When players leave us what is the make and break ratio. Dembele, VDS,Saha, Smalling undoubtedly went on to greater things and doing so added to our financial coffers but did we have a greater number of financial flops who left ?
Dembele has gone to a bigger club but he's not had the impact I expected - still think he should have stayed one more year and, if he'd maintained his form, joined a club in the tier above Spurs. Not sure what you mean by financial flops, in that we should have got more money or that they didn't kick on. I suppose Dempsey is an example of both, although he really had onlytone sparkling season - he was on the bench a lot under Roy. I suspect over the next year we'll be seeing a few of our youngsters go for less than what their value should be, I'm thinking LVC, Hyndman and Roberts specifically.
Van der Saar is, arguably, the only one mentioned above who didn't underachieve since leaving us. In Saha's case, his failure to nail down a bigger role at Man Utd was down to injury, but that move didn't really work out as United would have hoped. Smelling hasn't become the player United hoped when they paid us £12M (or whatever it was). Malbranque fell down the pecking order at Spurs, Sean Davis too. Clint Dempsey never came close to establishing himself. You can argue either way whether Boa Morte's move to West Ham counted at the time as 'bigger things', but we certainly sold at just the right time in terms of his performances for us and for them. The same applies when you look at Jimmy Bullards career after he left us. It's good to see Konch back in the Premier League with Leicester, but he had to drop a division to go back up after his disaster at Liverpool. Of this summer's departures, Sidwell and Hangeland would have expected more game time than they are getting. The only other player I can think of from the Premier League era who unequivocally moved on to bigger things successfully is Champions League winner Steve Finnan.
Aye-Aye Captain. Green Pastures has not really worked. The pity is that a few were really missed and their loss is one reason why we are in the current mess.
