Poor strategic negotiation... Tuanzebe

[UnitedFire]

It's rare you get decent detail on deals, but if the following is to be believed it's a little disappointing:

Tuanzebe heading for Napoli
Sky Italia transfer guru Gianluca di Marzio tells Sky Sports News:

"Axel Tuanzebe will move on loan, without options or obligations, and come back from Aston Villa and go to Napoli.

"It's €600,000 for the loan, €400,000 if Napoli reach the Champions League and another €200,000 if he plays 10 matches. He will arrive in the coming days."


Best case we get c. £1m for 6 months so call that an equivalent of c. £12m for a 6 year contract and sale. This is a piss poor price for a player with decent Prem experience and potential. Fine they aren't buying so the price might not be a fair comparison, but it's still low.

Worse than this though is the way we are agreeing contracts. The cap of 10 matches may be a fairly low nominal, but for a half a season could easily be a disincentive to use Tuanzebe and instead have him as backup.

We should be writing these contracts as €1m for the loan, but €200k discount if playing at least 10 matches or other equivalently agreed prices. The principle here should be to encourage use of the player to maximise our development opportunity and value.

Of course further provisions can be built in regarding player availability e.g. A discount if the player isn't available for 10 games minimum due to injury or other approved and agreed abscences.

This to me just stinks of another typical example of the commercial side of Man Utd not getting football and the best long term interests.

Of course this could all just be unfound speculation, but the quotes and detail seem pretty firm.

Sounds like they need to employ someone like myself who actually gets football as well as commercial contracts.

It's no wonder so few of our players actually have effective loans. We are mugs.

 

[Pexbo]

Just looking for things to moan about at this point which is weird because there is plenty of things to actually moan about.

 

[UnitedFire]

Just looking for things to moan about at this point which is weird because there is plenty of things to actually moan about.

Of course there is lots to moan about, but much of it is boring and has been repeated for many years... Midfield terrible, manager terrible, blah blah.

This is a genuinely interesting commercial insight that we are rarely exposed to. If you aren't interested in the commercial aspects of deals which I actually find quite interesting then maybe you should continue the other moaning.

 

[No Love]

We should be writing these contracts as €1m for the loan, but €200k discount if playing at least 10 matches or other equivalently agreed prices. The principle here should be to encourage use of the player to maximise our development opportunity and value.

Sounds like they need to employ someone like myself who actually gets football as well as commercial contracts.

I can see where you were going with the first part. It’s not the worst idea I’ve seen.

The second part made me cackle with glee! The way you threw it in there delighted me!

 

[bond19821982]

Just a random thread to moan about . Sums up the Cafe, after a defeat.

Like how OP used simple math to compare a loan and a permanent deal- 1m for 6 months and 12 m for 6 years.

 

[Ish]

It's rare you get decent detail on deals, but if the following is to be believed it's a little disappointing:

Tuanzebe heading for Napoli
Sky Italia transfer guru Gianluca di Marzio tells Sky Sports News:

"Axel Tuanzebe will move on loan, without options or obligations, and come back from Aston Villa and go to Napoli.

"It's €600,000 for the loan, €400,000 if Napoli reach the Champions League and another €200,000 if he plays 10 matches. He will arrive in the coming days."


Best case we get c. £1m for 6 months so call that an equivalent of c. £12m for a 6 year contract and sale. This is a piss poor price for a player with decent Prem experience and potential. Fine they aren't buying so the price might not be a fair comparison, but it's still low.

Worse than this though is the way we are agreeing contracts. The cap of 10 matches may be a fairly low nominal, but for a half a season could easily be a disincentive to use Tuanzebe and instead have him as backup.

We should be writing these contracts as €1m for the loan, but €200k discount if playing at least 10 matches or other equivalently agreed prices. The principle here should be to encourage use of the player to maximise our development opportunity and value.

Of course further provisions can be built in regarding player availability e.g. A discount if the player isn't available for 10 games minimum due to injury or other approved and agreed abscences.

This to me just stinks of another typical example of the commercial side of Man Utd not getting football and the best long term interests.

Of course this could all just be unfound speculation, but the quotes and detail seem pretty firm.

Sounds like they need to employ someone like myself who actually gets football as well as commercial contracts.

It's no wonder so few of our players actually have effective loans. We are mugs.

You can’t equate a £1m for 6 month loan to £12m over 6 year sale type deal though? Completely different. Maybe our priority is to recoup some of his wages and for him to get game time? If all that happens in 6 months - either he comes back a better player or Napoli will try and buy him for a good fee. So I have no idea what it is you’d want for a “loan fee” though?

 

[JPRouve]

Tuanzebe is 24 years old and has played the equivalent of a third of a PL season. 1m for 6 months or 12m for 6 years should be considered an international crime.

 

[AshRK]

Maybe he is not that good like some people think he is. The guy is 24 and still to play 100 professional games.

 

[James Peril]

Who the feck cares, Tuanzebe isn’t good enough and will never make it at United. He wouldn’t make it at Aston Villa either and hardly plays even if they’ve had a lot of injuries. He’s 24, not 19, let him leave on a loan and hopefully we get more than zero for him when he is sold off.

 

[tomaldinho1]

Getting a guaranteed 600k out of Napoli seems a win in my book, with the 400k CL qualification being very realistic. That covers his entire wage for 6months (he's on 38k) and then we might even make money if he plays 10 games.

 

[UnitedFire]

You can’t equate a £1m for 6 month loan to £12m over 6 year sale type deal though? Completely different. Maybe our priority is to recoup some of his wages and for him to get game time? If all that happens in 6 months - either he comes back a better player or Napoli will try and buy him for a good fee. So I have no idea what it is you’d want for a “loan fee” though?

I'm trying to compare the economic value in an equivalent way to a sale as this gives some context that is otherwise hard to get from a loan fee.

For an academy player I do get it's more about development and less about profit, but Tuanzebe is becoming a fairly well established professional. Thus for that type of player I would expect that with the benefit of access to that quality of player you would be more likely to pay a fee more equivalent to a sale, e.g. If Tuanzebe was a £20-30m player I would expect a £1.7-2.5m fee for 6 months, i.e. Effectively buying a proportion of his useful life.

The problem as always could well be we are over paying him versus relative quality players and thus that is resulting in a lower fee on top of covering wages. Or maybe I'm over valuing him.

 

[UnitedFire]

Maybe he is not that good like some people think he is. The guy is 24 and still to play 100 professional games.

This is a fair point. Maybe I'm over valuing him thinking he is a £20-30m player, but that's probably £20-30m for a big 6 team and in reality below selling to that level he probably quickly falls to a £10-15m making the loan fee more reasonable.

Anyway my bigger point was about the incentive to play in the contract which is where I think ad might be getting some of our loan contracts wrong.

 

[babablue]

I'm trying to compare the economic value in an equivalent way to a sale as this gives some context that is otherwise hard to get from a loan fee.

For an academy player I do get it's more about development and less about profit, but Tuanzebe is becoming a fairly well established professional. Thus for that type of player I would expect that with the benefit of access to that quality of player you would be more likely to pay a fee more equivalent to a sale, e.g. If Tuanzebe was a £20-30m player I would expect a £1.7-2.5m fee for 6 months, i.e. Effectively buying a proportion of his useful life.

The problem as always could well be we are over paying him versus relative quality players and thus that is resulting in a lower fee on top of covering wages. Or maybe I'm over valuing him.

The comparison cannot be made. For a proper sale, the buying club own the player's registration, and can sell on later. For a loan, once the term is over, the buying club owns nothing. Like renting vs a mortgage.

 

[Bondi77]

It's rare you get decent detail on deals, but if the following is to be believed it's a little disappointing:

Tuanzebe heading for Napoli
Sky Italia transfer guru Gianluca di Marzio tells Sky Sports News:

"Axel Tuanzebe will move on loan, without options or obligations, and come back from Aston Villa and go to Napoli.

"It's €600,000 for the loan, €400,000 if Napoli reach the Champions League and another €200,000 if he plays 10 matches. He will arrive in the coming days."


Best case we get c. £1m for 6 months so call that an equivalent of c. £12m for a 6 year contract and sale. This is a piss poor price for a player with decent Prem experience and potential. Fine they aren't buying so the price might not be a fair comparison, but it's still low.

Worse than this though is the way we are agreeing contracts. The cap of 10 matches may be a fairly low nominal, but for a half a season could easily be a disincentive to use Tuanzebe and instead have him as backup.

We should be writing these contracts as €1m for the loan, but €200k discount if playing at least 10 matches or other equivalently agreed prices. The principle here should be to encourage use of the player to maximise our development opportunity and value.

Of course further provisions can be built in regarding player availability e.g. A discount if the player isn't available for 10 games minimum due to injury or other approved and agreed abscences.

This to me just stinks of another typical example of the commercial side of Man Utd not getting football and the best long term interests.

Of course this could all just be unfound speculation, but the quotes and detail seem pretty firm.

Sounds like they need to employ someone like myself who actually gets football as well as commercial contracts.

It's no wonder so few of our players actually have effective loans. We are mugs.

I disagree that he has had decent Premier League experience at all.
If you think he has and he still can not get in front of Headless Chicken Bailly or Cowering Victor then we should really be looking to sell and not loan him out.

 

[VanDeBank]

I disagree that he has had decent Premier League experience at all.
If you think he has and he still can not get in front of Headless Chicken Bailly or Cowering Victor then we should really be looking to sell and not loan him out.

Good job leaving out our worst CB this season.

But yes I agree, he really doesn't have that much EPL experience.

If he does really well the potentially upside is massive.
Small risk, high reward type of stuff.

 

[Ish]

I'm trying to compare the economic value in an equivalent way to a sale as this gives some context that is otherwise hard to get from a loan fee.

For an academy player I do get it's more about development and less about profit, but Tuanzebe is becoming a fairly well established professional. Thus for that type of player I would expect that with the benefit of access to that quality of player you would be more likely to pay a fee more equivalent to a sale, e.g. If Tuanzebe was a £20-30m player I would expect a £1.7-2.5m fee for 6 months, i.e. Effectively buying a proportion of his useful life.

The problem as always could well be we are over paying him versus relative quality players and thus that is resulting in a lower fee on top of covering wages. Or maybe I'm over valuing him.

You’re spot on about that last bit. We struggle on selling players because they're mostly on massive wages with us. Martial will be another prime example.

 

[Sky1981]

Meh. Peripheral player, not even young anymore. Move him on, shake hands, wish each other well

 

[KeanoMagicHat]

United are ridiculously bad at negotiating sales, it's a joke. Nothing new there really.

 

[Pintu]

"It's €600,000 for the loan, €400,000 if Napoli reach the Champions League and another €200,000 if he plays 10 matches. He will arrive in the coming days."

Best case we get c. £1m for 6 months so call that an equivalent of c. £12m for a 6 year contract and sale. This is a piss poor price for a player with decent Prem experience and potential. Fine they aren't buying so the price might not be a fair comparison, but it's still low.

Worse than this though is the way we are agreeing contracts. The cap of 10 matches may be a fairly low nominal, but for a half a season could easily be a disincentive to use Tuanzebe and instead have him as backup.

Napoli is not Udinese. They make at least 200 M€ turnover a year. A CL qualification will increase that by at least 50 M€. They have ambitions, if Tuanzebe is good enough they will use him. And for the next 7 games he might be a guaranteed starter, Koulibaly will be with Senegal playing AFCON, that's the main reason they are bringing in a CB.

After AFCON, there will still be 13 leagues games and potentially another 8 in Europa league. So if he is the decent player we beleive him to be, he will certainly get more than 10 caps.

 

[arthurka]

Getting money for him is a win win, wages off and some realistic fees nothing wrong with this.

 

[marktan]

We messed up when we didn't loan him back to Villa the year after they went up. He would've played then, gained experience and increased his value. Instead in typical fashion we send him there once they already had Konsa and Mings starting, neither of whom he'd displace and little incentive for them to start him over Hause. He's better than the likes of someone like Guehi who went for £20m, it's just his game time has been managed very poorly. The Napoli loan if he doesn't play would add to that.

 

[Wednesday at Stoke]

I don't know what there is to complain about in getting 1M for half a season of loan for a player who has had less than a season's worth of meaningful appearances at senior level and was warming the bench at Villa.

 

[Dante]

This is somehow all Ole's fault.

 

[Varun1]

Getting money for him is a win win, wages off and some realistic fees nothing wrong with this.

Exactly, I actually think it's a decent deal. He barely played in the last 2 years, yet we managed to get up to €1m in loan fee.
Hopefully they're paying most of his wages as well.

This is somehow all Ole's fault.

Not sending him out on loan last year certainly is.

 

[TMDaines]

The time to sell Tuanzebe for a generous fee was after his promising spell at Villa in the Championship. His stock has never been lower since becoming a senior player.

Generally if you want an inflated fee for a young player, you need to sell early before they have been exposed at the requisite level. You will be able to entice a buyer when there’s promise, even if it is only the illusion of them being a real gem who is a sure thing with game time.

It’s something that Liverpool and Chelsea were quite good at, getting clubs to punt on some of their young players who they didn’t overexpose
with bad loans, whilst feigning reluctance to part with them.

 

[El Jefe]

Maybe he is not that good like some people think he is. The guy is 24 and still to play 100 professional games.

As is always the case on the caf. I remember a time on here when it seemed like a crime not starting Axel or TFM.

Every year there's a new batch of kids being called to be given starts and five years later they fade into obscurity at average clubs.

 

[Rightnr]

I get the negoating criticism but you're missing the point here. We want him to play and be a saleable asset in the summer.

We won't be paying a wage and Axel might come back as an asset at United or for increasing our budget. All in all, by far and away not the worst deal we (or any other club) have done in the past 10 years.

 

[Rood]

It's rare you get decent detail on deals, but if the following is to be believed it's a little disappointing:

Tuanzebe heading for Napoli
Sky Italia transfer guru Gianluca di Marzio tells Sky Sports News:

"Axel Tuanzebe will move on loan, without options or obligations, and come back from Aston Villa and go to Napoli.

"It's €600,000 for the loan, €400,000 if Napoli reach the Champions League and another €200,000 if he plays 10 matches. He will arrive in the coming days."


Best case we get c. £1m for 6 months so call that an equivalent of c. £12m for a 6 year contract and sale. This is a piss poor price for a player with decent Prem experience and potential. Fine they aren't buying so the price might not be a fair comparison, but it's still low.

Worse than this though is the way we are agreeing contracts. The cap of 10 matches may be a fairly low nominal, but for a half a season could easily be a disincentive to use Tuanzebe and instead have him as backup.

We should be writing these contracts as €1m for the loan, but €200k discount if playing at least 10 matches or other equivalently agreed prices. The principle here should be to encourage use of the player to maximise our development opportunity and value.

Of course further provisions can be built in regarding player availability e.g. A discount if the player isn't available for 10 games minimum due to injury or other approved and agreed abscences.

This to me just stinks of another typical example of the commercial side of Man Utd not getting football and the best long term interests.

Of course this could all just be unfound speculation, but the quotes and detail seem pretty firm.

Sounds like they need to employ someone like myself who actually gets football as well as commercial contracts.

It's no wonder so few of our players actually have effective loans. We are mugs.

This season is actually one of the best I can remember for effective loan deals - nearly all are playing regularly

Also many of our younger prospects are now on deals where we pay all or part of their salary IF they play so the clubs are incentivised to play them

I think getting any kind of loan fee for Axel is actually pretty good and it means nothing for eventual sale price

 

[AshRK]

As is always the case on the caf. I remember a time on here when it seemed like a crime not starting Axel or TFM.

Every year there's a new batch of kids being called to be given starts and five years later they fade into obscurity at average clubs.

And the worst part is we continue to hold on to half of the duds.

 

[KevinJoh]

He did not play at Villa since Slippy came and from my point of view this is good loan. If he manage to play there he will learn a lot, different perspective on football and defending. Not sure that he will play as Napoli is not bad team at all and have Koulibally, Jesus and Rahmani in that position, all pretty good and experienced. I guess Axel is backup initially as Koulibally will be on African Cup, but lets hope he will get some playing time.

 

[simonhch]

Just looking for things to moan about at this point which is weird because there is plenty of things to actually moan about.

Nail on the head

 

[HailtotheKing]

I get what everyone is saying but isn’t the posters main point about the structure of the deal? You want the guy to gain experience, so better to have it structured where you give them a discount if he plays 10 games rather than make them pay 200k if he does? I guess the question is would Napoli be willing to pay the extra 200k up front? But that seems very little. I think the OP raises a good point. We should be structuring our deals to encourage the club to play the loan players more.

 

[Andycoleno9]

Players like Tuanzebe should be sold while you can get decent price, not loaned. Our refusal to sell average academy players is just stupid.

 

[Pogue Mahone]

The idea that a club trying to qualify for the CL would suddenly stop playing him if he’s been good enough to play 9 matches for fear of triggering a 200k clause in his loan contract is obviously preposterous.

 

[Nickelodeon]

Liverpool or Chelsea would already have made 20 million off him

 

[Withnail]

Just looking for things to moan about at this point which is weird because there is plenty of things to actually moan about.

Yeah it's a bit weird. They even point out themselves that the complaint isn't really valid as it's a loan fee so it shouldn't be compared to a sale fee.

 

[Withnail]

I get what everyone is saying but isn’t the posters main point about the structure of the deal? You want the guy to gain experience, so better to have it structured where you give them a discount if he plays 10 games rather than make them pay 200k if he does? I guess the question is would Napoli be willing to pay the extra 200k up front? But that seems very little. I think the OP raises a good point. We should be structuring our deals to encourage the club to play the loan players more.

So we should pay them?

 

[Big Ben Foster]

Players like Tuanzebe should be sold while you can get decent price, not loaned. Our refusal to sell average academy players is just stupid.

Yup. This is the real story here. I don't really give a shit how the loan deal is structured.

 

[HailtotheKing]

So we should pay them?

No you go higher up front and offer them a discount if the player plays over 10 games. This giving them an incentive to play them but still getting the money you want. Rather than giving by a lower up front and saying if they play 20 games you give us more money.

 

[crossy1686]

It's rare you get decent detail on deals, but if the following is to be believed it's a little disappointing:

Tuanzebe heading for Napoli
Sky Italia transfer guru Gianluca di Marzio tells Sky Sports News:

"Axel Tuanzebe will move on loan, without options or obligations, and come back from Aston Villa and go to Napoli.

"It's €600,000 for the loan, €400,000 if Napoli reach the Champions League and another €200,000 if he plays 10 matches. He will arrive in the coming days."


Best case we get c. £1m for 6 months so call that an equivalent of c. £12m for a 6 year contract and sale. This is a piss poor price for a player with decent Prem experience and potential. Fine they aren't buying so the price might not be a fair comparison, but it's still low.

Worse than this though is the way we are agreeing contracts. The cap of 10 matches may be a fairly low nominal, but for a half a season could easily be a disincentive to use Tuanzebe and instead have him as backup.

We should be writing these contracts as €1m for the loan, but €200k discount if playing at least 10 matches or other equivalently agreed prices. The principle here should be to encourage use of the player to maximise our development opportunity and value.

Of course further provisions can be built in regarding player availability e.g. A discount if the player isn't available for 10 games minimum due to injury or other approved and agreed abscences.

This to me just stinks of another typical example of the commercial side of Man Utd not getting football and the best long term interests.

Of course this could all just be unfound speculation, but the quotes and detail seem pretty firm.

Sounds like they need to employ someone like myself who actually gets football as well as commercial contracts.

It's no wonder so few of our players actually have effective loans. We are mugs.

Or he comes back twice the player and becomes our new CB, more than doubling his value. Don’t see the point in moaning about loans