The College Dropout

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?

Thats why it’s a small group of clubs trading with each other. The rest will attempt predatory pricing.

Aye. They should be warming the players up for it.

Short of selling Gordon and the like. We can’t do this.

Tbf letting this get down to the last 48 hours is very bad.

If we were able to sell Miggy and satisfy the requirements, would you think that would be inexcusable? I think not selling Trippier was a mistake. And we probably overspent in the summer. All massive fees. Mistakes have been made. But unless we are forced to sell a star player, I don’t think it’s gross negligence. It’s close though. If Minteh didn’t have that breakthrough year, we’d have to sell a star player it seems.

You better believe it buddy. The rush for the end of the month means we arr on track to breach. Sales after that is to create headroom for more transfers. I don’t think having to sell is gross mismanagement either. But having to sell Minteh does mean we’ve miscalculated along the line. He’s not one we would happily trade. Having to sell Isak Gordon or Bruno would be gross mismanagement. we do have to wake up to the fact we don’t have masterminds in charge. They wil make mistakes. They wil take risks that backfire. imagine if we didn’t have Minteh to sell. We would have to sell an even more valuable player.

I don’t think it’s staggeringly bad. When Eales said we need to trade that was foreboding selling players we might not want too because of FFP. We aren’t selling our finest China. Having to sell the best players would be staggered flu bad management. If we were able to shift Miggy or even a Wilson we would say we’ve managed PSR well. Having to sell Minteh - a potential superstar is bad and evidence of miscalculation at best. But not gross mismanagement. 1/4 of the league are in the same boat.

This is fair. We are in a bad spot. But not the worst spot. The worst thing about our approach is that we’ve left it so late. When Villa sold Luiz we had few outgoing links. I thought we were ok. Now there’s multiple stories a day.

Aye. I agree it’s not the worst situation. But scrambling around 48 hours trying to get players off the books is desperate like.

Not this again.