We don't know how to sell players

[Andycoleno9]

When we talk about transfers it is always about buying players. But what about selling? Why we suck in this? Chelsea and Liverpool are selling backup players for ridiculous fees and we can't sell international players for decent fee. We can't sell players that we don't need like Jones, Rojo, Darmian or Fellaini for any fee. We have players like Smalling, Lingard, Shaw or Pereira for whom we can get huge fees in this crazy market and replace them with better players( i am not saying that they are not good or something like that, just making an example). But we don't even try that. We sold young talents like Depay and Januzaj for small money, we gave away Zaha for nothing, sold Nani and RVP for peanuts...

Is it because of big wages or Ed is just incompetent to sell players for good fee so we rather keep that players? Or, and that is my opinion, we don't even try to sell them and Ed is just thinking that offer will come out of nothing? I mean, if your manager gives you transfer list, then you call clubs and agents and you inform them that xy player is for sale? Right?

 

[Ish]

Subject line needs an edit OP.

 

[Andycoleno9]

Subject line needs an edit OP.

Thanks

 

[Ish]

OT, I think what plays a part is also that we hand out big contracts to average or unproven or even “old” players. So suitors can’t afford the wages, which is subsidized through a lowered selling price. Lots of other factors of course.

 

[Nate Dogg]

If we retain Jones after this summer then it would prove your point.

 

[Ish]

Thanks

No worries bud. Just wasn’t sure if it was “how” or “when” - because were probably a bit shit at both

 

[Zlatattack]

Valencia, Young, Darmian, Rojo, Jones, Fellaini are all evidence of this.

I hope we just let a load of contracts run out this summer, even Herrera and Mata (as long as we signed replacements).

 

[Raw]

Along with the whole high wages thing, it also doesn't help that we keep deadwood for way too long. Their value only declines if they're just rotting on the bench.

 

[SqualorVictoria]

OT, I think what plays a part is also that we hand out big contracts to average or unproven or even “old” players. So suitors can’t afford the wages, which is subsidized through a lowered selling price. Lots of other factors of course.

And Mourinho's stance didn't help either, I guess. He'd rather have reliable, experienced players like Darmian as the 23th choice in the squad than throwing on youngsters as Van Gaal did. I guess handing out a new big contract for Rojo wouldn't have happened unless Mourinho agreed upon it. This would probably look a lot different under someone like Pochettino.

 

[OldPop]

One explanation is perhaps that when the team underperforms, the interest and belief in the players' quality also decreases and their market value becomes lower. Ed might think it's better to wait to sell until their value has increased?

 

[dcrompton]

We also get really bad deals for the players we do sell. Liverpool got £34 million from Bournemouth for Ibe and Solanke. We sell Michael Keane for £2m and he’s a £25m player the next season!

 

[Ish]

And Mourinho's stance didn't help either, I guess. He'd rather have reliable, experienced players like Darmian as the 23th choice in the squad than throwing on youngsters as Van Gaal did. I guess handing out a new big contract for Rojo wouldn't have happened unless Mourinho agreed upon it. This would probably look a lot different under someone like Pochettino.

Yeah it’s been mentioned very often on here but not having a DoF have also hurt us as we’ve essentially appointed 3 managers post saf - each with their own vision which have meant zero squad planning or continuity.

But we do overpay. I understand having to overpay because we did not have UCL to offer but most of our wages are insane, especially when compared to the other big and successful clubs around Europe.

 

[JPRouve]

Generally when a club doesn't want a player anymore, he just informs the player and his agent that his services aren't needed anymore and find himself a club because he won't play. They don't contact other clubs because players and agents will take it extremely badly.
In our case the issue is that, we are talking for the most part about players on good wages by PL standard, that comes with massive question marks over their heads. These players are overpriced for other leagues, their wages do not match with the going rates in France, Italy, Germany or Spain since they are not particularly good players or good investments.

 

[Bola]

I'm not particularly bothered about generating large suns through player sales, for me that a sign of a failed transfer (Di Maria) or a 'involuntary' sale of a star player (Ronaldo). In an ideal would, we would only be selling on youngsters who have not made the grade or players in their twilight

I do agree that we do have a problem with transfer exits though. Far too many average players at the club and I'd rather they be moved on to make way for youth

We've at least 3 players who are surplus at FB, CM and CB, where offloading them would have a minimal impact at the club. If we are on the right path of transfers, then I'd expect to see all three offloaded by Feb

 

[Samid]

We don't know how to sell players because we give them stupid extensions all the time. The amount of people on here that recently were celebrating Smalling getting a new deal was staggering. Yes he might be the best of a bad bunch but nonetheless he's nowhere near good enough. When their deals are up, let the duds leave on a free. Because of our crazy wages we won't get any decent offers for players that are tied up on longer contracts.

Letting them go on a free means freeing them up from the wage bill. Yes we miss out on transfer fees if we let them go on a free but we aren't getting any transfer fees anyway the way the club currently is operating. Let the deadwood from this squad leave on a free and set up a proactive structure from scratch so that we get out of this vicious circle where mediocrity is constantly rewarded with new contracts. Only then we can start getting decent fees for players.

 

[OnlyTwoDaSilvas]

Jose Mourinho seemed to improve our outgoing business quite a bit, I thought. We sold Morgan Schneiderlin for £24million. Broke even on a terrible player somehow. Great business.

Did the same with Memphis. There's no chance we could have profited on him as he was so disappointing here, but we bought him for £25m, and we sold him for something like £18m rising to £24 with add-ons, which he's likely to have triggered as he's been pretty good over there.

I don't think we could have got much more for RVP or Nani at the time. RVP was more or less finished at the top level. Had one good season in Turkey and then he looked done. He hasn't been particularly good at Feyenoord from what I've read, and he's retiring in a few months. Nani hasn't done much since leaving either, and was injured for nearly the whole of his final season here.

Didn't we fail to sell Darmian because we didn't get offered as much as Mourinho valued him? We could have let him go for peanuts just to get rid, but then it would prove the point of this thread that we are lousy at selling. Personally, I thought that was a good approach, to lay down the marker that United's surplus isn't a bargain bin anymore. Also we didn't try to sell Fellaini. Mourinho wanted him to stay when he could have left for nothing.


I did think we should have got more for Welbeck when we sold him, given that he was young and English and also going to a rival, but given what we know now - that his knees are made of biscuit - it was a great deal in hindsight. But at the time when you had equally average players like Adam Lallana moving for £20m+, I thought we could have pushed for more.

 

[AgentP]

One explanation is perhaps that when the team underperforms, the interest and belief in the players' quality also decreases and their market value becomes lower. Ed might think it's better to wait to sell until their value has increased?

True about most players. But the players we want to offload are not really going to turn into good players under any manager. The likes of Rojo, Jones, Fellaini, Darmian and Valencia are just not good players anymore. So we might as well sell them as soon as possible instead of letting their contracts run out.

The fact that Everton wanted Rojo and we didn't get the deal done says all you need to know about our ability in the transfer market. Two to three clubs were interested in Darmian as well. But now we are going to lose him for free in the summer.

 

[JPRouve]

@OnlyTwoDaSilvas For Memphis it's supposed to be 16m€ to 25m€ not pounds.

 

[redshaw]

We do buy players who are just not rated that highly, or who have under performed so much not many want to take a risk. High wages don't help but if they were good or rated/valued there would be more takers.

Watch where the players go like Nani, you'd think maybe a top 10 PL would be interested, maybe a German club, Spanish or Italian. He ends up on loan back at Sporting and then off to Turkey because no-one is interested.

RVP ends up in Turkey as he's deemed to be finished.

Fellaini if he did go before would've gone to Turkey. Not many rate him enough but there has been links to Italy since he has played well more recently. More clubs become interested if the players performances increase.

Blind while we got good money for once, he's back in the Netherlands. Where's the list of clubs lining up for him from the big four leagues?

Depay played shit for us and only looked good against Club Brugge and other lower teams. A team from the French league comes in but where's the others driving up the price, nowhere. Sometimes good players get tarnished with the usual universally unfancied crap we'd only buy. He'd go for a decent amount now I'm sure.

Rojo and Darmian have been linked to some clubs who can spend at last but there's no clamour again to drive the price up and it's we're kind of interested and we're sure no-on else is.

Under Fergie we had a history of players who'd only make relegation clubs or division 1 if they left.

 

[Ekeke]

The club probably read the forum and think the players who are just about good enough to be in our squad, or arent good enough are "shit" and should be playing in the championship

This isnt new, we didnt get much value for selling our players under Sir Alex and Gill either

 

[OnlyTwoDaSilvas]

@OnlyTwoDaSilvas For Memphis it's supposed to be 16m€ to 25m€ not pounds.

So, £22.5m, on todays exchange rate. Still not a bad deal considering how poor he was here, and considering how poor our sales record was prior to Jose. Though I'm not sure how much United paid for him in the end as he likely won't have met many, if any, of the add-ons in that disappointing 18 months.

And there's a sell-on clause too, isn't there?

 

[Coxy]

People have to want our players first

 

[BigRon1985]

Our buying policy has hardly been great either the past 5 years!

 

[Djemba-Djemba]

We've been bad at this for years.

It was clear in the Summer of 2011 Berbatov was finished here, he'd lost Fergies trust and didn't even make the CL final squad. But instead of selling him then, after a season in which he won golden boot and would have been sold for a good price we kept hold of him for an extra year in which he barely played and then we sold him for almost nothing.

 

[Nr.7]

Seeing Solanke sold for £19million made me think of this question myself.

We’re really bad at this.

 

[crossy1686]

Said in another thread, I think there's more value in a swap + cash deal in the current market. We've got Darmian, Rojo, Fellani and potentially perhaps Valencia, Sanchez and Lukaku who could be used in a deal for an upgrade. I don't think we're going to go out and spend another £150m+ on one player because it's a sellers market at the moment. I think we'd have way more joy in securing a player like Koulibaly if the deal was say, Rojo and £40m or something like that.

Napoli get a player to cover the outgoing player and £40m to reinvest where they see fit.

 

[Andycoleno9]

If we retain Jones after this summer then it would prove your point.

He is my biggest proof how shit we are. We are now in lose-lose situation. It is either he goes on free transfer or we give him a new contract and wait for offers. Again.
Time for selling him was when we bought Lindelof

 

[crossy1686]

People have to want our players first

And for that to happen they have to play well first.

 

[crossy1686]

He is my biggest proof how shit we are. We are now in lose-lose situation. It is either he goes on free transfer or we give him a new contract and wait for offers. Again.
Time for selling him was when we bought Lindelof

Jones is alright, he's still only 26 and there's far worse back up options out there or within the club (Rojo)

 

[Patrick08]

Woodward offers too much salaries for players which normally don't deserve it and then we see those get complacent with fat pay checks, and I am not sure they live cleanly either with the injuries they have or the weight some of them put on after coming here. Then we have trouble moving some of them on.

 

[Henrik Larsson]

It's true and this is why our spending in the summer simply stopped after 80 million or so. Every other top club around the world other than the book cooking oil clubs have had to sell players in order to generate funds for transfers, even Real Madrid.

 

[cyril C]

Valencia, Young, Darmian, Rojo, Jones, Fellaini are all evidence of this.

I hope we just let a load of contracts run out this summer, even Herrera and Mata (as long as we signed replacements).

Valencia and Young are already on the wrong side of 30s so should never attract any big bid, beside it is club policy to offer 1 year extension so no-one would put in a 30m bid in Jan for a 30+ player that they can't wait for another 6 months. We never intend to sell Fellaini because he was Mourinho's favourite son. Jones is never available for sale because he spends more time in hospital than pitch, you can say the same for Rojo as well. You can offload these players for free which you don't want to. Only Darmian fits into your argument for a player that we don't use much but no-one come in for them. I think an Italian club did, only for a penny which we (or Mourinho) would rather lose him for free instead of selling him for a penny.

 

[Andycoleno9]

Jones is alright, he's still only 26 and there's far worse back up options out there or within the club (Rojo)

No, things should be much different. When players come into that age(25-27) you must decide.
1) is xy player good for first 11 or we need to buy another? If our plan is to buy another( better) player on that position then...
2) can i get a good fee for that player? And does he have too big salary for backup player?
3) if yes, then you sell him and you buy new (better) player for that money.

Look at it like this. For Jones and Rojo you can get 50 mil easily. Would you rather have those two or Manolas who is 35 mil?

 

[LuisNaniencia]

I agree with the OP apart from selling Lingard. Would cost a bomb to replace him like for like, so selling would be pointless.

 

[RedDevilCanuck]

We also got completely fleeced on RVN, Beckham and Ronaldo.

I cant think of us really getting a great deal. Maybe Di Maria.

 

[Raw]

Think I mentioned this in another thread a while back but it deserves mentioning again. Our top 10 highest sales:

1. Ronaldo to Madrid - £80m
2. Di Maria to PSG - £44.3m
3. Beckham to Madrid - £24.5m
4. Schneiderlin to Everton - £24m
5. Depay to Lyon - £16m
6. Welbeck to Arsenal - £16m
7. Stam to Lazio - £15.25m
8. Veron to Chelsea - £15m
9. Blind to Ajax - £14m
10. Van Nistelrooy to Madrid - £10.2m

Schneiderlin being 4th is downright hilarious.

 

[Nate Dogg]

He is my biggest proof how shit we are. We are now in lose-lose situation. It is either he goes on free transfer or we give him a new contract and wait for offers. Again.
Time for selling him was when we bought Lindelof

He will have a scorchio of a game against brighton which will prompt Woody to give him a 5 year contract, and as soon as he signed he will be out injured for a couple of months.

I think we are the only club Europe that struggles to get rid of the deadwood.

 

[Adisa]

If Darmian, Jones, Rojo, Valencia are still at this club come autumn, then things are not working.

 

[sunama]

If we retain Jones after this summer then it would prove your point.

I believe that we will be retaining Jones.
For whatever reason, even though Jones is mostly injured and has a major mistake in him, every match, which almost inevitably leads to a goal, successive managers keep picking him to be in our first team.
Although he may lack footballing skills/intelligence, I think he does follow orders, which is why he keeps getting picked.

A player like Jones should only be signed on a pay as you play contract. Woodward and Judge, though, will offer him a juicy contract that no other club would even dream of offering.

 

[Gopher Brown]

It’s very simple. When we want players to leave that automatically lowers the selling price - we have extracted their value by playing them and hopefully having success.

We are at/near the top of the food chain, so clubs cannot simply buy players we still want to retain - Ronaldo went for a world record fee because we wanted to keep him.

I’d far rather we extract value from these players by hanging on to them and playing them. We don’t really seem to need or use the money from player sales anyway, it’s just bragging rights people want.