miracle this can go the same way, we are in for a treat!!
Sigh, seen this quite a few times now. I haven't seen anyone panicking or losing their heads or whatever else you want to call it. It's just a different opinion to yours. I've personally said multiple times this is the kind of signing I was expecting us to make and that it makes sense. I have no issues with us signing this kid. I hope he turns out great for us as a player and we make loads of money from him in the future. IMO, we are overpaying for him. He's very young and is coming from the French lower leagues. He seems to be valued at around €800k, and in this scenario where we are the main club buying from within the SR group, I absolutely do not think we should be overpaying for him (if we are, £3m isn't confirmed). If you overpay every transfer by a couple of million because oh, it's nothing,...it will catch up to you. And there have been many instances where we've been going for a top transfer target and seemingly been unwilling to pay an extra few million to make it happen. We have also been struggling with PSR and are about to lose loads of money etc etc. Anyway, I've said my peace many times now. So I'm not going to bore anyone any further. Agree to disagree if you want, I just don't appreciate all the sensationalising that a differing view point must be losing their heads just because they had a different opinion. Sidenote: SR also deserve a lack of trust because they've constantly made dumb ass decisions for years now. This was the PL season that we were supposed to have learnt from the last one and the only thing they've shown is that they are incapable of learning from their own mistakes.
As this message directly followed my own, I assume this is in reply to me? I never said anyone was panicking or losing their heads, I merely stated it seemed to be causing some alarm from some posters, albeit mild alarm. I am not sure my post was sensationalising anything, bit extreme that! Yeah we may well be paying over the value of this kid but let's not forget this is an in house purchase so it's just a way for them to move some money from 1 club to another. Maybe somewhere down the line it will happen in reverse, probably not but it really doesn't matter. It's like when I use the money from an account for bills to pay for a night out. It's all my money so it doesn't really matter at the end of the day. I agree SR deserve stick for how things have gone but I'm pretty sure they aren't trying to lose money and **** things up, of course I could be wrong. All of the above is just my opinion of course, you are all free to have your own!
