Mahrez to stay or go - now coutinho has started the midfield playmaker merry go round and if he does leave do we need a replacement and if so whom?
No - surely clubs had quite an attractive proposition of him for £50m in the summer You simply don’t sell your star players in January at all. Simple. No issue at him at all going in the summer - again set a price and don’t sell for a penny under
Reports of Man City coming in for Harry Maguire for 50m...what's with all this crap of just sticking 50m on everyone's head. We are not back in the 1980's when all we did was sell our best players for peanuts. All our decent players are on very good contracts and WE DON'T HAVE TO SELL THEM.
The media love to think that we will doff our cap to the first suitor.. mumble "Yes m'lud" and thank them gratefully for the pittance being offered ... my particular favourite is whenever Everton are included in the speculation .. "Everton set to sign Demarai Gray ... for £10 million" ... You'd think the dumb ***** might have picked up on the fact that the only player that we wanted to keep who has left was Kante ... and that triggered by a release clause ... we don't HAVE to sell anybody ... we might sell if the money is right and the sale suits us ... the end.
Since the owners came here only Drinkwater has left and that was because he spat his dummy out and we charged top dollar for him Kante we was powerless due to the release clause
You don't pay more than £50m for players outside the top 6 obvs ... but Liverpool broke this rule so its back to silly season. Honestly, i wouldn't sell Maguire for £50m either, unless the owners wanted to just flip him for a quick profit, but the Mahrez situation shows they are doing the best for the club, not the coffers. I like Schmeichels comment about our stubborn owners, but at the end of the day, they are just good businessmen.
Robbie Savage says £75M Claude Puel has said over £100M Anyone who watched MOTD at the weekend and seen Schmeichel’s interview. He was asked about Mahrez leaving and his answer was aslong as he doesnt have a release clause that he isnt aware of it will be difficult for Mahrez to leave as Vichai is stubborn. Mahrez has another 2 years left so if we manage to somehow keep hold of him again in the summer then the follow season we will probably be best off selling him while he has value
Ideally it would be best to sell him this summer, as soon as they get within 18 months of their contracts expiring, their value starts to drop. After that, if we hold on waiting for a big bid next Jan or Summer '19 that doesn't come, we'll eventually end up losing him on a free. I mean we'll get 2 more seasons out of him, but have nothing to re-invest.
He clearly wanted a move preferably to Barca with Real Madrid and PSG as other options. Doesnt appear that any of those 3 are interested in him. Would offer him a new contract now to test the water to see if he would be willing to extend his stay now that he knows his dream move will not materialise. If he declines, then flog him in the summer.
I do think that’d be a bigger issue if we hadn’t only spent 400k on him. It depends what value we could get out of him on the pitch for them two years. I’m hopefully we could be in the Europa league next season so that may help us keep him anyway
Depends how patient he is willing to be... if he runs his contract down I’m sure any of them would take him on a free if he really wanted to go and didn’t ask for big wages
