Conor McGrandles

[Zappa 0]

The fact that Falkirk can potentially take in £2 million on three players we released is obviously a bit galling, but I honestly think it's just the unfortunate reality at a big club like ours.

 

Falkirk are only getting good money for an 18 year old like McGrandles because they were in a position to give him a lot of valuable first team experience (66 games in the Championship) at a very young age.

 

It's also worth noting the Gary Holt connection to this deal and asking ourselves whether it would have happened at all if Gary Holt hadn't managed the lad for over a year at Falkirk.

[calscot 0]

Where are all those managers then? They will be well aware that our cash-strapped club will be easy to deal with, so why have there been no bids accepted/declined?

 

You could say that for any player in the world. Nobody is currently making offers for Messi AFAIK, doesn't mean he's worthless. A manager will come in if and when he fancies a player at the time for his squad. We haven't exactly been publicly inviting offers. But hasn't there been one offer?

 

But as I said, our players are not so attractive while playing in the bottom two tiers and even a 7 figure transfer from the second tier is exceptional and you'd have to wait till later in the season before our players will have shown what they can do there. But the point is that if people did come in for them you know what the quoted prices would be.

[Ser Barristan Selmy 222]

You could say that for any player in the world. Nobody is currently making offers for Messi AFAIK, doesn't mean he's worthless. A manager will come in if and when he fancies a player at the time for his squad. We haven't exactly been publicly inviting offers. But hasn't there been one offer?

 

But as I said, our players are not so attractive while playing in the bottom two tiers and even a 7 figure transfer from the second tier is exceptional and you'd have to wait till later in the season before our players will have shown what they can do there. But the point is that if people did come in for them you know what the quoted prices would be.

Messi has been the subject of £200m + bids according to reports in Spain. Lets keep this argument realistic.

[Ser Barristan Selmy 222]

By "decent fee" I infer you mean about £8m at a time when the English record was about £32m, we're talking about £1m when the record is now £85m for Gareth Bale. We're now effectively talking about peanuts for the richer clubs. I doubt you put McGrandles into the same category as those you mention.

 

 

 

I suspect the likes of Norwich who've just done so for a Falkirk player who was apparently one of our rejects. Hearts definitely thought Templeton was worth more than £1m, enough to turn such an offer down. Even if to quote some terrible English on here, "he has went [sic] backwards" since he arrived at Ibrox, history has shown that there are plenty of managers willing to take a punt on a promising young player who isn't doing so well, for a discount on his last fee. Especially when £1m is so little for a player these days.

When we were in the SPL how often did we get £1m + for players that weren't absolute stand outs that commanded significant fees? Or how many players have we actually sold for over £500k?

 

The vast majority of our players leave for nothing while Celtic have in the past punted duds like Craig Beattie for the best part of £2m.

 

Do you think Celtic would have sold Charlie Adam for £500k? He has been a regular in the upper tiers of English football ever since.

[Ser Barristan Selmy 222]

The fact that Falkirk can potentially take in £2 million on three players we released is obviously a bit galling, but I honestly think it's just the unfortunate reality at a big club like ours.

 

Falkirk are only getting good money for an 18 year old like McGrandles because they were in a position to give him a lot of valuable first team experience (66 games in the Championship) at a very young age.

 

It's also worth noting the Gary Holt connection to this deal and asking ourselves whether it would have happened at all if Gary Holt hadn't managed the lad for over a year at Falkirk.

There's far bigger clubs than both us and Falkirk making a killing from selling young players. The only reality with us is our incapability to function like a normal football club.

[Zappa 0]

There's far bigger clubs than both us and Falkirk making a killing from selling young players.

 

Maybe there are, but there's possibly even more who aren't!

 

The biggest clubs invariably spend MASSIVE amounts of cash buying in young talent these days, only to not give all of these expensive young signings a proper chance in their 1st team.

 

Here's an interesting article published yesterday about Chelsea which I would heavily wager also applies to many of the other top clubs across Europe:

 

Marco Van Ginkel Highlights the Failings of Chelsea's Youth Policy

By Harry Reardon , Contributor

Aug 28, 2014

 

Dominic Fifield reported in The Guardian on Tuesday that AC Milan are confident of sealing the season-long loan signing of Chelsea’s Dutch international midfielder, Marco van Ginkel.

 

The 21-year-old looks set to move to the San Siro alongside his Chelsea teammate Fernando Torres, who the BBC reports Milan have identified as a replacement for Mario Balotelli.

 

But although Van Ginkel’s transfer to Milan is not permanent, the loan deal looks set to spell the end of his Chelsea career before it even began. Van Ginkel’s mooted departure comes just a year after he moved to London from Vitesse Arnhem in a deal worth around £8 million.

 

Much excitement surrounded the Dutch youngster’s arrival at Chelsea.

 

Van Ginkel had been voted the best player under the age of 21 in the Eredivisie for the 2012-13 campaign. Then 19, Van Ginkel scored eight-goals from midfield in helping Vitesse to achieve a fourth place finish—the club’s highest league finish for more than a decade.

 

These performances also prompted Louis van Gaal to hand Van Ginkel his senior-level international debut in a friendly against Germany in November, 2012.

 

Parallels between Van Ginkel and a young Frank Lampard abounded at the time of his arrival in London, and manager, Jose Mourinho, promised the youngster a starring role in his debut season.

 

"Marco is one of the best prospects in European football right now," Mourinho told reporters, per The Guardian, "I have been following him for a long time. He has great potential.”

 

How hollow those words seem now as Van Ginkel seems set to be shipped off and out of Chelsea having made just two first-team appearances.

 

Of course Mourinho never really had the opportunity to establish Van Ginkel in the first XI. The Dutchman suffered an anterior cruciate ligament injury in a League Cup tie late last September which effectively ended his season.

 

Nevertheless, when one observes the experience of talented youngsters like Kevin De Bruyne and Romelu Lukaku at Chelsea (again, promising players recruited from central European leagues for sizeable fees), it is very difficult indeed to regard the suggestion that Mourinho considered Van Ginkel a potential first-team player with any seriousness.

 

After all, if the Portuguese manager was so taken with Van Ginkel’s talents, why did he spend over £50 million in recruiting Nemanja Matic and Cesc Fabregas as senior level midfield starters during the Dutch youngster’s absence through injury?

 

Indeed, the cases of Matic and Fabregas demonstrate well the fact that there are few things in football that Chelsea and Mourinho loathe more than developing young talent.

 

Chelsea signed Matic as a prodigiously talented 19-year-old in 2009. However, the Serb was barely given a sniff of senior-level football during his first two-seasons in England and moved to Benfica as a part of the David Luiz deal in 2011.

 

Matic, though, progressed rapidly in Portugal having been exposed to first-team football with Benfica, and Chelsea ultimately ended up re-buying him at a massive loss last January.

 

Fabregas’ time at Arsenal, meanwhile, embodies the fruits that patience and faith in a talented young central midfielder can reap.

 

Cesc had a patchy injury record during his formative years in the Arsenal first-team and he was by no means a performer of any great consistency when Arsene Wenger blooded him as understudy to Patrick Vieira aged 17.

 

Nevertheless, Wenger maintained faith in Fabregas through injury and dips in form and was ultimately rewarded with three-seasons of some of the best attacking midfield play in the Premier League era.

 

This chronic mistrust of young talent constitutes Chelsea and Mourinho’s greatest failing in terms of transfer policy.

 

Van Ginkel’s Chelsea career seemed destined to go the same way as De Bruyne’s and Lukaku’s from the moment he was signed; one can well see the futures of Mohamed Salah and Kurt Zouma following a similar path.

 

Van Ginkel may well consider himself fortunate to get out of Chelsea before his career stalls completely under Mourinho; a failing Milan side could be a good venue for the Dutchman to rebuild his reputation.

 

But Marc Overmars’ dire warnings at the time that Van Ginkel turned down Ajax in favour of Chelsea have taken on a haunting prescience this week.

 

“We would have liked him to come to Ajax," Overmars told the BBC, "whether it is too early for him to go to Chelsea or not, I don't know.”

 

The former Arsenal and Barcelona winger concluded: “With us, he would have played a lot of games and played in the Champions League…the important thing for the player is that he gets minutes in the first team. Hopefully the deal goes well and he will get into the team."

 

It was clear at the time that Overmars thought Van Ginkel was making the wrong decision in moving to England and he was ultimately proved correct. One hopes that the Dutch youngster’s time at Chelsea stands as a warning to other emerging players in lesser European leagues tempted to choose petro-dollars over playing regularly.

 

Because at a club like Chelsea, it seems that it can only ever go one way.

 

http://bleacherreport.com/articles/2179167-marco-van-ginkel-highlights-the-failings-of-chelseas-youth-policy

Edited August 29, 2014 by Zappa

[der Berliner 3,217]

Well, van Ginkel secured himself a nice pay-cheque going to Chelsea. We'll have to wait and see whether he'll make a break-through at Milan.

[Ser Barristan Selmy 222]

I don't think Chelsea are a good example because they have very little interest in youth development. What they are doing is buying players with plenty resale value and this is seen through the likes of Mata and Luiz. With the money they have they don't really need to bring through their own players nor do they require raw potential. They are funded by one of the wealthiest men in the world and are doing pretty well now in player sales.

 

Mourinho's vision is to have a team dominating England and Europe for the next 10 years. With Matic as the destroyer and Fabregas as the creator in central midfield, the likes of Van Ginkel will have little chance.

 

Try Barcelona, they could field a team of home grown players that could beat just about anyone and they make plenty cash.

[Zappa 0]

Try Barcelona, they could field a team of home grown players that could beat just about anyone and they make plenty cash.

 

They make plenty cash and they spend plenty cash buying some of the World's best players and paying their insane salaries.

 

They have massive amounts of debt (hundreds of millions) and would probably have went bankrupt if the Spanish government & taxman hadn't written off vast amounts of tax debt.

[amms 0]

I've only seen the fee for McGrandles reported as "up to £1 million" which suggests it'll be a much smaller fee with additions for first team matches, promotions, international call ups or sell on fee etc.

Had things been different we could have had Allan McGregor, Rhys McCabe, Jamie Ness, Greg Wylde and John Fleck in our first team just now. As it is McCabe, Ness and Fleck get to grace the English lower leagues and count their money in their spare time.

 

I'd be astonished if Lewis MacLoed isn't worth well over £1 million, anyone with eyes can see he's got the ability and attitude to play at a higher level than he does now.