timeEd32

Worth noting, if multiple sites are to be believed, that he's on very low wages at the moment. We could double them and he'd still only be on about £20k/week. As far as FFP is concerned a player who costs £30m making £1m/yr (£20k/wk) costs the same as a player who costs £20m making £3m/yr (£60k/wk). My guess is people would have less of a reaction to the latter, but it's all the same in the end (and I'd argue the higher fee/lower wages is probably preferable). That will also mean that, if he does well, he'll be near the top of the list for an extension which would further smooth out the transfer fee.

You're not really wrong, but two important points: - We had to spent a lot of money in the last two years just to play catch-up with the squad, while at the same time having no one of note to sell. Selling him (and Wood) helps us with the current three-year accounting period as well as the two following this one. - Our revenue, particularly commercial and player sales, has nowhere to go but up. In four years time when selling Maxi is gone from the books and we're still paying fees/wages for Tonali, Barnes, Livramento, and others we will have presumably made considerable progress on these fronts.

He might be a little nervous the first time he steps out at SJP in a PL game, but on the whole he doesn't strike me as someone like that. I think that was a factor in our interest -- if we're walking out at the Bernabeu in a few months or another final at Wembley I'm not sure he's going to give a shit (in a good way).

There’s an incredible amount of mental gymnastics in this thread.

Is that Lewis as LCM or LW? Hilarious either way. Strong team otherwise.

Even ignoring the financial benefits (which are significant), I have a feeling this type of take is going to look quite silly in 6 months time.

I can’t tell what’s a joke vs serious (I hope it’s all jokes).

Basing complaints about spending around net spend, ignoring wages, and ignoring revenue while also wondering how we haven’t sold Fraser yet and saying Maxi can’t go under any circumstances is all going to be the end of me.

It's how we got Isak. We definitely have some solid valuations on players and if the selling club is asking for far above that we just move on (or wait).

It does because it's within the 3 year period, but they will come off sooner than they would have had we not done that. "From an accounting perspective" is all that matters for FFP. Hayden is "only" on around £22k/wk according to multiple sources. Fraser a bit over £40k and Hendrick slightly under. The three combined are a little over £5m per season. We didn't write off Fraser's wages and he's probably the most attractive of the three, so I'm really hoping we can convince someone to take him.

I have no idea what the market is for Targett, but if we can sell him for £12m+ to help fund a serious LB upgrade it would be a no brainer.

I think it will be a Gordon / Miggy platoon but yes, the Gordon haters better be ready to see quite a bit of him.

I hope they are always behind us but it would be incredibly refreshing if Newcastle and Villa, two historically big clubs, barged into the closed shop at the top. It’s really quite unfortunate Man City are who they are with Pep because if you take them out I’m not sure how you could possibly predict a champion, top 4, or top 6 right now.

Pretty hilarious they threw in the August and R&A membership for Al-Rumayyen. Bold.

Word on the street is our base for the USA tour is in the Atlanta area and the team is just flying up to Philly and NJ for the matches. That's a bummer for my stalking plans.

Not sure I've ever wanted a player to succeed more than Gordon at this point.

This is probably far too sentimental, but I hope Eddie rotates enough so that the first XI in the first home Champions League game is: Pope, Trippier, Schar, Burn, Longstaff, Bruno, Willock, Miggy, Isak, Joelinton

When a player is given an extension you can use those new years to spread the fee out even further. Obviously it’s never announced if the club is doing that so there’s guesswork involved, but in most cases I assume they would. Even with the new UEFA rules that cap amortization at 5 years you can extend it further with a contract extension, which is now also capped at five years from the date of the extension. In Maxi’s case the difference is pretty negligible either way.

Did some rough math here:

I don't want him to be. I made a previous post about how that's my least favorite part of the potential Barnes signing. If you put him in this imaginary XI then Joelinton or Barnes is on the bench. Either way the point stands that our bench is much better than it was a year ago.

#amortisation

Not sure if it's already been discussed in here but they had plenty of time to get him a shirt with his name/number on it if it was confirmed, which makes me think he'll be taking an existing number from someone.

If we sign Barnes and sell Maxi our bench is already greatly improved from the beginning of last season. Defensively is where it needs some serious help. Wilson Gordon / Miggy Willock Longstaff Murphy Anderson Targett Lascelles

Fraser - £2.17m through 2024/25 We should be offering him a free helicopter / private jet to anywhere in the world if we can shed those wages. Lewis - ~£2m through 2024/25 (£6m amortization remaining; £3m per year) I'm assuming we'd want some kind of fee for him. If we could get £6M or more I'm guessing he'd be gone. Targett - £5.2m through 2025/26 (£11.25m amortization remaining; £3.75m per year) For FFP purposes he is costing us almost £9m per year for the next three years -- that's half a Tonali/Isak in terms of fee + wages. If he's not playing semi-regularly then I'd probably rank him #1 overall in terms of the benefit of moving him on. Krafth - £2.86m through 2023/24 Unfortunately with his injury and the fact it sounds like he's still recovering it seems like he's probably just a sunk cost for this season. I didn't realize what he was on until last week and I was genuinely shocked. Dubravka - £2m through 2024/25 or Darlow - ~£1.5m through 2024/25 Bringing back Karius gives us the flexibility to move on one of these two. Seems like Darlow is most likely. ------------------------------------ Getting rid of two of Fraser / Lewis / Krafth / Dubravka / Darlow would pay for Bruno's rumored wage increase for the next two years. Getting rid of three of them would essentially pay the wages of a Trippier / Isak / Tonali level earner.