Transfer Rumours Saint James!

Trying for this chap has totally reassured me we intend to spend that £50m war chest! Wooo!

 

Hence the bid for Promes (in Jan) was around that region.
That said, the Osvaldo fee, wages, add-ons exceeded £30m snd some. Same case for Gaston Ramirez..... value for money? Nah!
Hence Saints shop for players at the right price for their skill set and or potential... nothing wrong with that it seems particularly within the realms of FFP across the playing squad.

 

The bid for Promes seems to have mysteriously disappeared. It's almost as if that was never as serious as we attempted to portray.

And yes, you can make mistakes when spending big money. You can also make mistakes when spending smaller money. We have made a lot of those recently, which is why our squad does not have many players who are particularly good at football.

FFP continues not to be remotely relevant to our situation. I'm not going to do the math for the umpteenth time, but if it was, we'd be aggressively shifting all of the high-wage mediocrities in our squad, and we aren't. Wages, not transfer fees, matter with FFP; if we were an FFP-conscious club, we'd be following the Cortese model (spending big on transfer fees, while keeping wages down by maintaining a smaller squad bolstered by the Academy). We're doing the opposite, spending little on transfer fees while allowing our wage bill to bloat.

 

Hughes may consider his needs are different from those of MP2. If funds are limited (which they are for most teams), he may prefer to spend elsewhere. Fans will never agree because we want great players in every position. He may be right or wrong, but it's his head on the line. Promes may also have changed his mind or better offers have come in....or, as said, we may not have wanted him as much as WE thought.

 

Yes. Hopefully Hughes will have something to do with all the money we will spend....

 

Those prices are realistic, but they are not rational. Not by any definition that makes sense to me.

They are the going rate, sure; but there is nothing rational about those numbers, and I can't believe they are sustainable in the long term either.

 

They feel irrational because of the sudden rise in football finance, but the most-recent overseas TV deal suggests that there's still quite a bit more room for growth. But no, they aren't irrational at all. Take a look at the books of Premier League teams: they're all rather stable, despite paying market price, and wage-to-turnover ratio has fallen considerably across the league. I'd argue the opposite: steadfastly trying to hold to an outdated financial model in the face of all evidence would be irrational. You can't get a brand new car for £2000 anymore, but that doesn't mean spending £15000 on one is a bad decision.

To go with a really opaque example from another sport: a Major League Baseball team recently just (for all intents and purposes) bought a draft pick for the equivalent of about £6m. Not a particularly high pick, either. That gave them the right to pay a player something like £750,000 who will not play for the first team for 3-5 years at best, and in all likelihood will never play at all. And yet, because of the financial structure of the league and the ridiculous benefits of having homegrown talent, it was a sound financial decision. Sometimes you have to set aside the first impression of "god, that's expensive!" and go based on the underlying realities, and paying market price (particularly in a market that heavily favours English teams) is a better decision than some sort of quixotic quest to get something for nothing, especially as we haven't exactly turned down the extra £100m a year we're receiving in revenues.

 

whilst I agree with your overall point I don't think it is particularly valid in the individual case of Maddison. By all accounts we matched Leicester's bid, we just aren't as attractive to him as Leicester are, which is completely understandable.

The thing we have to change (which I have mentioned many times) is the wages we are willing to pay. We have ****ed up and have a large wage bill having some sort of level pay scale for anyone in the first team squad which means we can't afford to offer the better players "big" money. This is going to take a few years to change as contracts run out for some of our players we can't sell on high wages. Whether or not we can afford a few years is another matter, based on last season I'd suggest we can't.

 

100% of zero is.....

I am only joking, but we all know it’ll be a relatively small number that probably won’t even exceed all three of the promoted clubs.

No point denying it. Kat was in it for the money, and Gao too has shown no signs that he’s in it for anything other than the money. If the money keeps leaving the club, we’re not going to be very competitive.

Hope I’m wrong, but actions speak even louder than Ralph’s words (which didn’t point contrary either).

 

Seems that the attraction of Leicester was primarily, LOCATION.........simples

 

I don't massively buy into that, sure it is a factor but England isn't exactly massive. How long is the drive from Southampton to Coventry? 2 hours or so? It's about 45 mins from Leicester to Coventry so less than an hour and a half difference. If we were really appealing I'm sure most players would be happy to sacrifice that, we aren't due to a number of things so he chose Leicester, simples.

 

Commuting is a 'balls ache' at the best of times! His family links are all local too; so residing somewhere between the two is/was, I suggest, his desired choice.
Have to respect it and move on

 

Doubtful.

It's a factor for sure but there's not one decent football reason to choose us over them, and it's deluded to think otherwise.

 

I would say the opposite tbh. We're much more likely to play him more given our position and help him develop and then sell him on. They were saying as much on the norwich forum so its not just rose tinted glasses.

Prestige and money, sure. But for footballing reasons I would have chosen us.

 

Agree - he was at Aberdeen on loan from Norwich season before last. He`d have been here all season, but Norwich recalled him - then didn`t play him!. I`m sure he could have found a closer club if it was an issue.

 

Agreed. We’re obviously not at the same level as them but we’ve been making the same sort of mistake Arsenal made for years.

A flat wage structure means we don’t pay our best players enough to keep them very long but we pay poor/mediocre/average players higher wages than they can get elsewhere which means we can’t get rid of them when and if we need/want to.

 

I think it's obvious what happened, Leicester offered him a more attractive contract, we will continue to miss out on our targets if Leicester and Everton are also interested IMO.

 

Not obvious at all........ pure speculation!
Bit like all the transfer stories currently, 99% speculation and around 1% guesswork. Keeps newspapers being read, forums getting comments & clicks towards advertising revenue generation et al.

 

Obvious to me, not to someone who has his head firmly in the sand maybe...

 

E

Yet it's obvious to you that location is the only difference and not the fact that they're closer to challenging the top clubs, showing more ambition and with no boardroom uncertainty?

Okey doke.