The College Dropout

They sold Palmer becaus they couldn’t guarantee his minutes so Palmer wanted to leave. And I think they probably regret it. Ferram Torres, James Trafford, Douglas Luiz, Edozie, Bazunu- not good enough. That’s the Real Madrid model. I don’t mean Minteh will be as good as Foden. City sell youngsters because they will not be good enough for City or the youngster wants to leave and play. If the kids want to stay and they rate the kid - they’ll keep him. That’s Rico Lewis and Phil Foden. We aren’t selling Minteh because we don think he’s good enough so we’ll take the money. Man City have never sold a player for FFP violation reasons - they’ll break the rules before they do that (allegedly).

Aye. That’s the silver lining in a good and bad way. If it wasn’t Minteh - it would’ve been a top player. That’s a huge relief and fucking scary at the same time.

Because the youngster isn’t good enough for the team so they sell him. Arsenal sold us Willock because they didn’t think he would be Arsenal level and they used the money to buy Odegaard. He was never going to get a game. City couldn’t promise Palmer he would be a regular at 21. Minteh might already be better than what we have in the squad. His ceiling is considerably higher than the RWs in the squad.

Little interest? Everton, Lyon, Brighton all willing to bring in our highest ever sale no? This is like City selling Phil Foden at 19. Minteh is meant to be good enough for where we want to be in a couple years. It’s not like selling James Trafford who would be on the bench for as long as Ederson is around. I also think the club expected someone to activate the Bruno clause. In retrospect we seem to have advertised it. It’s the only thing that makes sense.

Why would we sell?

Maybe so. But not like this. On the eve of a deadline. And an accelerated development. This wasn’t planned.

Not yet. I think Minteh has the potential to be a 60m+ RW and we’re selling him for £33m now because PSR is forcing us. Brighton think the same. That’s shit on our end. I don’t think we are selling him because we want to. Do you ?

This would be gross mismanagement tbf.

Man City have an elite and winning side though. A lot of the players they sell are not good enough for them. I’m sure many of their fans think selling Palmer was a mistake but the ends justify the means. They won the league again. Our situation isn’t the same. Man City have never sold a youngster they do not want to sell because of FFP

I don’t think this is right. We are bringing in the amortised cost of transfers and higher wages of all those seasons. We’re still to account for Isak, Bruno, Gordon etc. and the bigger wage bill. I expect we’ll need to sell to generate FFP headroom until we get some major revenue injections. PSR is a trap. Because big player sales are only accounted for 3 seasons. But big purchases and contracts are carried for 4-5 years. The increase in Bruno’s wages likely offsets the Lower amortisation cost he has.

I don’t think this is true. If we could’ve sold Miggy, I’m sure Howe would’ve loved to have given Minteh a look. Also Minteh’s another good season from adding another £10-20m to his value. We’re potentially selling Nvidia stock in 2019. Which is why Brighton want him. If he continues to develop at the rate he has, he’ll be worth double in 24 months. But we’ve had to take the short term money to save our bacon.

He’s the most talented RW we have in the squad. His ceiling is a £60m+ player in the weakest position we have in the squad. We could’ve sorted our weakest position in the squad with a £8m transfer. Instead we are likely to sell another player to fund a £30m+ RW that will be a significant FFP burden for another 4-5 years. Borrowing from Peter to pay Paul type stuff. It’s the best result all things considered. But it does suck. Had we sold a player we were happy to sell, everyone would be happy. If Minteh was a CM, less people would care. We have lots of options there. We don’t at RW.

We haven’t managed to get rid of Miggy and Murphy yet. I’m not confident we’ll be able to move them along for decent fees. I expect 1 to still be here in August. I think we need to sell further to spend big money.

Aye and also. We don’t have (m)any other Mintehs. Villa and Chelsea have academy’s that are producing talent. We don’t. Chelsea has options of players to sell. We had Minteh and then a crown jewel. minteh lad has saved us from catastrophe. And him moving is a mini catastrophe too.

Getting it done in June is to avoid a points deduction. It might get us some wriggle room too but I doubt it. We seem to be actively trying to shift a few others. I think those players will bring us the wriggle room.

The painful thing with the Minteh transfer is that he’s a RW and we need a RW. Had we used the Barnes money to fund a RW and then we sold Minteh - most wouldn’t be bringing up the transfer. That’s precisely the point. We have 2 first team LWs. And 0 RWs of the level we need. The one RW we have on the books that could be on that level - we will sell. I don’t think we signed Tonali with the intention of selling off our brightest youngster in the position of most need to afford the previous summer spending spree (or the last 3 years). Along the line a calculated risk has backfired. Mistakes were made. In August we knew that we needed a certain revenue number for the season. In January we knew we were likely to fall short. Which is why we had interest in a few of our players. For some reason we didn’t resolve the risk then. I think perhaps we anticipated more demand for squad players but again - that’s a big risk to take. We are actually pretty fortunate Minteh had such a great season. If we couldn’t flog him what would we do to become PSR compliant? We’ve let the issue go down to the supposed deadline. Mistakes have definitely been made. And you can question a lot of our transfer and contract situations over the last 18 months in particular.

I agree with this somewhat. Clubs didn’t know what punishments would be until Everton got points deductions. Now we know - we had a chance to sort our situation out in January - for whatever reason we didn’t. Villa have sorted their house. While we are still trying to sling a player to make the deadline. That’s probably the biggest mistake they’ve made. Letting it get this far.

Aye that was my first thought. Put it out there so we are less sad when Minteh goes. But as time goes on, I’m less convinced. Because any Minteh transfer doesn’t seem certain. So if not Minteh a maybe - someone else. I would take a points deduction before selling Gordon. But what if they offered £80m for Gordon? We might take that.

Seems like Minteh has been talking to other clubs. If we didn’t plan on selling him why would we allow him to do it? Im not sure I believe the Gordon stuff. But if so - we’ve been mismanaged even more than I thought. Gordon’s like the 3rd crown jewel. I’ve thought the Isak and Gordon rumours were put out there by the club to show what we might lose if we don’t sell a Minteh or someone. But that might be wishful thinking. And we are genuinely trying to smoke out favourable offers.

It’s unsettling our players. I don’t think it’s intentional if we take the hit.

Aye it’s bad. I thought Villa had messed up and they’ve been sorting out deals for weeks. We’ve messed it up worse.

We needed a RW more than we needed a LW. Lots of us said that at the time. ASM barely played yet we spent £40m for his replacement to sit on the bench. That doesn’t make sense. From a PSR and footballing perspective. Committing £60m for Barnes over the next 5 years was a bad idea considering we don’t have a viable RW option. We needed a CM. We didn’t need to spend £50m on a CM though. Ultimately the ends justify the means. If we managed to finish 4th and got to the CL QF we wouldn’t need to sell and we would say spending so much on the squad got us there. That didn’t happen. And with the transfers we made imo that was unlikely. So you have to say that was a misjudgment and poor decision making. the decision making in January seems to be even worse. Someone needed to go.

I’m not sure if it’s competence. But they are not perfect. Not by a long shot. Mistakes have clearly been made. We should’ve shifted lads in the winter when we had the chance. a lot of people seem to think there’s some kind of infallible masterplan. That’s not the case. Nobody plans to be in this position.

Posters like you are in for a rude awakening.

What does this mean?