Bayern Munich want Sadio Mané

Sadly, you are correct

 

Mane has sent out every signal that if a bigger club wants him, he'll be leaving
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What's he said?

 

Nothing. I think he is referring to last year's sulk in order to get to us.

 

We will assuredly still end up having to sell players. The goal, however, is to perhaps hold on to them for a bit longer (as we did with Morgan and may yet with Clyne), thus allowing enough stability that we may at some point give players pause about leaving. If we fold and sell as soon as players make a peep about departing, we can be assured that we will be a revolving door.

 

Well, I personally won't start pissing my pants just yet then. FFS.

 

I'm not worried really. Sadio will stay.

 

Didn't Sadio say something in an interview when he joined us about using us as a stepping stone as it wasn't the right time to jump straight into one of the 'big teams'.
Doesn't necessarily mean he's going now, but I don't think he'll be with us for very long unfortunately.

 

Although it'll probably all come down to money in the end, don't underestimate the draw in having a legend as a manager. Some of these players will stay because they want to play for Ron.

 

Last paragraph is relevant

http://www.givemesport.com/511596-sadio-mane-better-than-barcelona-star-duo

“...I’m sure he will not spend too long at Southampton because there are lots of clubs in Europe who would like to buy him. When Sadio went to Metz, I said he wouldn’t spend very long with them and it was the same when he went to Red Bull. He has the talent to play in the Champions League.”

 

I can't take a single word of that article seriously.

 

I have heard the Brenda thinks he'd make a good RB

 

He wouldn't be getting touted if he hadn't scored that hat trick.

I remember at Christmas when many Saints fans were writing him off as a terrible signing.

He was the next Fox/Guly!

 

I was not one of them. I constantly said "give him a chance"

 

Nor me. I've always thought he was an exciting talent.

 

Also one of the quoted "big clubs" is Spurs, and they definitely wouldn't pay that much. The article from where a lot of this stems from is an African-centric French language website; which is possibly looking for/creating gossip surrounding players from key demographics, such as the Senegalese.

 

Agree and also disagree with this. Agree that to a point we can't keep our best players forever or force anyone to sign a new contract. Disagree regards the fact that the club clearly places a value on every player and only sells when the offer exceeds that value (simple but good economics for the growth of the club). We also correctly prioritised that of all the offers made to us last summer, Schneiderlin was the one we didn't accept.
Looking over the course of last season one would say confidently that Shaw, Lovren, and Lambert have all decreased in value compared to the fee we received, and at best Lallana and Chambers have stayed the same. Schneiderlin on the other hand has seen his value increase. In other words, none of the calls the club made regards sales in the last year have hindered our plan for growth as we've been able to use the extra monies efficiently to make the team even better.

 

I was thinking that. Quick, someone take down that goals thread.

 

I think that is co-incidence / circumstantial at best. The club put the expected spin on it saying they were not letting Schneiderlin go but no-one ever put a bid in of a value that could be accepted. If someone had bid £25m+ whether it was before the others had already been accepted or not then he would have been sold.

 

Sure, I agree that if someone had bid a higher figure (say £25m like you said), the answer may have been different. But lets say we had accepted £25m last summer it would have almost certainly been because the club thought that that was an offer high enough that we could improve the overall squad with.

As Schneiderlin is currently still rated as a £20-£25m player and not higher, we wouldn't have actually made a bad call provided the replacements were coming in were correctly valued also. I think until we genuinely have far better depth in the squad there are still areas we can gain in this fashion even when losing what seems to be your best individual player.

Accept that some may still see last summers transactions as 'lucky', so the proof will be in the pudding to see if we can do it again this summer/next summer to prove that we can make that style of business model work while we are still building the profile of the club. Finish top 8 again or higher in each of the next two seasons, while having some progress into the groups of the Europa League and we can probably say that the plan is working.

 

It cuts both ways. We brought in good replacements for cheap and made a killing while also improving our league position. So from that perspective, why couldn't we do it again?

The counter example to Lovren is Osvaldo. A year ago we probably could have sold him for 5m. Now we'd be happy to give him away just to get his wage off the books.

I also think that despite how good those deals look now we would have gotten more for lallana and Lovren had they not made it clear they wanted to leave. I think we could get more for Schneiderlin if we weren't over a barrel. And none of those guys fetched 30m.

I mean Schneiderlin has some years left on his contract. If you could only keep one of Mane or Scheiderlin, I think most of us would choose Schneiderlin. But we are willing to sell him for 25. And I don't think Mane is even as loyal as MS. That gives you some idea of how little leverage we have.

If someone wants Mane this summer and made a concerted effort, they could probably get him for 20m, max.

If they were stupid enough to offer 30m, I'd grab that fast. But the point is moot because I just don't think it will happen.