We’re getting better at selling

[Zlatattack]

I think one way to look at it is, even if we're not getting top market value for some players, moving them on improves the environment in the squad and creates opportunities for those positions to be filled by someone else.

Martial for example, i wish he'd turned into our Henry, but he's not and never will be. It's like both having a striker and not having a striker.

 

[Sarni]

How would have made a club pay more for a pretty average player we obviously don't want to keep, doesn't want to stay, isn't in high demand and has less than 12 months left of his contract?

I'd be fascinated to get your insights.

I think people just have no perspective on what other clubs can afford. Unless you are selling to a Premier League club, you are not getting any of these exorbitant fees for your deadwood because no clubs outside of England can afford that. Just look at record transfers of Bundesliga, La Liga or Serie A teams from the last decade or so (Serie A used to spend heavily in the 90s and 2000s so looking at that could skew it a bit), the reality is Luton and Nottingham are able to afford much higher fees than top teams in other leagues can.

 

[Lastwolf]

We've let more than a few walk for nothing/ next to nothing lately, atleast we are looking forward.

If you look at our expiring contracts, pretty much everyone getting shifted for "low" fees is someone that expires next year and doesn't have a +1 contract option or is a youth player (with buyback/ sell-on clauses, which is fine).

The only ones we've been holding out for higher fees on (Maguire, Henderson, Mctominay and Van der Beek), don't expire till '25 with most of them having +1 ones. We are the best position we are ever going to get as a selling club baring them have sensible wages, which unforunately 2-3/4 of them don't have. Hence taking "only" 30m on Maguire, which tbh is a fairly decent amount for someone that should never have cost 80m in the first place.

It might not be the same levels as our rivals but it's aleast pro-active for the first time in decades.

 

[Spaghetti]

We still have Maguire, Henderson, Bailly, Fred, McTominay, Beek and Martial. If we were better at selling, we would have drummed up some more interest in this bunch.

 

[Adisa]

Disagree. I just think we are learning to not hoard players.

 

[Plastic Evra]

The perspective definitely get skewed because of how inundated we are with the big transfer news at the top. Most of the rest of elite football outside of a dozen clubs operate at a 5 to 40m€ scale.

 

[Andycoleno9]

Little bit early to say that, isn't it?
McT, Henderson, Donny are still here. And as things stand we messed up selling McT with demanding huge fee from only club which is interested.

We shall see in 20 days how this will end.

 

[Telsim]

Little bit early to say that, isn't it?
McT, Henderson, Donny are still here. And as things stand we messed up selling McT with demanding huge fee from only club which is interested.

We shall see in 20 days how this will end.

Well...

 

[Care_de_Bobo]

Moving Elanga on at this stage is an improvement. Kovar I'm not sure but if there is a first refusal clause that's good.

Accepting that we have to let players leave for peanuts or nothing because they are on big contracts is not an improvement in selling for me. It's an admission that we fecked up.

But the people selling those players are not the same people who bought them in the first place. If the current team had sanctioned the purchases of Fred and Maguire then you'd have a point.

A player's value will naturally decrease when they reach a certain age anyway. There has clearly been an improvement this summer, why not just accept progress instead of expecting perfection.

 

[Herman Toothrot]

I think people just have no perspective on what other clubs can afford. Unless you are selling to a Premier League club, you are not getting any of these exorbitant fees for your deadwood because no clubs outside of England can afford that. Just look at record transfers of Bundesliga, La Liga or Serie A teams from the last decade or so (Serie A used to spend heavily in the 90s and 2000s so looking at that could skew it a bit), the reality is Luton and Nottingham are able to afford much higher fees than top teams in other leagues can.

Exactly. Also, we are getting almost half what we paid for a 25 year old who is now 30 and not pulling up any trees. What's the alternative? Not take 12m, spend six million on wages, hardly play him and lose him for nothing? It's by no means a triumphant piece of business, but it was it is.

 

[cyril C]

Unless you are as good as Leicester or Dortmund in selling a 40m player for 80m, there is very little in chanting about how good you are on selling players. I am more concern with our ability in identifying the right players, we have brought in far too many over-valued player with half the gift expected.

 

[mikeyt]

So what's our total sales then...
Elanga £15million
Iqbal £1million
Kovar - £5million
Maguire - £30million
Fred - £10million
Telles - £4million
De Gea - Free
Jones - Free
Bailly - Going for free?

Unless I've missed someone that's £65million. I don't think that's too bad for this lot. Iqbal and Kovar feel a bit low but we have clauses to bring them back so not bad. Plus we've saved not far off a £1million a week in wages.

Hopefully we can offload DVB, Henderson and maybe McT before the window shuts albeit DVB will probably be a loan.

 

[glasgow 21]

So what's our total sales then...
Elanga £15million
Iqbal £1million
Kovar - £5million
Maguire - £30million
Fred - £10million
Telles - £4million
De Gea - Free
Jones - Free
Bailly - Going for free?

Unless I've missed someone that's £65million. I don't think that's too bad for this lot. Iqbal and Kovar feel a bit low but we have clauses to bring them back so not bad. Plus we've saved not far off a £1million a week in wages.

Hopefully we can offload DVB, Henderson and maybe McT before the window shuts albeit DVB will probably be a loan.

I think the Magic number for McT is 35m . Fred wages were high so good to that off books. So far we have net gain in the books of 103m. Add McT 35m say and 2.7m wages that would be another 37.7m total 140m in net gain minus prob a £10m bribe to Maguire to leave.

I will add that the way this window is checking out, McT should be 70m

 

[Alemar]

So what's our total sales then...
Elanga £15million
Iqbal £1million
Kovar - £5million
Maguire - £30million
Fred - £10million
Telles - £4million
De Gea - Free
Jones - Free
Bailly - Going for free?

Unless I've missed someone that's £65million.

Isn’t Kovar 9m euro plus bonuses, and Telles 7m euro? There was also a 0.7m fee for Laird and 1m sell on for Chong at least

 

[Halftrack]

Little bit early to say that, isn't it?
McT, Henderson, Donny are still here. And as things stand we messed up selling McT with demanding huge fee from only club which is interested.

We shall see in 20 days how this will end.

No, we didn't mess up. Can't mess up a sale we aren't even trying to make to begin with. We asked for a high fee because, as things stand, EtH prefers hanging on to him for the coming season.

And before you ask me about the hows and the whys, I don't know. I think McT is an average midfielder who has certain uses, but even as a squad player he should be upgraded on. But I can understand why it might not be a priority right now.

 

[Andycoleno9]

No, we didn't mess up. Can't mess up a sale we aren't even trying to make to begin with. We asked for a high fee because, as things stand, EtH prefers hanging on to him for the coming season.

And before you ask me about the hows and the whys, I don't know. I think McT is an average midfielder who has certain uses, but even as a squad player he should be upgraded on. But I can understand why it might not be a priority right now.

No matter what me, you or anybody else think about McT's qualities. Keeping 25-30 mil worth 6th choice midfielder is a bad business for the club.
Especially when you struggle with FFP.

 

[DavelinaJolie]

The fact that they're selling, instead of trying to extend is a positive in itself. One the one hand you've got people complaining that £10m+5m isn't enough for Fred then you've got people in the McTominay thread wanting him gone at £20. Contract length, age and nationality play a decent part in these fees, as well as the interested clubs and their funds. I have no problems with the business we've done selling.

 

[Adamsk7]

Thing is, none of these players are good enough to be wanted by teams with big money, other than West Ham but even that’s a one off. When we have sold players to big teams we’ve done well enough.

Our biggest problem has always been huge wages and renewals. We’ve now corrected that largely. The amount we’ve saved in wages alone this season is astronomical

 

[Red Royal]

Hopefully they little cameo by Elanga will show some that if some players aren't good enough for United, they can still be good for a lesser (with respect to Forrest) team.

 

[Chief123]

We still have Maguire, Henderson, Bailly, Fred, McTominay, Beek and Martial. If we were better at selling, we would have drummed up some more interest in this bunch.

It’s hard to drum up interest in non-elite players who are on elite contracts.

 

[Ace of Spades]

Hopefully they little cameo by Elanga will show some that if some players aren't good enough for United, they can still be good for a lesser (with respect to Forrest) team.

Just because they are not good enough for us, does not mean they are bad players.

The problem is wages, most of those lower teams can't offer them the wages they will want.

 

[DartMaverick]

Miscalculated the Mctominay deal

 

[Cantona’s Kung Fu Kick]

No, we didn't mess up. Can't mess up a sale we aren't even trying to make to begin with. We asked for a high fee because, as things stand, EtH prefers hanging on to him for the coming season.

And before you ask me about the hows and the whys, I don't know. I think McT is an average midfielder who has certain uses, but even as a squad player he should be upgraded on. But I can understand why it might not be a priority right now.

I just don’t understand the sense in keeping this guy around. For what little he offers and it is very little, you’d be better giving his minutes to one of the younger, up and coming players. It’s very telling that there is little to no interest from clubs lower down the league, speaks volumes to his utter lack of quality.

 

[Redstain]

Also the average ages of players sold is important. United make a lot of signings around the 25/26+ age mark and that diminishes their re-sale value due to being older and released closer to the 30's. If you take chance on youth there's more capabilities to move them on at competitive prices due to the age profile. That's why Daniel James was a fairly successful transfer from a financial standpoint he was just 23.

So it's not just the key people in negotiations competence, it's also the philosophy behind what players are being purchased.

 

[OhGee]

We still suck at it. The trick is to let players who are not part of the project go early - then you can get decent money for them. Pep is very good at this - Klopp to an extent as well. At United we have tended to keep the fringe or out of favor players for way too long and then struggle to sell them for any significant value. Let’s see what happens next season after most of the deadwood purge is over.

 

[Gavinb33]

Fees outside of the UK for average players is very low right now so you either have to have interest from clubs here or accept transfers outside of the UK aren't going to generate the fees some people want to see, most clubs just don't have that type of funding for average or below average players.

As for the transfers out for relatively low fees we have made surely if any other clubs were properly interested in our players they would make bids especially at the prices we are selling for as they would see some kind of value in doing so, you can try and make a market with player through agents and intermediaries and such but if there are no takers you are left with either a lower fee than you'd like or keeping players on wages you'd rather not pay for another year or possibly 2

 

[Plastic Evra]

Fees outside of the UK for average players is very low right now so you either have to have interest from clubs here or accept transfers outside of the UK aren't going to generate the fees some people want to see, most clubs just don't have that type of funding for average or below average players.

As for the transfers out for relatively low fees we have made surely if any other clubs were properly interested in our players they would make bids especially at the prices we are selling for as they would see some kind of value in doing so, you can try and make a market with player through agents and intermediaries and such but if there are no takers you are left with either a lower fee than you'd like or keeping players on wages you'd rather not pay for another year or possibly 2

The fees only get crazy when the players moves upwards to a top club or laterally from one top club to another.
And there's less "top clubs" while the money below is not growing at the same rate or even stagnating.

I think the "we are not a selling club" has been a little overblown or used as cover to poor business but there's some truth to it : Bayern doesn't often sell for big money either.

Someone said it best : At least there's a willingness to sell (helped by having so many surplus players) this year. It's fine not being a selling club but maybe there's progress to do on recognizing earlier when to cut losses.
Hopefully with less costly mistakes in recruitment (?) this won't be a massive problem. The largest area to improve is managing academy players.

There might be some tests in the coming seasons that will illustrate if the mentalities really changed :
- If Sancho has another lackluster season, do we sell him ?
- If Hojlund doesn't pan as well as hoped in a couple of seasons, what do we do ?
- If a massive offer comes in for an improving Garnacho, do we take it ?
- Do we sell aging players if they start showing decline ?
Pure hypotheticals for now that we can't answer in a vacuum.

 

[cyril C]

The fees only get crazy when the players moves upwards to a top club or laterally from one top club to another.
And there's less "top clubs" while the money below is not growing at the same rate or even stagnating.

I think the "we are not a selling club" has been a little overblown or used as cover to poor business but there's some truth to it : Bayern doesn't often sell for big money either.

Someone said it best : At least there's a willingness to sell (helped by having so many surplus players) this year. It's fine not being a selling club but maybe there's progress to do on recognizing earlier when to cut losses.
Hopefully with less costly mistakes in recruitment (?) this won't be a massive problem. The largest area to improve is managing academy players.

There might be some tests in the coming seasons that will illustrate if the mentalities really changed :
- If Sancho has another lackluster season, do we sell him ?
- If Hojlund doesn't pan as well as hoped in a couple of seasons, what do we do ?
- If a massive offer comes in for an improving Garnacho, do we take it ?
- Do we sell aging players if they start showing decline ?
Pure hypotheticals for now that we can't answer in a vacuum.

Answer to the last few questions, is in fact easy.

We don't sell performing players, unless player forced to leave like CR did (or Pigue for that matter). We often give disappointing player another season, so Hojlund stay regardless, but Sancho will get a big question mark on him. Sancho and DVB's problem is longer term, unlike Martial who does perform when he is fit (50% of the season), so patience will be much less on these 2, provided that there is interested party.

Ohh, we never sell aging players even if they show decline, just check out Neville, Valencia, Scholes and Giggs (some might even add Rio, Evra, but I do think they leave on the right summer). We always retain pensioner, as long as they are not at 200-300K bracket or causing problem in dressing room.

 

[tenpoless]

Sold Iqbal for €1m, Fred for €15m, Elanga for €15m. And even that looks better for us... we gave players away for free that's why.

 

[Plastic Evra]

Answer to the last few questions, is in fact easy.

We don't sell performing players, unless player forced to leave like CR did (or Pigue for that matter). We often give disappointing player another season, so Hojlund stay regardless, but Sancho will get a big question mark on him. Sancho and DVB's problem is longer term, unlike Martial who does perform when he is fit (50% of the season), so patience will be much less on these 2, provided that there is interested party.

Ohh, we never sell aging players even if they show decline, just check out Neville, Valencia, Scholes and Giggs (some might even add Rio, Evra, but I do think they leave on the right summer). We always retain pensioner, as long as they are not at 200-300K bracket or causing problem in dressing room.

That's how it has been in the past, maybe it needs to change.

 

[Sylar]

Did we get anything for savage?

 

[Lentwood]

Not even comparable. Its night and day.

EVERYTHING has been better since Woodward left. He was the most incompetent buffoon to be ever let near a football club

 

[Someone]

Miscalculated the Mctominay deal

Agree. His value will only decrease if he spends another year on the bench. He'll be gone for way less next summer.

 

[Giggsy13]

Success yields better opportunities to sell players, which city are obviously benefitting from currently. Alternatively, you do what Liverpool did and sell an asset in their prime like Coutinho to strengthen elsewhere. They also wisely sold Henderson and Fabinho at opportune times. Unfortunately when you’re clearing up the damage caused by the Woodward era, it will take time to see the club be better at managing contracts and player sales. While not outstanding, Murtough has done a fairly decent job selling in difficult circumstances this summer.

 

[Spaghetti]

It’s hard to drum up interest in non-elite players who are on elite contracts.

You are right, but you’d think we could leak some “interest” to some journalists and get other clubs thinking…

 

[JediSith]

Fred for 15 million when relegation fodder in Rice and Paqueta going for a combined 200 million suggests not..

Fred was closer to £8m. I think it’ll rest on how much we get for Maguire and McTominay.

 

[united_99]

Fred was 10+5 € (not £).

 

[glazed]

It marks an end of valuing players according to Woodward's accountancy statistics and instead valuing them for how good they are.

 

[Melville Red]

Are we? Slab Head is still here. I’ll say no more.

 

[goalscholes]

A club like City would have got £40m for McT, £17m for Fred and £18m (and some additional sell on fees) for Elanga.

The Maguire fee was decent and fair though.