A few reasons, in theory; nobody wants a player who throws his toys out of his pram (whether or not the toy-throwing is truthful) - look at Tevez. And nobody would bother bidding for a player who specifically wanted CL football, which rules out nearly 3/4s of the PL. The remaining few either didn't rate him or are on the cusp/deluded (Liverpool, Spurs, Villa).
I have to agree with this (well, I don't have to, but I do). Clint would not get into the side at Arsenal, Man Utd or Chelsea - let's face it, he probably won't be a starter at Spurs on a very regular basis - so he definitely wouldn't get in the team for the other three. And that was his problem. The clubs that could offer CL football were just not interested and could, and did, buy better players. Who would you take Hazard or Dempsey, Cazorla or Dempsey?
I think part of the reason that so few people came in for him was more to do with his age rather than is ability. Despite the lack of respect I know have for him he is a very very good footballer. At 29 he is at the peak of his ability and you know you are guying quality, but from a financial point of view itâs a poor investment. You are never going to get your money back and only going to make a loss. In todayâs climate I think thatâs a big factor. In terms of ability at this point in time you wouldnât say Dembele was more than twice as good as Dempsey (which the fees paid would reflect) they would be pretty much even, but you also buying into potential ability and potential financial value. Dembeleâs value is only going to go up over the next two seasons unlike Dempseyâs who in 2 seasons time isnât going to be worth much more than 2mil.
Given that Henry and other owners would have sized it up, I'm probably wrong, but I'm sure he would have boosted North American merchandising revenues and along with the Fox documentary increased the clubs profile (in terms of brand recognition). In terms of his cost- he wasn't that expensive, another 29 year old went for about 5 times what we were asking. RVP must have a worse injury record. Also, think about who swept him up- Daniel 'not a penny more' Levy. The difference between football and business is that a 'short term fix' could actually work out, if that fix got CL qualification- the subsequent boost in revenue would cover the expense, and if managed properly, could help build on the success. Considering Dempsey carried us in terms of goals last season and Liverpool couldn't score - it seems like the perfect marriage. Providing he doesn't get injured, I think Dempsey has about 7 years left in him- he's been growing each season, I think he has got another 3 years of the same level form.
No, but I'm minded that the significant interview which prompted much of the furore was the one between Jol and Sarah Brookes and orchestrated by the Club. There were certainly some 'political' shenanigans going on. As usual, I should have expressed myself better - primarily I was supporting the way Cheetahyz put forward his argument and thought he was wrongly getting a bit of flak.
Fair enough. I do think the fallacies needed pointing out though, especially the notion that Jol was trying to use Dempsey to beef up Dembele's price. Nonsense.
Such a good point to make. If Dempsey had done what he did for us at Arsenal last season, he would've been worth £30m.
I don’t think you can really compare Dempsey and RVP as in terms of ability they are worlds apart… Last season RVP was one of the best players in the world… by comparison Dempsey didn’t even get in the PFA team of the season. Yes they are both 29 and both have dark brown hair but I think that is where the similarity ends. Your right he would have been… And if he had been in the Barcelona or Madrid team he would have been work £50 Mil… but he wasn’t… he was in our Team. Had he been at Arsenal he wouldn’t have played nearly as many games or scored as many goals. He scored 17 PL goals for us last season which was a good return but roughly double what he has scored on average over the previous few seasons…let’s not get carried away with how good he actually was….
Dempsey himself hasn't done too badly out of it - $7.4m per year or over £80k per week. Par for the course I suppose for Spurs if Benayoun was on £82k pw. http://www.businessinsider.com/clint-dempsey-is-now-the-highest-paid-american-soccer-player-ever-2012-9?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+businessinsider%2Fsportspage+%28Sports+Page%29
He has done well… with the extra cash he can buy FIFA2013 for his PS3… It’s the only Champions League football he’ll be playing while he’s at Spurs.
Nobody is comparing them in terms of ability, but the situations are eerily similar - both 29, both in the last years of their contract, both seen as the central player of their clubs, both scoring the vast majority of their team's goals, both wanted out. The only differences are the injury records, which RVP comes off much worse in, and the price tag. If RVP is worth £25m, why is Dempsey only worth £6m, and not £10m, for instance? I think that was the point Silky was making. Not sure what you're getting at. I was saying that it appears that simply because he played in the white of Fulham that he's worth a pittance in transfer fees. And you don't think he'd score as much at Arsenal? You think he'd get less goalscoring chances there? I find that hard to believe. He'd be playing against the same defences there as he would do here (domestically) as well.
Oh well, it looks as though the Club are not prepared to do whatever it is sleeping dogs do - they apparently still wish to pursue L'pool for impropriety in the affair - http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/18886354
I do see what you mean on the comparisons… I guess one difference is Wenger stated he wanted £25 mil or would keep RVP for the season. If a club paid that he could go. Which happened and he went to UTD. RVP despite saying he wasn’t going to sign a new contract never refused to play as Dempsey allegedly did. RVP could have gone back into the Arsenal team and played this season. After Dempsey’s summer I don’t think he had a way back. As a result it reduced his value as clubs new we needed to sell. Dempsey wouldn’t have scored the same about of goals at Arsenal last seasons as he wouldn’t have been an automatic starter for them. If you start on the bench rather than the field of play you are going to score less goals… Had a scored the same amount of goal for Arsenal he would have been a lot better player than he is.
I agree with TMHAF on this one. Dempsey would not have gotten as may goals at Arsenal for one reason, Fulham set themselves up to play around him and always looked to pass him the ball in dangerous areas (this is reflected by the mass amount of shots he had over the season). Arsenal, whether it be last season (RVP) or this season (Giroud, Cazorla, Podolski) have other players they would rather pass to in dangerous areas. Apart from Dempsey, we had little attacking threat last season, therefore he was the focal point of the team. Would he be the focal point of the Arsenal team this season? I highly doubt it.
Okay, so last season's goal tally was well up on his previous average, but the point about his goals is that the pattern was for him to increase the total year after year. There's a progression and a development, rather than just one freakish season which eclipses all the others. He's a player who has consistently improved. Anyway, why are we still talking about him? I have nothing against him and hope he does well, but I'd rather focus on what we've got than what's gone.
Yup, Dempsey's old news. But Cottager58's note brings up an important issue that effects the entire team: Dempsey's now making 80k/week, and I'm sure Dembele is making at least that much for Spurs. What were they making before - 30k - 40k/week? If Fulham have a de facto wage cap that effectively says no player, no matter how good, only gets 40K/week, how can we hope to keep our best players? Let's say Ruiz and Petric have break out years that catch the eyes of bigger spending teams. Aren't we doomed to repeat this fiasco, year after year? Again, the words of Mark Hughes come back. “I felt my ambition for where I wanted to take the club was not matched,” Hughes explained. “Historically, Fulham was a club that was happy to be in the Premier League and that was their ambition but it was not my ambition for them. “In conversations, they were saying, ‘We know exactly what you’re about Mark but really we are just quite happy to stay in the Premier League’.”
I think our cap might be closer to £50k, I think Berba is around that figure (the Sun claims it is 100k http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepag...-Dimitar-Berbatov-from-Manchester-United.html). At the moment we need to sell players at a higher value than we purchased them to build resources- most other income streams are tied to the success of the team, which then brings in prize money or more fans and higher merchandising sales. If we flip a few more players like Dembele, invest the money in the academy, infrastructure and growth then we can build toward becoming a team that pays a higher wage and attracts players at the peak, rather than from either side of the curve. Tottenham were not in a dissimilar position to us when Jol was in charge, although they did have a larger stadium and fan base to draw revenue from. Hughes is a fool. To him ambition equals spending money- pure and simple. He probably wanted £30m to spend from Big Mo, to improve a team that had not long since reached the EL final. Hughes can't just do steady management, it's all about revolution- sack the backroom team, bring in new methods & players and try to imprint his style on the club. Hughes should be Chief Scout, not manager. If you consider what QPR and Fulham are currently doing- I think our actions represent true ambition, theirs reeks of desperation. We are investing in youth, developing academy players and working toward a specific style of football in line with Jol's philosophy. QPR are looking at this season only, bringing in players but not building a team. Hughes can't seriously think QPR could ever challenge for the top 4. Chelsea stuggle enough with a 40,000 seater stadium, but an 18,000 seater with no potential for expansion cannot sustain the spending he has undertaken. The owners can't be expected to just keep pumping money in with little return. City had the stadium when the owners came. At the minute their only ambition can be to stay in the league- to become like us. The crucial element in us flipping players for profit is that they don't pull a Dempsey and make it difficult for us. I would categories top level English teams in the following way; Superteams - City, Utd, Chelsea Top teams - Spurs, Liverpool, Arsenal Feeder teams - Fulham, Newcastle, Villa, Sunderland etc.. Dregs - Bottom of the league and below, a few exceptions such as Crewe, Southampton In my approximation, we've moved from Dregs to Feeder in the last few seasons- we've begun to attract higher quality players earlier in their career. We've got to go through this level to get to the next. Newcastle are on the cusp of moving up to be a top team- they sold on some of their best players for profit and appear to have the cache & resources to retain top talent. If they can finish top 5 this year I think the transition would be complete.
Well said, Silky. DR, I find it worrying that you think we should be spunking money we don't have on sky-high wages. Even if we did offer massive wages, we can't offer CL or even european football every year, much less the prestige that a bigger club has. If Hughes' "ambition" means becoming another Portsmouth or Rangers, then I'd rather be ambitionless.
Bid-meister I'm not necessarily advocating that we spend money like drunken sailors. I take pride in the fact that ours may best and most efficient club in the league. Pound for pound, I suspect it's between us, Everton and Wigan The problem for us is that we're, as Silky rightly describes, a feeder team for the big boys. Our good players (Dempsey, Dembele, Saha, etc) go up to the bigger clubs and their lessor players (Sidwell, Duff) come filtering down to us after a pit stop at Newcastle. As long as we're happy being a feeder club, it's not a problem. As long as we don't mind being whipped around by finicky rich teams like Liverpool, Tottenham, it's going to be OK. They control our destiny. If they want our players, they know (and we know) they can have them. But I'm becoming less and less OK with that. And given that our owner is a bona fide billionaire, it's hard to see us ending up like Rangers.
