The trouble with your logic here is that you are saying that the worth of a player is defined purely on how much of a priority he is to the buying club. You're therefore happy to ignore factors like, well, everything else (off the top of my head this list would include the ability of the player, the experience of the player, the current market, the contract of the player, the position the player plays...etc etc). To me a player can still be over-priced even if he is the priority signing for the buying club. Imagine we had already bought a couple of strikers or whatever. Levy, Baldini, AVB etc sit down and realise that now the priority signing is (say) back-up/competition for BAE. Would ANY price be justified if they paid it to land their number one target for reserve left-back?! We paid 12m for Berbatov. After negotiating hard (and after he had had two excellent seasons in the EPL coming on the back of five very good years in a highly competitive league and plenty of international caps/goals) he was then sold for 30m. And Berbatov showed class and ability in abundance besides the goals (has Benteke? - genuine question). 25m for Benteke is over-priced. It's not surprising that Villa have set such a high price but it is definitely way too much. There are loads and loads of very, very good strikers who get bought for way less than that every year.
You seem to be forgetting that adebayor also has a poor attitude and an even more extensive track record of it. Every club he's been at, he's had 1 good season with and then been very disappointing. - hence why he's moved around so much. Not to mention he earns a fortune and isn't worth 1/4 of his wages. Too many make excuses for him all the time. We will see very little from him now and the club knows it, which is probably why he's been offered to besiktas. I'm not saying remy is a golden boy, but his performances on the field have been pretty good, so that in itself is a step up from adebayor. He's not an ideal signing, but IMO he's worth a 6mill punt as I think he'd work we'll for us and we have to remember how much we're being quoted for other strikers. - at least someone like remy gives us a fresh option, where as we currently know what we've got and we've all stated. how in satisfied we are. There's no harm in us trying till the end of the window to get a big player in, but we should have a back up plan in case it falls through. - otherwise bale is going to have to go up front next season!
An update on Bongani Khumalo after he played for Ipswich last night in their 2-1 win over Crawley. "I was pleased with Bongani. He is certainly very quick and athletic and whatever he did, I thought he did OK. I was pleased with him", said Mick McCarthey. The 26 year old is contracted to Tottenham until 2015 and McCarthey says the defender would not be a permanent addition to his squad. "We're not looking to buy him, we're looking at a possible loan deal".
Khumalo's 26 now so in reality, if he's still not going to be challenging for a first team role this year I don't see the point in loaning him. Should just sell him to someone willing to take him on permanently. Surprised he hasn't made much of an impact, he was pretty good in the last World Cup, I know it takes a bit of time to adjust but it's been nearly 3 years now since he joined.
The Khumalo signing really was such a weird one. And he still has two years left on his contract?! I can only assume that he is on a very, very small wage (small in the world of football, of course). I keep forgetting that he actually cost us 1.5m. Why? Just why?
In fairness, he did actually have a good World Cup, even managing to score against France. So I suppose the club saw him as a small risk, £1.5m is peanuts in football today and so if he proved to turn out a top defender, result for us, if not, we can probably flog him for around £500k-£1m. As for his wage, I reckon you're right, can't see him earning any more than £10k-15k.
I was thinking a lot less than that, TBH. I'd imagine you could put clauses in so that they immediately start getting paid bigger money once they make X number of 1st team appearances. Til then it's League 1 wages. Dunno - just guessing. True enough about the loss risk/potentially high reward, it's just that he was turning 24 when he joined. Shouldn't he have been a bit more obviously good by then? Maybe it was just horse-trading. He was never gonna get into our 1st team but given a decent loan spell we might well have got our money back/made a small profit and got a sell-on clause in there too. Or something. Maybe it was just a way for Joe Lewis to shift around a million and a half cos the accountant told him to. Tax avoidance or something else boring and financial.
Shirt sales? Were we thinking football might take off in SA in a big way after the world cup? Having one of their stars would be a good way to go about getting a piece of that pie. When did Pienaar sign....?
Usually I'd agree but reports in the media (and I think Spurcat later backed it up) was that we're paying Ezekiel Fryers £15k a week... So I reckon Khumalo would be on similar to be honest. I know for a fact that as of 2010, Ryan Mason was earning £4k a week too! I think perhaps the scouting team/ management may have thought he was better than first thought for his age, so maybe just an error of judgement? Yeah good point, he was probably the biggest name still playing in SA so bringing him over here would've no doubt increased our rep and boosted shirt sales.
Blimey! I'm pretty sure that in Bale's "Inter Milan" season he was on 20k. Used to like rubbing gooners' noses in it that he was on the same wages as Jay Emanuel Thomas. And good point, Spurm, about the shirt sales/club profile stuff. I dunno though - I don't get business. Shirt sales? We pay someone 10-20k a week to boost (legitimate) shirt sales in South Africa? How many are they buying? More than 10-20k worth of sales every week? I guess it works but I bet the people who big up intangible benefits like "profile" and "brand" and set up the deals accordingly get paid a lot of money to peddle such notions. I know it must make sense but just find myself sort of incredulous that it apparently works. Does loads of money come pouring into the club from South Africa every month? Or is it all just vague "global branding" stuff? And when does that turn into actual money? Since it's mentioned in the media so much it must be true about shirt sales but I'd love to see a breakdown: How many more shirts did Beckham sell for a club? How many shirts were sold in South Korea after Lee Young Pyo signed for us? Etc etc.
i doubt the shirt sales offset the wages tbh, but the overall aim is to gain lifelong fans who will spend money here and there throughout a number of years and attend friendly matches (which we also did a fair few of). Then, as you say, its global branding. Get the name out there, make it recognisable, make sponsors wanna get a piece of that pie etc etc Signing Pienaar would have done more than Khumalo though, even if he was a bit pants for us. Mind you, £10k/week is only 500 shirt sales a week at £20 (assuming they are cheaper over there?). That doesn't seem like a huge amount for an entire country
I don't think it's just shirt sales but all sorts of Spurs-related merchandise sold in SA. Plus I'm pretty sure TV stations try buying more rights to screen games out there so they can watch their national heroes (albeit not worked with us so far with Khumalo) so I'd presume we get a chunk of money for every Spurs game streamed out there. Plus with money aside, it just boosts the whole profile of our club in SA which is also bonus, especially SHOULD a starlet arise and we became interested, the more popular we are out there the better the chance of persuading them to choose over other potential suitors.
Reports circling that Dempsey has been transfer listed. If that's the case, I reckon we could be hearing a Chadli announcement soon, I doubt we'd sell Dempsey if we weren't bringing in another attack-minded player.
It isn't always the case though that fellow national will get on, ask Gary Neville (off the record) if he is happy about working with his fellow Englishman Carraghar.
Different situations and scenarios to be fair mate. Neville and Carra were some of the main men at rival clubs and weren't playing in a foreign country so they had plenty of mates around. When you're not on native soil and in a minority, you always look for fellow compatriots to help feel settled.
Don't know if this has been mentioned this already - apparently there is interest from Spurs in Daniel Opare. Personally never heard of him, anyone?
Thudd off to Sunderland 5 million pounds,just heard some bad new's about Kaboom,i've been told he has the same problem as Ledley,if there is any truth in it i don't know,the guy who told me is a Spurs fan,so it 's probaby right
