Mark Bresciano

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Your definition differs from mine and that is fine.

 

But YES we could have prevented the sale ov GvB and Reyna - they were on contracts and the club did not need to sell them.

 

They wanted to go and there was little we could do to stop them without having unhappy players in the squad and then getting nothing for them. There was no business or footballing case to keep them against their will.

 

Arsenal sell because they WANT to sell from a footballing perspective,

 

So an offer of �£22M has nothing to do with it? In a football sense what they did was spend the money on about four excellent players that vastly improved their team. How is that different from the Boumsong scenario?

 

The only way you can sell from a "footballing perspective" is if the player has no place in the team. Boyd could be sold from a footballing perspective, but not a first choice player.

 

not because they have to (you can decide that we dont have to and that is your prerogative - I happen to believe SDM is selling because he has to, not because he wants to from a footballing perspective).

 

We sold Cuellar because it was in his contract, so yes I suppose we had to. The money will go towards the midfielders we've been crying out for so there is little to argue that there is no footballing benefit to the sale.

 

In much the same manner that you castigated others for dealing in speculation over the sale of Cuellar you are doing the same in the instance of Man U and Ronaldo - the simple fact is that they have NOT sold him and have said he will NOT be getting sold, so that example is worthless.

 

Read it again, it was not speculation at all, it was HYPOTHETICAL. I was making the point that IF Man U sell their best player it will not make them any more a selling club than if they don't sell him. I think that point has some worth.

 

Whether there is an actual sale is irrelevant to the concept and so categorising it as speculation is just meaningless.

 

I would say our best players in recent years have been Barry Ferguson (sold to Blackburn), Alan Hutton (sold to Spurs) and Carlos Cuellar (sold to Villa) - who else has there been ?? Prso, Arveladze ?? Retired and let go. Maybe McGregor and Boyd. Neither sold but we dont know if that is because we dont want them to leave or because we have had no offers. You mention Boumsong yourself and he is a very good example IMO. Tranferred on a Bosman and gone 6 months later - is this not an example of a selling club especially when we were bereft of quality ? Arteta wasnt sold at a huge loss at all IIRC - he was bought at 5 mill and sold for 6 or something (not 100% on this though).

 

Getting someone for free and selling it for 8M 6 months later hardly shows you are a selling club. It's an obvious golden opportunity taken and good business sense - a good footballing sense when you need a few more players to make your team competative.

 

I may be wrong but thought Arteta was bought for 6M and sold for 2M.

 

Cuellar as I've repeated, I believe left against our wishes. Bazza is a difficult one to judge but as we bought him back for almost as much as we sold him, it's hardly profiteering and obviously a very poor example for showing we are a "selling club".

 

So there is ONE decent example of us being a selling club - Hutton, and like I've pointed out, it shows we're no more a selling club than Arsenal are. It's just we're open to silly offers, especially in our current financial climate.

 

You use Laudrup as an example yet that was in our "spending spree" days when money seemed no object so I am not surprised that the money was turned down - it was also a number of years ago that it happened and, as you will readily admit, times have certainly changed for our club since then. Just because we werent a selling club 7 years ago doesnt mean we arent now.

 

Fair enough but I was struggling to find examples of losing our "best" players.

 

You cant say we are keeping our best GK for years either or has the Cuellar debacle not cleared your mind on that ? You reckoned he would be here for a year at least as you chose to believe what you read. He left. Now you are choosing to believe that McGregor will be here for years because he has signed a 5yr deal - don't count on it (although I will be very happy for it to be the case).

 

I think you misinterpreted me there - I meant he has been our best keeper for years not that he would stay for years. Although there is no reason to suggest he won't.

 

 

Our Captain is now here because he wants to be here and with the way he left Blackburn and the statements he made I doubt another club would bother trying to sign him as he obviously doesnt want to be anywhere else.

 

I can't argue with that but it is still not evidence of being a selling club especially considering the amount of money we stumped up to bring him back.

 

IMO WS can't sell Thomson because we would have no midfield left. The offer from WBA was mooted at 4 mill - would it be worth taking 2 mill profit anyway ? Being a selling club doesnt mean you have to accept any offer over what you paid for a player.

 

It still doesn't show us as a selling club.

 

Have we had any large offers for Fleck ? How does he even factor into this debate ? I havent heard that we have had any significant offers for him so if you use him to justify us as a non-selling club then I am all ears.

 

There has been rumours about Man U being interested. But it's just another example of one of our "best" players still being here.

 

As for Rangers not hawking our best players look no further than Hutton - if you believe that Rangers did not hawk him then good for you but Walter's own comments told you the club wanted the cash. For the record, I disagree with you that we were offered silly money for Hutton - he was worth more than 9 mill IMO in the current market place but that is another debate. On a tangent but again, IMO, selling Hutton cost us far more than the 9 mill we got for him because IMO we would have won the league with him and a guaranteed CL spot.

 

I wont go further into debate on it as it is obvious that you and I disagree on the definition of a selling club.

 

I think there is a massive difference between taking extra-ordinary offers that come along and spending it on other players than being a selling club. The Hutton sale was a gamble that may or may not have paid off. Without a parallel universe we will never know, but basing it on one player is pretty thin. The reasoning behind it was obvious but it's also a one off and not a general process.

 

I think I've given pretty rational arguments about how calling us a selling club is not a well developed premise, but if you choose not to consider them and give a more developed counter argument then that's up to you.

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I should specify that my definition of a selling club would be one that constantly brings in more money from transfers than it spends. Not only that they constantly deliberately break up good teams when they are offered good money for their best players (not the plural) without consideration of the impact to their success.

 

While you could squeeze the facts to shoehorn certain recent events into this definition, I think it's obvious that it doesn't fit comfortably in the slightest and is undone by a cursory wider view of the facts.

[craig 5,199]

I should specify that my definition of a selling club would be one that constantly brings in more money from transfers than it spends. Not only that they constantly deliberately break up good teams when they are offered good money for their best players (not the plural) without consideration of the impact to their success.

 

While you could squeeze the facts to shoehorn certain recent events into this definition, I think it's obvious that it doesn't fit comfortably in the slightest and is undone by a cursory wider view of the facts.

 

Actually the more I thought about this the more I agree with your definition (although it cannot be disputed that there could be more than one definition). The reason I agree is that if we sell our "best" players for, say, I don't know, 7.8 million and we go out and sign someone to replace them the expectation from the management has to be that the replacement is of similar quality. And I don't doubt that WS, AM and KM would be looking for a similar quality replacement to Cuellar. Now..... if we sign someone for, say, 2 million, that doesnt necessarily mean that the replacement is of lesser quality (although the less informed fans would think he is).

 

The reason I use 7.8 mill is obvious - it is what we got for Cuellar. The reason I use the 2 mill ??? Because that is what we PAID for Cuellar. Now, we just don't know - we could very well bring someone in for 2 mill who proves to be every bit as good as Cuellar (early days I know but I thought Bougherra looked a very good player last week against Falkirk - although I don't see him as Cuellar's replacement). So if we CAN get someone in of as good a quality (and you never know until they have played a few games so it is always a risk) then selling Cuellar has been an astute bit of business.

 

That said I would have preferred to have seen Bougherra beside Cuellar. Again though, if Bougherra proves an able replacement and we get one other and the rest of the Cuellar funds are spent wisely on midfield then we could actually be strengthened rather than weakened by his departure.

 

I don't think EITHER theory gets undone.

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One question is - is it better to have one 8M player and be looking for a 1.5M player, compared to buyging 3M, a 4M and a 2.5M midfielder, which is a position where we're are considerably lacking in quality?

 

I think if we'd qualified for the CL, we'd have spent this money anyway and kept Carlos, but that's the way the cookie crumbles.

 

You need money in the bank, or the promise of money, before you can spend it.

[craig 5,199]

Back on topic - are we still in for Bresciano even though we just signed Mendes ? I know they are different players but just wondered if we would splash the cash on another midfielder having just spent 3 mill on one.

 

I wouldn't mind seeing a couple of midfielders leave (McCulloch springs to mind as we could probably get a couple mill for him).

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Newcastle are reported to be interested...

 

I've completely gone off McCulloch and if we can get 1M to 2M, I think we should take it to help balance the books.

 

Hemdani is also starting to look superfluous and doesn't want to play for us anyway and I'd take 0.5M to 1M for him.

 

I'm also hoping we can get a couple of mil for Cousin. We're really ruing that FIFA decision now and although Fulham have every right to pull out, it does seem a bit bad form.

 

Those three could bring in about 4M and balance the squad and wage bill.