Re: The Race for Europe/6th Place
Drop one player off that list and you are looking at the total we spent on players last summer that allegedly he did not want. So go spunk it on ****e instead.
That's not really as true as it seems on the face of it:
1. Capoue was cheap and probably retains most of that value.
2. Chadli and Vlad were relatively cheap, and their value has probably gone up a smidge.
3. Paulinho was expensive, but probably retains his value, and in fact we'd probably make a few quid on him.
4. Soldado's fee was closer to £13m + add-ons than the oft quoted £26m, so if we sell him this summer we probably don't lose much.
5. Lamela's fee probably also has that kind of structuring, so again we're probably not down much on what we could get for him in Italy, and he might yet turn out to be a very valuable asset for us.
6. Eriksen we got for relative peanuts and has soared in value
In contrast with those other guys:
1. Surely to GHod £30m for Willian is a ceiling on his price - will he really go for more than that at some point in future? He's an asset repaying his value for sure, but it's borderline whether he'd represent value to us. Plus, we did almost sign him.
2. Moutinho at £30m was £13m more than his replacement, Paulinho, and he is 3 years older than Pauli. Moutinho probably won't be sold on for that money again.
3. Coentrão - £20m+...would have been worth it on the fee, but truly astronomical on wages. Also, he didn't want to come. Nothing to be done about that.
4. Hulk - Not only is there the £30m+ fee, but also I think literally the 2nd or 3rd highest wages of any player in the world. Outrageously, prohibitively expensive. Total, total non-runner.
5. Soldado was AVB's pick, and the point above stands.
Really, AVB wanted gold-plated, established star players with modest sell-on prices, huge wages and borderline age profiles. We ended up with a younger roster of players who all, on average across all 7, retain their value and at least 5 of whom (Eriksen, Vlad, Chadli, Pauli and Lamela) are young enough to be a spine for a long time.
