Who Will Be Sold In January?

Think we could see a major clearing of the decks next month. Personally I think more should have been sold in the summer, but due to hideous salaries for average players this was harder than the club thought.

Ralph is definitely going to want 2 or 3 new players to better suit his system, and the only way he will get these, is by raising some serious funds. Think we have the reported 8th highest wage bill in the Premier league, so here's my list of who could go.

1 Gabbi. £10 million. 80k per week. £4.16 million per year
2. Austin £5 million. 70k per week. £3.64 million per year
3. Davis. Free. 60k per week. £3.12 million per year
4. JWP. £10 million. 45k per week. £2.35 million per year
5. Yoshida. £3 million. 50k per week. £2.6 million per year

£28 million in sales and approx £15.87 million per year / £305k p/ w off the wage bill.

Could also add Stephens to the list as I think a new CB is required and as bad as Hoedt / Vest have been, they'll be on longer bigger contracts. Also feel McCarthy could be sold as will be near on impossible to get rid of Forster with his 70k p/w wages. Gunn number 1 with Forster as back up. Would be a big gamble but the club will look at the best way to get funds in for the new manager. Think Romeu could also go for a price as a new DM is being touted.

Stephens. £6 million. 48k per week. £2.5 million per year
McCarthy £15 Million. 40k per week £2.08 million per year
Romeu. £10 million. 65k per week. £3.38 million per year

Would raise another £21 million in sales and approx £7.9 million per year / £153k per week off the wage bill.

Money then for 2-3 quality players instead of the average dross we've been buying of late.

Think this is the only way we'll be buying in January? These are my guestimate transfer figures as clubs will know we are desperate to sell and lower fees will account for the higher wages.

Could be a fun January transfer window for once?

 

That's about 50k p/w, which sounds about right. Not "that sounds right" as in "that sounds like a fair wage given their productivity", but rather in the sense of "that sounds about what I would expect and also that really makes it tough to shift players who aren't PL quality when no one else in the world has average wages even approaching that".

 

For the sake of comparison, our wage bill is significantly higher than all but Dortmund and Bayern Munich in the Bundesliga, and well above all but the top three in Spain, all but PSG and Monaco in France (I believe), and somewhere between 3rd-6th in Serie A. Such is the yin and yang of the Premier League: if you recruit well, there's no upper bound to the level of talent you can accrue, because you can easily offer a wage hike to players on all but the elite clubs. If you recruit poorly, there's no lower bound to the trouble you can find yourself in, because no one can afford to take those players off your hands.

 

Largely for top earners, and I think @Schad has discussed this previously, the fee can be largely irrelevant.

Take Austin or indeed Fraser. They won’t fit our system, one will never play, the other barely.

You could, contract duration allowing, give them a free contract to offset wages. £5m for Austin and his wage means any longer than 18 months you can let him go now and be no worse off.

Fraser you could effectively let go free now considering he won’t play and clogs up a huge wage.

If we did that, there’d be takers.

 

Not many that would pay him 70k a week plus Saints would have to pay the remaining years of his contract which would be in excess of £10 million

 

This is why it will be very hard to get rid of players unless they put in transfer requests. The only straight forward one would be Steve Davis, as we would let him go for free so Rangers would pay him a larger signing on fee to cover the reduction in his salary, saving Saints any pay of due. Not going to be easy to raise funds that are desperately needed.

 

Austin can stay. Although he doesn’t naturally suit our style lambert did ok when Pochettino came (admittedly his off the ball movement was superb).

Would rather see hoedt and vestegaard go than maya, although as mentioned they are on long contracts. We need to shift at least 1 CB, hoedt/vest/Stephens are not PL quality. Take your pick.

Jwp/Davis meh they can go. Solid enough box-box players but jack of all trades and not good enough in attack/creativity.

Romeu was a fantastic player under puel and one of the reasons our defence was tight. Happy with Romeu/Hojbjerg/lemina atm, if Ralph is as good as we think he can get them functioning.

Would ideally need a CB, attacking creative mid and striker. We might get one of these.

Important to remember with high tempo pressing we force errors and get opportunistic goals. We don’t need world beaters just good players to work to Ralph’s system.

 

Not really, the free fee instead of paying a fee allows them to pay higher wages than usual.

It could hit us in part depending on how we have accrued said players purchase, how we write off value etc

 

The simple answer for me is “those that can’t or won’t buy into the new regime”.

Plus Forster.

 

The transfer fees you have slapped on these players is way too high, Who would pay the Price your put on JWP, a player who spends most of his time on the bench or not at all. You can divide the fees you quoted by 5 at least, and even then there are not going to be takers. JWP (around 500k), Austin (200k), Stephens (200k), Romeu (1million tops)

 

You aren't operating in the realities of 2018 Premier League finances. I doubt very much we sell all of them; there is zero chance that they would all command sub-£1m fees. £10m is what one spends on a rotation-level, somewhat-young experienced PL player these days...no player who has even a modicum of talent would command a fee as small as £200k. Heck, the smallest fee that I can see on a transfer between two PL teams in the summer was £4m.

 

Ides, mate, it’s 2018!

If anything, the fee for JWP is too low.

 

The January window is difficult for buying...teams doing well hold onto players and the last thing teams doing badly want is to let go of good players. And the window is short....though obviously ground work may have been laid much earlier. The obvious selling market are teams/leagues where our money is comparatively large, but selling to buy would be a nightmare...almost impossible unless a few of our players are already sorted and just waiting for the window.

There is one advantage to selling/releasing players without being able to replace them....frees up the manager's brain space...as unhappy players take up more time than happy ones. And Ralph could get to look at some youngsters at least in training with the first team.

 

I think JWP’s work rate will see him getting a lot more match time than he did under our last 3 managers. There is no way he will be sold in January.

 

JWP would only command such a fee if he is a player in demand. And looking at the collective achievements of the Saints squad over the past year or two, I doubt that demand is high for any of them, therefore if SFC are keen to move any on, then the fee needs to be lower. And it is rare for Championship clubs to pay anything approaching 10 million. Clubs in Europe might prefer a loan deal a la Boufal and Carillo. La Liga clubs, apart from the big 3, do not splash the cash unlike SFC or Bournemouth and others at the same PL level. .

 

JWP would go to another premier league club for about £15m at least. Not that he’ll be sold though, as Chilcs says.

 

Didn't wolves bid £10m back in summer for him?

 

1 Gabbi. £10 million. 80k per week. £4.16 million per year
2. Austin £5 million. 70k per week. £3.64 million per year
3. Davis. Free. 60k per week. £3.12 million per year
4. JWP. £10 million. 45k per week. £2.35 million per year
5. Yoshida. £3 million. 50k per week. £2.6 million per year

Blimey I'd buy all of them at those prices.
Dont forget they get heavily taxed! The same rate that someone on £150k a year is on so 45 % is taxed being the higher rate.
So Gabs only actually has a 'take home' pay of £2.29m or £190,833 a month. So he can only have take-aways what 3 times a day?
And he can only buy a new car say once or maybe twice a month

Tax Rate (Band) Taxable Income Tax Rate
Personal allowance Up to £11,850 0%
Basic rate £11,851 to £46,350 20%
Higher rate £46,351 to £150,000 40%
Additional rate Over £150,000 45%

 

JWP went from one of the first names on the team sheet to the no-where man...if he suited Poch and Koeman, he will surely suit Ralph. No one can doubt James' love for the club...if there is any player who will pull his finger out it is him.