Shipping out Smalling w/o a replacement wouldnt be an issue.
If United had not signed him from Porto, you can bet Wolves would have. His best position is clearly not at RB, it's at RWB/RM something Ole rarely plays. It's like if Jose continues playing Doherty as a RB, his first game there he looked terrible
With the system they play he can replace Doherty in that RWB role.
Anyone know what wages these guys are on?
Probably comfortably over £1m a week there
I can agree on you with Smalling, but Mengi and Tuanzebe would compete for a 3rd or 4th CB slot.
So we are realistically looking at needing to offload upwards of £350k+ a week in order to be able to manage Sancho or others financially - it’s the weekly wages that we are struggling with, not the actual transfer fee.
We have 30 players for first team players (And I exclude Garner, Joel & Chong). Can't sign anyone if they can't sell players in the first place, that should be the logic. 30 first team players is just too much, and we need to trim the squad to 25.
Smalling, Rojo and Jones were loaned or barely played so not much would change
Smalling will be the first sold as he’s the only one with suitors willing to pay something resembling a fee.
lingard- decent player who’s peaked and majorly dropped off, Jones crocked, Smalling has peaked and doesn’t suit our style of play anymore.The deadest of the deadwood. That’s before other players in the squad that won’t be sold but probably have a question mark over their places. Dalot, Pereira, Ighalo, Williams (for LB anyway) Henderson//DDG is a clusterfeck waiting to happen. Matic -how long more has he left? Bailly, James... These are really important squad players that all have doubts about them. our roster is a mess currentlyLast I heard on Smalling is that his transfer depends on Federico Fazio transfer out of Roma as they are similar players. But Fazio transfer has stalled and if that's not a go then I reckon they wont come for him.Smalling will be the first sold as he’s the only one with suitors willing to pay something resembling a fee.
Rojo - unless he goes back home it’s looking like he’s staying. Like a new signing...
Lingard is going to stay because I reckon the penny has dropped that the current alternatives aren’t pretty if they exist at all. Free transfer next summer gives him much more choice and a chance at keeping his wages high at his next club no matter how poor he’s been here the last 2 years. Smart business from his perspective. Either that or Ed gives him another improved deal to protect the asset. Wouldn’t fecking surprise me at all.
mata will stay and see out his deal having done the square root of feck all since he signed the newest contract that he shouldn’t have even been offered.
No notion of terminating Jones contract after a year. Keep the wages high. It gives the impression that we have lots of expensive assets in the squad without having to pay a transfer fee for someone who might actually play the odd time
I wish we could sell them all and get some fresh talent in. Players on the up. All the above have peaked a long time ago. Mata- Was always the wrong player for us for RW
and we're also desperate to offload.
That too.
We are already desperate
Yesh, the only way teams would go for any of our deadwood early is if there was competition for them. That's certainly not the case with Jones, Rojo, Lingard, or Perreira. There may be a few clubs wanting Smalling but he appears to only want Roma so we should just sell him and get it over with so it's not tying up precious time during the last two weeks of the window. Can you imagine floundering a deal for other players because we're haggling over €5m for Smalling?
true, but deadline day was back to the wall stuff if we haven't removed them.
We have to sign at least a RW even if it isn't Sancho before the deadline, ideally get Telles as well because Shaw needs some backup at LB because we know how prone he is to picking up knocks
Most importantly we have to buy the right player or players. I'm fine with our approach.
They are the right players
Yeah that is our only hope right now
Sancho has a limit to what we can pay. And if we want to drag it out to try and drive the price down then so be it. Its a pandemic environment and we aren't going to splash 120m EUR with weeks left of the window just because the selling club asked us to.
Why can’t we sell Jones, Rojo and Mata for free? I am sure for free somebody would have taken them.
He would be available for around £18m according to reports which is a bargain in this market, there is no point in dragging this Sancho deal out anymore because the price is not going to come down, so now it's time to either walk away and look at alternatives or we pay up what they want (over 2/3 instalments not addons)
You're talking with a lot of presumptuous BS here. In a market where you can pick up Lewis or Doherty for that amount or less, who have at least a season or more of proven Premier League experience with years ahead of them, you think a punt on Telles is fine. And you think it's fine for this environment on top.
Don't you think we would have heard by now if Dortmund's position is that weak which confirms that it's strong in my eyes, in regards to Telles we could afford it if we were actually able to sell a few players like Smalling, Dalot, Romero & Andreas.
Contrary to belief, not every transfer is drip fed with information. They are not going to disclose their appetite for bids openly and feck up their negotiating position.
No, I firmly believe we have the back ups already sounded out and have asked clubs to keep us updated on their situation (as we did with VDB). If Sancho becomes untenable we will get the back up (could be Sarr, coman, dembele, whoever but there is a shortlist we keep tabs on). I still think we will get sancho though. Itl just happen v v close to the end. No 100m+ transfers get done early on, so it was naieve to think you'd get progress shortly after 10th August.
Utter crap isn't it
