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Ethan Laird | Birmingham watch
- Thread starter top1whoisman
- Start date
Only player along with Mejbri (if we sell him) that we include a buy-back clause.
Good little player there. He will have a good career.
If he stays healthy, I couldn't agree more. Fingers crossed!
Good luck to him, I feel he'll end up playing in the Prem after his team gets promoted.
Looks like we are friendly with Birmingham. Too bad apparently they don't play good football. We could loan them another youngster.
I suppose buyback clauses are the way to go with prospects we aren‘t sure about.
In before someone moans about the fee.
Great price for a talented lad. Hopefully cements whatever relationship with Birmingham we are trying to and hope he can keep developing and get a chance at a higher level in the future.
Good that we sold him instead of letting his contract run out which happened with a few youngsters before.
Very talented at youth levels and was a great attacking full back. Unfortunately, injuries have hampered his development as I believe his trajectory was to the first team! Will be following his career with great interest!
My favourite youth at one point. I think he’s going to make his way into the PL if he can stay fit. Best of luck to him 
I’m shocked that it’s only half a mill.
Really talented player who’s been unlucky with fitness. Good luck to him, love his personality and his style of play.
He's actually stayed relatively injury free the previous 2-3 seasons. The killer for him was the move to Bournemouth, which was completely unnecessary given how he was performing for Swansea at the time, very poor management to send him there.
I remember when people always said Laird will be eventual first choice at RB when there was so much turnover at the position and to not worry about it. Just goes to show that life events like injuries are unpredictable and can undo any plan.
Whitwell said in a tweet it's 750k with a good sell on clause.
Bugger, seems really cheap for a guy with his talent. I was convinced he'd make our first team in some shape but hey ho, what can you do. I think he'll play PL football before long.
Best of luck to the kid, no path to the first team so it's the correct call to move him on now. I'm sure he'll have a good career in the game, either top half of championship or bottom end of the prem. Very few make it at the highest level, if he's smart he should be able to set himself up financially for life doing the thing he loves.
Even 750k is better for us than letting him go on a free in 12 months time, every little bit helps nudge the FPP dial. It's like Zidane, small fees but with sell on clauses, some of them will yield a return in the future.
Even 750k is better for us than letting him go on a free in 12 months time, every little bit helps nudge the FPP dial. It's like Zidane, small fees but with sell on clauses, some of them will yield a return in the future.
That’ll cover last 2 weeks of De Geas wage.
Yeah saw that. A Birmingham reporter said less than 500k but who knows. Not a lot of money anyway.
Good luck to him. He has talent, so would not be surprised if he gets a bigger move later.
To think that some thought he should have been around the first team on here! 
Best of luck to him, very good player and will excel at that level.
Best of luck to him, very good player and will excel at that level.
I wouldn’t say that. I see where you are coming from but I can see the logic, if he gets in the Bournemouth team that is flying high and gets promoted then they could have looked for a decent fee circa £10m like Neco Williams, but he couldn’t. I don’t think Utd ever saw him in the 1st team squad but hoped to extract a high value out of him. It didn’t work out. We got good money for Garner, it’s swings and roundabouts.
Had a year left on his contract and needs to kickstart his career. I think this is just another case of the club not standing in the way of an academy graduate and accepting a low fee. If he does well and they sell him on then the club will benefit from the sell on clause.
I know people look at the fees Chelsea, Liverpool, and sometimes City, get for their young players, but that's never been the model for our academy. The best players end up in the first team.
There is an argument for trying to move more towards what Chelsea do and use the academy to generate funds for first team transfers, but then they've sort of ended up with a production line of very similar players who aren't quite good enough.
We need to get better at placing players on loan so they get the necessary experience and exposure, which would allow us to expect more in a transfer fee if they're not going to make it here. That's easier said than done though, sometimes a loan looks like it should work out but then the manager gets sacked and the player is stuck on the bench for half a season until we can move them somewhere else.
Good luck to him. Now was the right time to cash in, hopefully he can get himself a Premier League move in the future.
I’m not saying anything different. I like how we conduct ourselves when it comes to young players and supporting their careers.
Said on another thread that apparently when we sold Chong to Birmingham it was a low fee but with a 40% sell on clause. After one season Luton are linked with a £13m move. So its good to support the players careers and also its a smart way of us potentially generating revenue from academy players.
I feel like Pellestri is another example of someone constantly on loan who isnt getting the right move to develop into the player he might be. So he’s neither coming back here to fight for first team or developing elsewhere. Not strictly an academy player but hes a prospect and its not good for these players to get stuck in a rut
According to the same Whitwell it's a 25% sell-on clause on Chong. Probably the same as with Laird.
He was never going to make it here, was touted as a great prospect but he'll be 22 at the start of next season and hasn't really showed anything to suggest he'll make it at top level, never mind at a top club.
So small fee or whatever accordingly it was 750K but we all know we're shit at selling so no surprise.
So small fee or whatever accordingly it was 750K but we all know we're shit at selling so no surprise.
Mad how overrated he was on here for ages. Best of luck to him though, hope he puts his injury woes behind him.
After Liverpool had Trent and Chelsea had James it was only fair that Manchester United also had atleast a very good RB coming through the academy! Too bad injuries ruined his chance to some day compete against Dalot and AWB for the spot. Its not like he had world class talent in front of him.
Nah he was absolute quality as an U18, wasn't much between him and Greenwood in that generation. Injuries fecked his development.
Agreed here. Laird absolutely was outstanding at U18. We’ll see him in the PL after a year or 2 at Birmingham I think.
That's because he was signed as a back up and in January of that season, he should've stayed at Swansea for the duration of the season.
Do we have a buyback clause?
This is always a weird opinion to have and happens all the time. Just because a youngster doesn't quite make the step up, doesn't mean they were overrated. At the level he was at, in that time, he deserved every bit of praise he got, he was quality. His injuries have sadly done a number on him at a crucial time, and he hasn’t developed to make the next top level it seems.
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I re-read several pages of his thread in the reserves and youth section. It is extraordinary how bad the predictions on here are regarding youth players making it at United. Being a very impressive U18 player does not mean a player will break into the first team; that should be obvious by now. U18 football looks nothing like PL football.
Laird's attacking qualities simply haven't had the same impact in the Championship as they did at U18s. In hindsight, a loan to a League One team that used wing-backs told us a lot, as did his loan move to Swansea, another side that used wing-backs.
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Fletcher rising out his connection with that guy at Blues. They get a player every year.
No just a sell on