Summer 2022 Transfer Thread

[paul_e]

Most of the frees were players we couldn't get rid of for a fee who we wanted rid of well before the end of their contracts.

I agree with the earlier points about some of them having done a job.  But it still doesn't invalidate Fred's point, which is we struggle to sell players for any value.

How many clubs in the top 2 divisions in English football over the last 7 years have made a profit on trading? How many of those have stood still over that time?

Without looking, I reckon Brentford are probably killing it on that count.

Southampton?

Probably a decent shout. Although they've thrown away a lot of money on dross as well.

Boufal, Gabbiadini, Hoedt, Djenepo, Carillo, Lemina and Elyounoussi is the thick end of £120m, and they've not got much back from that - either in fees or performances.

and they've absorbed that by selling their best players almost every summer. I doubt anyone on here wants us to replicate that.

[chrisw1]

It's not necessarily about making a trading profit, just about getting a little bit of value back.  We don't seem to have been very good at that for a good few years.

but 'value' is about more than just money. JUst from your list I'd say Hourihane and El Ghazi in particular played a big enough part in us turning things around and getting promoted that any value we needed from them was delivered on the pitch ages ago.

I agree.  And as I said in my post I wasn't saying they were all bad buys.

Look, to coin an oft used phrase this isn't a hill I'm going to die on.  It's not even my hill.  I just said I thought Fred had made a reasonable point and I think the facts bare that out.

[Hookeysmith]

Anyone getting the feeling (hoping more like) that this silence is a pre cursor to a big purchase coming in?

I bloody hope so as i am sick of trawling every news outlet looking for rumours - just cannot wait for the season to start

[ChicagoLion]

Did not realise Southampton had bought so much dross, no wonder they have stood still but I always thought they were happy being a mid table make up the numbers sort of club.
Its not like they have a great history of achievement,

[Dave]

I bloody hope so as i am sick of trawling every news outlet looking for rumours - just cannot wait for the season to start

You know that's not something that you have to do, right?

[paul_e]

It's not necessarily about making a trading profit, just about getting a little bit of value back.  We don't seem to have been very good at that for a good few years.

but 'value' is about more than just money. JUst from your list I'd say Hourihane and El Ghazi in particular played a big enough part in us turning things around and getting promoted that any value we needed from them was delivered on the pitch ages ago.

I agree.  And as I said in my post I wasn't saying they were all bad buys.

Look, to coin an oft used phrase this isn't a hill I'm going to die on.  It's not even my hill.  I just said I thought Fred had made a reasonable point and I think the facts bare that out.

but it's only a reasonable point if you ignore us making £100m profit on a single player, which was my problem with his post all along. The alternative to selling him is that we'd probably have had to sell 3-4 players to bring in the players we have and take the hit to our squad depth that comes as a result. The money we made means we can focus on trimming away the players we don't see any use in keeping instead of having to decide who we're willing to lose. It might be a 1-off fluke that we can't rely on again but that doesn't mean it didn't happen and didn't have a huge impact on our transfer plans in the last year.

[cdbearsfan]

The only clubs who have been in the Premier League at any point in the last seven years and have made a profit in said period are Swansea, Hull, Brentford and Norwich.

Forest and Southampton have the next best record after Brentford among current Premier League teams, with losses of £51 million and £67 million respectively.

Villa eight highest nett spenders (£289 million). Man U first (£709m), Man City second (£588m), Arsenal third (£272m).

(You may have to sort/filter the link below):

https://www.transfermarkt.co.uk/premier-league/einnahmenausgaben/wettbewerb/GB1/plus/0?ids=a&sa=&saison_id=2015&saison_id_bis=2022&nat=&pos=&altersklasse=&w_s=&leihe=&intern=0

[OCD]

We might have brought £100m in but we very quickly spent £30m on Bailey and again on Ings having already paid out £30m+ on Buendia.

[Smithy]

You can really only judge the club and our current owners on their performance since they bought us, and for the large part the transfers have been more than okay.  We haven't been in the league long enough for us to have sold many players that were bought since we came up - as the players sold have mostly been players from our Championship days, with a few exceptions.

You can't expect the owners to suddenly start making money from the sales of players they inherited.  In the same way that they were lucky to inherit a Grealish.

The real test will come when we start moving on players who we bought after promotion.  Targett we got our money back (but was net positive for FFP), Trez we've lost a little money on.  Engels we lost a little money one. Samatta we lost a little money on.  But these are all players bought for under £10m, and we probably lost £10-£15m in total on all three, and a lot less in FFP terms.  Another way to look at it, particularly for those last three players were bought as "gambles", is that they contributed in differing amounts, and were then moved on - for actual cash money - when they were deemed not good enough for us.  Not frees.  Not kept around on a wage to the end of their contracts.  Sold. For money.

Now, the real question is how many of our signings are worth more than we paid for them if we WANTED to sell them.  And I'd say the answer is most of them. There are a few we'd struggle to get our money back on, Ings being the prime example, but for every Ings there is a big Emi worth probably four times what we paid.

Either way, the time to really judge our club's ability to make money from players sales is when we've sold players bought since our promotion, and more than just a few squad players in that group.

[algy]

I'll be honest ... I don't care how disastrous it is to someone else's bank account.  I genuinely couldn't give a monkeys if we make a profit or loss on players, assuming that it doesn't stop us from spending even more money to push us up the table.  And from what I understand of the whole FFP thing, because the fee gets amortised over the length of the contract we've made an FFP profit on both Targett and Trez, who are the outgoings this season, and of course Greasy last season.

I do think it's unfair to include players from the Dr Shitshoes era, though, whether they've been good signings (Hot lips, SJM, ...) or bad (Fat Ross, Hogan, ..).  They didn't have anything to do with signing them, or making sure that we could make any kind of profit on them after.

[mike]

I'm another that broadly agrees we have for many years paid too much and sold too cheap - sadly, Fred's virulent pessimism grates with everyone including me so his reasonable points get lost. However, that list of transfers includes a few players who were sold for little or nothing because they were a bit past it so no one was going to pay much for them. We probably 'lost' money on the likes of McGrath and Merse. Even Ian Taylor went for nowt. But, yes, there are some unforgivable purchases but no-one pissed money up the wall on average players like O'Neil.

[cdbearsfan]

Part of the reason (nearly) everyone loses money is that everyone knows Premier League clubs are minted. That's what attracts a lot of players and any decent agent will be taking advantage.

But the same advantage in paying wages turns into a disadvantage when you are trying to shift them on, so you have to take a dent in the fee to make up for it, or accept that they will just stay until their contract runs out then leave for nothing.

[Mister E]

Part of the reason (nearly) everyone loses money is that everyone knows Premier League clubs are minted. That's what attracts a lot of players and any decent agent will be taking advantage.

But the same advantage in paying wages turns into a disadvantage when you are trying to shift them on, so you have to take a dent in the fee to make up for it, or accept that they will just stay until their contract runs out then leave for nothing.

... which is why we're struggling now to offload the non premier-league standard players; the  Championship and other comparative leagues are unable to pay the wages these ones are on .

[jwarry]

McNeil to Everton for £20m strikes me as a good deal.  Not that we wanted or needed him as I don’t think he would fit our system

[Londonvilla]

Aston Villa can confirm that Head Coach Steven Gerrard has named John McGinn as Captain.

https://www.avfc.co.uk/news/2022/july/27/mcginn-named-aston-villa-captain/

So he starts each week and I am happy with this.

Mings will have to improve or he is gone (sure he will improve)

But what type of new midfielder are we looking at as Mcginn is a box-to-box so is it another number 6?