Concrete Ron

[ozzjim]

Somewhere around 30k for Vlaar and 40k for Delph I read somewhere.

Southampton have now taken in around 100 million this summer. With that swishing about, should they want Vlaar as badly as is being made out, then at a minimum from them £15 million of it should be coming this way. They will likely be relegation rivals if they don'e spend a lot, quickly, and as such we should try and get as much out of them as possible IF Vlaar wants the move.

[villan from luton]

He has a year left on his contract, doubt we will get top dollar

[ozzjim]

We should hold out for it or keep him.

[Toronto Villa]

He has a year left on his contract, doubt we will get top dollar

if he goes we'll get what we want or we have the option of keeping him and letting his contract run down. If someone comes in and offers £12-15 million, then at 29 we'd be a bit nuts not to accept. When you consider Lovren, who isn't in the same class as Vlaar, has just gone to Liverpool for £20 million then it sets the bar for PL CB's. Crazy numbers like that will help our negotiations with anyone who really wants him.

[villan from luton]

So Southampton get £20 mill for Lovren and we get in your opinion 12-15 million for Vlaar, I have read alot less. Is that good business by Villa then?

[Toronto Villa]

Lovren is 25 and not at the entering the last year of his contract. Vlaar is 29 and is. Prior to the WC if someone offered us £6-7m we'd have likely taken it and considered ourselves lucky. The WC has added value but the facts of his age and contract remain unchanged. It's very unlikely despite the WC anyone will offer us what Southampton got for Lovren, so getting what would amount to be considerably above what we'd have received for Vlaar pre-WC would be good business.

[Brian Taylor]

Good business? My jim royle it is good business..we will be down in the low quarters again, this season, without Ron.

[Gregorys Boy]

Lets stop talking figures and wait and see if anything happens.  So far there has been no bids, and the manager is making all the right noises so figures crossed.

[RussellC]

Prior to the WC if someone offered us £6-7m we'd have likely taken it and considered ourselves lucky.

If we'd have sold Vlaar for £7m prior to the World Cup it would have ranked as one of the most stupid transfer deals in the club's history for me. We would have been left with Clark, Baker and Okore as our centre-back options and very little money to find a replacement at a time when the Market is ridiculously over-inflated.

[paul_e]

As I said, that means a week before the end of the season, with 2 games to be played (I said one earlier, I forgot about the rearranged one in midweek). Do you think the players would've signed a new deal if it were offered that week?

I don't know if they'd have signed it, but that certainly wouldn't have stopped me from making an offer to let the player know they were wanted and to show the supporters my intent to keep our best players.

For Vlaar that means he went off to the world cup as soon as that window starts.  Even then it's a problem because he happened to have an unbelievably good world cup.

As another poster (KevinGage I think) reasoned, we can't use Vlaar having a good World Cup as an excuse for the situation.

If the season kicks off and contracts aren't in place then it's a fair time to start complaining but right now you all come across as if you're looking for things to be pissed off about.

It's not being pissed off Paul, it's being genuinely worried. We've had 4 successively poor seasons, the club is up for sale and seemingly without a new owner in the pipeline. FWIW, I'm not negative about everything at the moment and am one if the few posters who thinks that Roy Keane will have a positive effect. I genuinely admire your positive outlook and wish I shared it, but I'm afraid I'm just worried at the moment.

What's the difference between making an offer that the player is unlikely to sign and telling the player that you would like to have full contract discussion in pre-season?

For the world cup it's not an excuse, it's an explanation, pessimists regularly get the 2 confused, no one would be panicking that Man Utd were going to come in and take Vlaar if he hadn't just had a fantastic world cup.  If he'd had an average world cup most of stories linking him with x,y,z wouldn't have appeared and most people would be expecting to hear about a new deal in the next few weeks.

Genuinely worry about things worth worrying about, like the gap in midfield that is yet to be addressed.  Vlaar is still under contract for another year and can't even talk to other clubs for 5 months, the incentive for us to sell him this summer is very small unless there is an offer well in advance of those suggested in the press. The 1 time we've had a player in high demand with a year left on his deal we got a huge fee for him, I see no reason why this should be any different.  As with Benteke last summer this leaves us in a position where Vlaar is worth more to us than he is to any of the sides who'd be interested, I didn't think Benteke was leaving last summer and I have the same feeling this year with Ron.

[badluckeric(gates)]

He won't be allowed to go unless a very good offer comes in. Won't be the 4 or 5m the papers seem to think or even 10m. Just keeping him for one season and letting him walk is more valuable to us than that.

[Dante Lavelli]

My optimism hat suggests that the reason new offers have not been made is because the size of any deal is beyond the current 'holding strategy' and will addressed by the new owners (absolutely zero ITK here by the way before anyone asks). 

For all we know the new guys might be planning a £20m raid for [insert CB] and therefore £10m for Vlaar might be seen as good business for a 29 year old with one year left on his contract.  If there were no buyers on the horizon then you'd think extending the deals for Vlaar and Delph would be pretty high on the 'To Do List' even for a chairman who is looking to limit spending, so the silence hopefully suggests something is happening behind the scenes. 

[paul_e]

My optimism hat suggests that the reason new offers have not been made is because the size of any deal is beyond the current 'holding strategy' and will addressed by the new owners (absolutely zero ITK here by the way before anyone asks). 

For all we know the new guys might be planning a £20m raid for [insert CB] and therefore £10m for Vlaar might be seen as good business for a 29 year old with one year left on his contract.  If there were no buyers on the horizon then you'd think extending the deals for Vlaar and Delph would be pretty high on the 'To Do List' even for a chairman who is looking to limit spending, so the silence hopefully suggests something is happening behind the scenes. 

I think there's a good chance that keeping the liabilities down in advance of a sale is a big part of the delay, I don't really agree with that approach but I can understand the approach being that we give it 7-8 weeks from the RL announcement to see where things are at before we start discussion with the higher earners, contracts for the likes of Gardner and Robinson aren't going to be a huge overheadso they'll have been given the thumbs up but you'd think Delph and Vlaar will both be looking at £30k p/w minimum.  Give them a 3 year deal each  and that's £9m+ of commitment that the new owners may not want to make.  The balancing act is that if we don't arrange new deals we lose 2 big assets for free next summer which devalues the club, running in a 'holding pattern' for 2 months this summer, whilst the world cup was stifling a lot of business anyway doesn't seem all that risky in advance.

[RussellC]

What's the difference between making an offer that the player is unlikely to sign and telling the player that you would like to have full contract discussion in pre-season?

As I mentioned previously, I would not have wanted my Captain going to the World Cup without having him tied to an extended contract. Whether or not I expected him to sign it would not have stopped me from making an offer. I doubt that the club expected benteke to sign an extended contract last summer, but that didn't stop them from offering it.

For the world cup it's not an excuse, it's an explanation, pessimists regularly get the 2 confused, no one would be panicking that Man Utd were going to come in and take Vlaar if he hadn't just had a fantastic world cup.  If he'd had an average world cup most of stories linking him with x,y,z wouldn't have appeared and most people would be expecting to hear about a new deal in the next few weeks.

That's just not correct. Read the Philipe Senderos thread (http://www.heroesandvillains.info/forumv3/index.php?topic=52162.msg2613988#msg2613988). A lot of posters were concerned that we'd lose Vlaar to Utd well in advance of him having an excellent tournament, purely for the fact that LVG played him for the majority of the qualifiers and pre-tournament friendlies. I wouldn't call it pessimism any more than I'd say you'd have to be completely ignorant of the club's situation to be optimistic at the moment.

Genuinely worry about things worth worrying about, like the gap in midfield that is yet to be addressed.  Vlaar is still under contract for another year and can't even talk to other clubs for 5 months, the incentive for us to sell him this summer is very small unless there is an offer well in advance of those suggested in the press. The 1 time we've had a player in high demand with a year left on his deal we got a huge fee for him, I see no reason why this should be any different.  As with Benteke last summer this leaves us in a position where Vlaar is worth more to us than he is to any of the sides who'd be interested, I didn't think Benteke was leaving last summer and I have the same feeling this year with Ron.

My worry - and complaint- has always been that the club seem to be so hesitant in sorting the situation out. I don;t believe that any talks have already taken place, and the club will now be approaching negotiations from a position of weakness. You seem to agree that it's an odd situation with Delph, but think that the Vlaar situation is a well-thought-out strategy?

[silhillvilla]

To replace Ron would be expensive. Say £8m fee and a £50k a week 4 year deal to someone, so all in £18m outlay.