Elliot Anderson (now playing for Nottingham Forest)

[The College Dropout]

1 minute ago, joeyt said:

And to be fair that "short term thinking" won us our first cup in a generation

Yes agreed. But you can’t keep moving like that and we basically have ever since Ashworth left.  

[Dokko]

14 minutes ago, r0cafella said:

Because we only got 15m  

 

Which helps when he's sold on as it was written down as that by the PL, meaning our % sell on starts from 15m and not 35m. Small gains but at least we get something.

 

Does anyone know what it is? Think it was 15% for some reason. 

 

BTW, don't rule out him coming here to replace Tonali. It's his preferred move, as long as we can pay him well enough (we won't match citeh but he doesn't expect us to)

[r0cafella]

2 minutes ago, Dokko said:

 

Which helps when he's sold on as it was written down as that by the PL, meaning our % sell on starts from 15m and not 35m. Small gains but at least we get something.

 

Does anyone know what it is? Think it was 15% for some reason. 

 

BTW, don't rule out him coming here to replace Tonali. It's his preferred move, as long as we can pay him well enough (we won't match citeh but he doesn't expect us to)

As far as I'm aware we don't have any sell on clause. 

[Groundhog63]

I'm always a bit confused about the Anderson hand wringing. Especially when it runs alongside Staveley worship.

I love her to bits but, let's face it, she was part of an executive team that dropped the ball. Massively 

The main point, as has been mentioned incessantly, is Anderson was a squad player in his first season after a League 1 loan.

There is absolutely no way he would have been given huge game time and no reason for that to be otherwise.. Zero chance he would've been anywhere near the England radar either.

Classic case of a fuck up ending up being the perfect move. For him.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited April 25 by Groundhog63

[joeyt]

22 minutes ago, The College Dropout said:

Because we had just given him a bumper new contract after Ashworth left.  
 

 

Ashworth planned to sell Joelinton (and/or Bruno).  We never got the Bruno bid and the Joelinton contract stopped any sales.  That’s why we were in total panic. 
 

 

Was there ever any serious interest in Joelinton?

 

Maybe some Saudis could have offered us mega bucks but we didn't get that for ASM or Miggy

[SUPERTOON]

Anderson wouldn’t be the player he is now, if he had stayed, imo.

[The College Dropout]

12 minutes ago, joeyt said:

 

Was there ever any serious interest in Joelinton?

 

Maybe some Saudis could have offered us mega bucks but we didn't get that for ASM or Miggy

We don’t know because we gave him a new contract.  
 

But the intention was to sell him from Ashworth. Sell at peak value, get in a younger cheaper model or even better promote from the youth academy.  Thats the type of medium/long-term thinking a DOF should provide.  
 

We essentially sold Anderson for £15-20m. We would’ve got more for Joelinton imo.  

[The College Dropout]

Our transfer policy since Ashworth left has been now now now. Signing players at peak value, prem proven etc. 

[joeyt]

1 minute ago, The College Dropout said:

Our transfer policy since Ashworth left has been now now now. Signing players at peak value, prem proven etc. 

 

Didn't we do that when Ashworth was here though too? 

[nufcjmc]

7 minutes ago, The College Dropout said:

Our transfer policy since Ashworth left has been now now now. Signing players at peak value, prem proven etc. 

I agree not been enough done on the developing side unless some of these signed for under 21 level last few years come good. 

 

However not a big sample though thanks to not being able to sign anyone for 3 or 4 windows and the signing we made was a punt on osula young/raw/ potential.

 

[duo]

33 minutes ago, SUPERTOON said:

Anderson wouldn’t be the player he is now, if he had stayed, imo.

I that's a fact - just wouldn't have got the game time. I am praying we learn from it and build our team next season around Miley.

[The College Dropout]

34 minutes ago, joeyt said:

 

Didn't we do that when Ashworth was here though too? 

Outside of Barnes - no. 
 

We signed Tino, Hall and Gordon but these were all inexperienced players who weren’t prem proven - so we bought them based on potential.  Gordon had the most Prem matches at 65, Hall had 11.  Which is why their values have increased. Now they are prem proven - Gordon is now at peak value or close. 
 

Under Ashworth nearly every player we signed had potential to 2x their value or close. 
 

Barnes has been a successful signing but there was little chance his value would substantially increase. 
 

Anderson made 44 league appearances for us. He wasn’t prem proven either which is partially why his fee was so low. Now he’s a Prem star.  

Edit: I guess Pope and Targett too. Both were cheap though. I don’t mind cheaper  prem signings.  It’s the Ramseys, Wissa, Elanga type deals that you can’t have too many of.  And the chasing of Strand Larsen.  

[The College Dropout]

40 minutes ago, nufcjmc said:

I agree not been enough done on the developing side unless some of these signed for under 21 level last few years come good. 

 

However not a big sample though thanks to not being able to sign anyone for 3 or 4 windows and the signing we made was a punt on osula young/raw/ potential.

 

Even the players we were after backs it up. Which is why we missed out on them. 
 

We went from trying to sign players 1-2 years before the big clubs are likely to come circling (eg JP 2023) to try and failing to sign players the big clubs want now (eg JP 2025)

[KingArthur]

We can't get him, and at the moment we really don't need him. Different story if Tonali is sold.

[The College Dropout]

6 hours ago, Interpolic said:

 

Hardly any fan gave the slightest fuck we were selling Elliot Anderson tbf. Probably more commotion over Minteh, which was still minimal versus the uproar there'd have been about a Gordon sale. 

 

In hindsight selling Gordon for big money would have been great but it wasn't that evident at the time and no fans were calling for it. 

I’m not talking about fans.  I’m talking about the club. 
 

It’s for people at the club - the DOF in particular to ensure the medium/long term future of the club. As soon as Ashworth left we stopped doing that.  
 

I personally understoood the logic of selling Joelinton and would’ve preferred that to either player going. Obviously that June was a mess, we were the biggest losers from all of that.  Selling promising players for not spectacular fees and bringing in a dud.  And even then - all of that was ok because we won the league cup and got into the CL. Then we had another summer of short term thinking.  We had the opportunity to go and buy the next Anderson or Minteh and we spent the entire net fee of those transfers on a single Elanga or Wissa. 
 

Summmer 2025 wasn’t an outlier.  We’ve had no long term thinking at the club with transfers for some time.  We’ll be lucky to get our money back for any of the 2025 signings. 

[Interpolic]

On 30/06/2024 at 00:18, The College Dropout said:

I’m ok with this one as I don’t think he’s going to be good enough to hold down a regular place and we have numbers in midfield.  

 

Good job you're not on about fans @The College Dropout cos you sure didn't give a fuck about losing Anderson - see above. 

 

I actually agree with you in theory about the (lack of) long term thinking but then it's more difficult when you break it down case-by-case. My head says yeah cool we should have sold Joelinton at his peak but we've seen him bring something intangible the last few years.

 

Us not being pushovers in recent seasons, particularly against the bigger clubs, owes a lot to the physicality and tenacity of Joe. We could have tried to replace that somehow but there are no guarantees on that score and as a fan I'm not really disappointed we didn't.

[The College Dropout]

Just now, Interpolic said:

 

Good job you're not on about fans @The College Dropout cos you sure didn't give a fuck about losing Anderson - see above. 

 

I actually agree with you in theory about the (lack of) long term thinking but then it's more difficult when you break it down case-by-case. My head says yeah cool we should have sold Joelinton at his peak but we've seen him bring something intangible the last few years.

 

Us not being pushovers in recent seasons, particularly against the bigger clubs, owes a lot to the physicality and tenacity of Joe. We could have tried to replace that somehow but there are no guarantees on that score and as a fan I'm not really disappointed we didn't.

Bit of a waste of time digging up that post. I would have told you I never thought Anderson would be this good.  
 

You can also find me saying I wasn’t sure we should give Joelinton a new contract. You could tell he had maybe a couple years at the top and would start declining/losing value due to age.  
 

And like I said.  You could justify these sales with the success of the following season.  But we did the same short term thinking the following summer. 

 

It’s not my job to ensure we sell players at peak value and sign players that can become even better.   

[Weezertron]

Still never watched him play a game away from here. No thanks. 
 

I hope it haunts everyone at the club.

 

 

Edited April 28 by Weezertron

[TheBrownBottle]

On 25/04/2026 at 20:17, SUPERTOON said:

Anderson wouldn’t be the player he is now, if he had stayed, imo.

He definitely wouldn’t have.  It’s only because Tuchel plays that insipid formation that the lad is an England regular and is now worth a ridiculous fee - my view is still the same as when he was here, he’s a solid player but nowhere near being a top one.  If Man City or whoever pay an insane fee for him it would be the worst outcome for the lad - Man City and Chelsea have been a graveyard for moderate young English talent who aren’t quite at the level. 

[Crimson Cardigan]

7 hours ago, TheBrownBottle said:

He definitely wouldn’t have.  It’s only because Tuchel plays that insipid formation that the lad is an England regular and is now worth a ridiculous fee - my view is still the same as when he was here, he’s a solid player but nowhere near being a top one.  If Man City or whoever pay an insane fee for him it would be the worst outcome for the lad - Man City and Chelsea have been a graveyard for moderate young English talent who aren’t quite at the level. 

He’s no 1 in premier league midfielders for duels won, possession won and successful passes this season. You really have to do a lot these days to be a “middling” talent!

[TheBrownBottle]

59 minutes ago, Crimson Cardigan said:

He’s no 1 in premier league midfielders for duels won, possession won and successful passes this season. You really have to do a lot these days to be a “middling” talent!

I’m an old curmudgeon who views that type of player as being a ‘water carrier’.  It says more about what is dull about modern football for me

 

For clarity, I don’t doubt I’m wrong and you’re right re this technically - but at heart I don’t care  - I still think that if someone like Bruno was tasked with just winning the ball and passing it safely he’d be worth five times what Anderson is ‘worth’.  

[Coffee_Johnny]

On 25/04/2026 at 10:39, The College Dropout said:

We didn’t have to sell him. We chose to sell him over more mature players. 
 

A lot of short term thinking that summer 

To be fair, looking at the cover we had for various positions letting a central midfielder go—however promising—was the right choice in the circumstances. Especially given he had only made 13 league starts in three seasons.
And I was as disappointed as anyone at the time. I am happy for the lad though; it has been a great move for him. 

[The College Dropout]

5 minutes ago, Coffee_Johnny said:

To be fair, looking at the cover we had for various positions letting a central midfielder go—however promising—was the right choice in the circumstances. Especially given he had only made 13 league starts in three seasons.
And I was as disappointed as anyone at the time. I am happy for the lad though; it has been a great move for him. 

When it came out that Ashworth was holding up the Joelinton contract renewal and was heavily considering selling him - I thought that was the wisest move long term.  Sell a non elite player at the top of his value.  
 

Now we don’t achieve what we did if we sold Joelinton. You can justify keeping him based on that. But we would be better positioned today and for the medium term.   
 

And that’s not the only time we’ve kept players too long when we could have got a decent fee. 
 

For a team like ours you need to sell your Joelinton’s, Willocks even your Wilson’s at the right time.  A manager won’t want to do it, the team is weaker in the short term.  But you avoid the situation now where Joelinton is a dwindling force on the pitch and in terms of value. 

[Coffee_Johnny]

3 minutes ago, The College Dropout said:

When it came out that Ashworth was holding up the Joelinton contract renewal and was heavily considering selling him - I thought that was the wisest move long term.  Sell a non elite player at the top of his value.  
 

Now we don’t achieve what we did if we sold Joelinton. You can justify keeping him based on that. But we would be better positioned today and for the medium term.   
 

And that’s not the only time we’ve kept players too long when we could have got a decent fee. 
 

For a team like ours you need to sell your Joelinton’s, Willocks even your Wilson’s at the right time.  A manager won’t want to do it, the team is weaker in the short term.  But you avoid the situation now where Joelinton is a dwindling force on the pitch and in terms of value. 

I thought we missed our window for decent money for Big Joe, but then (a) I love him and (b) they would have not wanted to unsettle Bruno. 

[wiseman]

2 minutes ago, The College Dropout said:

When it came out that Ashworth was holding up the Joelinton contract renewal and was heavily considering selling him - I thought that was the wisest move long term.  Sell a non elite player at the top of his value.  
 

Now we don’t achieve what we did if we sold Joelinton. You can justify keeping him based on that. But we would be better positioned today and for the medium term.   
 

And that’s not the only time we’ve kept players too long when we could have got a decent fee. 
 

For a team like ours you need to sell your Joelinton’s, Willocks even your Wilson’s at the right time.  A manager won’t want to do it, the team is weaker in the short term.  But you avoid the situation now where Joelinton is a dwindling force on the pitch and in terms of value. 

If we had sold joelinton, do you think we would have won any silverware? 

 

I agree hes passed his value now, and we wont get much for him, but he was immense that game and I dont trust we wouldve had a better option in CM for it if we had sold him