Winter 2025 Transfer Window - hopes, speculation, rumours etc.

[Smithy]

Not sure anyone will know the answer to this, but I'll ask anyway. When a club takes a player on loan, and agrees a buy option, are the players terms agreed at the same time?

If Rashford is amazing for us, and we decide we want to buy him for the agreed price, do we still have to negotiate with him, or has that part been done already too?

Short answer - it depends.  Sometimes it's negotiated in advance, sometimes not.  I will be VERY surprised if we've agreed terms with Rashford should we want him at the end of his loan.  I suspect he'll have a lot of options, so it would be quite naive for him to have something agreed already.

When we brought Archer back from Sheff Utd, those wages were all agreed with Archer in the event we triggered the buy-back, but it's unusual.

My guess is we've got our fee agreed with Man Utd, which is great, but that they're under no obligation to turn down other offers, so if the loan goes well, we'll have to make an offer to Marcus that makes him want to stay with us.

I've said it before, but I think there is a sweet spot for his loan with us where he does well enough that we want him permanently, but not SO well that he's suddenly in demand across the continent.  Because if the likes of Barcelona do come calling, and they can find the money to buy him, he's unlikely to choose B6 ahead of that opportunity, unfortunately.

[LeeB]

There's also the possibility that he decides that he wants to stay with the man who finally gets the best out of him.

I'm not saying that will be the case but I think it will be a factor, he's had such a shit time of it he may just want to stay where he's happy.

[OCD]

His experience with us a whole will be a big factor. But it's more about what we can achieve between now and the end of the season. If he helps us get top 5 and qualify for the CL again and he goes elsewhere, fair enough. We then just need to identify another in that bracket of player that he and Asensio fit into.

[AV84]

Yes, if his experience at Man U was so bad, and we get him back to loving football and he's happy again, he might be tempted to stay. Especially if we're in the CL again.

Depends too, I suppose, on what our plans are for Watkins, Asensio, and any new signings. He's presumably going to be OK with playing a supporting role for the rest of this season, but beyond that, probably not.

[Dave]

Not sure anyone will know the answer to this, but I'll ask anyway. When a club takes a player on loan, and agrees a buy option, are the players terms agreed at the same time?

If Rashford is amazing for us, and we decide we want to buy him for the agreed price, do we still have to negotiate with him, or has that part been done already too?

Short answer - it depends.  Sometimes it's negotiated in advance, sometimes not.  I will be VERY surprised if we've agreed terms with Rashford should we want him at the end of his loan.  I suspect he'll have a lot of options, so it would be quite naive for him to have something agreed already.

When we brought Archer back from Sheff Utd, those wages were all agreed with Archer in the event we triggered the buy-back, but it's unusual.

My guess is we've got our fee agreed with Man Utd, which is great, but that they're under no obligation to turn down other offers, so if the loan goes well, we'll have to make an offer to Marcus that makes him want to stay with us.

Obviously it's hard to tell without knowing what's in the contract, but my gut-feeling is that there is more already agreed than this.

Take the £40m "option" that we have. I'm pretty sure that if we want Rashford to join and he wants to join us, he will, for £40m regardless of what other teams want to do. Otherwise we don't have an option to buy him, we've got an opportunity to enter the market and negotiate a fee for a player available for transfer.

And to even put that option in place, we need to have had a pretty good idea of what terms Rashford would be signing with us and that his future Villa contract was acceptable to both him and the club. There would be no point agreeing that £40m option if we have no idea what Rashford would want in order to sign. If we said we wanted to take up the option, and he then said "I want my Man Utd contract paying up in full and for Villa to then pay me £1m per week", then once again, we don't really have an option to buy him.

I wouldn't be surprised if (as I think paul_e mooted), Villa / Man Utd / Rashford have all agreed and signed something along the lines of "if Villa are in the 25/26 Champions League, then Rashford is joining Villa on a contract that looks like this. If Villa are not in the 25/26 Champions League then Marcus doesn't want to go and Villa can't afford him anyway, so it's back to Old Trafford he goes".

[Somniloquism]

I suspect the basic wage being offered might be similar to what we are paying now with Manure covering the rest. We might then offer a performance based bonus on top to bring him closer to the Manure wages. But with UEFA doing the Wages/Turnover finance rules, lets hope he has agreed to a significant cut because he didn't get many other offers in Jan due to the wages.

[Drummond]

I suspect that £40m was agreed on the basis that we will have to pay a big signing on fee etc to keep wages lower.

[Dante Lavelli]

Someone on here suggested that Rashford’s £325k/week wages were based on Man U qualifying for the champions league and his secured actual wage was a lot less.  Given where Man U are this season then he’d know that he’ll be on the lesser salary next season so dropping down to Villa’s wages might not be such a large jump.

[Somniloquism]

Someone on here suggested that Rashford’s £325k/week wages were based on Man U qualifying for the champions league and his secured actual wage was a lot less.  Given where Man U are this season then he’d know that he’ll be on the lesser salary next season so dropping down to Villa’s wages might not be such a large jump.

I don't think so. Ratty was bemoaning that most of the big wages at Manure where all paid regardless of performance based uplifts unlike at Citeh and wanting to change that going forward. Obviously that could only happen when new contracts are signed.

[Smithy]

Not sure anyone will know the answer to this, but I'll ask anyway. When a club takes a player on loan, and agrees a buy option, are the players terms agreed at the same time?

If Rashford is amazing for us, and we decide we want to buy him for the agreed price, do we still have to negotiate with him, or has that part been done already too?

Short answer - it depends.  Sometimes it's negotiated in advance, sometimes not.  I will be VERY surprised if we've agreed terms with Rashford should we want him at the end of his loan.  I suspect he'll have a lot of options, so it would be quite naive for him to have something agreed already.

When we brought Archer back from Sheff Utd, those wages were all agreed with Archer in the event we triggered the buy-back, but it's unusual.

My guess is we've got our fee agreed with Man Utd, which is great, but that they're under no obligation to turn down other offers, so if the loan goes well, we'll have to make an offer to Marcus that makes him want to stay with us.

Obviously it's hard to tell without knowing what's in the contract, but my gut-feeling is that there is more already agreed than this.

Take the £40m "option" that we have. I'm pretty sure that if we want Rashford to join and he wants to join us, he will, for £40m regardless of what other teams want to do. Otherwise we don't have an option to buy him, we've got an opportunity to enter the market and negotiate a fee for a player available for transfer.

And to even put that option in place, we need to have had a pretty good idea of what terms Rashford would be signing with us and that his future Villa contract was acceptable to both him and the club. There would be no point agreeing that £40m option if we have no idea what Rashford would want in order to sign. If we said we wanted to take up the option, and he then said "I want my Man Utd contract paying up in full and for Villa to then pay me £1m per week", then once again, we don't really have an option to buy him.

I wouldn't be surprised if (as I think paul_e mooted), Villa / Man Utd / Rashford have all agreed and signed something along the lines of "if Villa are in the 25/26 Champions League, then Rashford is joining Villa on a contract that looks like this. If Villa are not in the 25/26 Champions League then Marcus doesn't want to go and Villa can't afford him anyway, so it's back to Old Trafford he goes".

I hope you're right, but I would be genuinely surprised if Rashford has agreed to sign for us permanently, with wages agreed, should certain milestones (like champions league qualification) be reached.  That's a LOT of negotiating to do in a very short space of time at the end of the January window.  It's relatively easy for an unhappy player to make a 5-month commitment, but it's much more difficult to make a 5 year one.  Especially a player who KNOWS he will have options.

Given the interest he's had from abroad (I'm thinking Barcelona specifically), I just don't see him agreeing to something that means he could be here for 4/5 years BEFORE he's even kicked a ball for us or spent any time being coached by Unai.

My guess is that all we've agreed on is the fee, and Man Utd HAVE to accept our £40m bid (if we make one), but everything else is up for grabs.

I hope that come the end of May we're all united in our desire to see the club do whatever it can to keep him.

[Dave]

Yes, all those points are sound. And I'm 100% certain that there's nothing agreed that Rashford couldn't walk away from if he thought it was in his best interest to do so.

But at the very least we must have an idea, in a world where we are opting to hand Man Utd £40m, we're doing so with the prior knowledge of what the player would want in those circumstances and that it's acceptable to us.

[algy]

Not sure anyone will know the answer to this, but I'll ask anyway. When a club takes a player on loan, and agrees a buy option, are the players terms agreed at the same time?

If Rashford is amazing for us, and we decide we want to buy him for the agreed price, do we still have to negotiate with him, or has that part been done already too?

Short answer - it depends.  Sometimes it's negotiated in advance, sometimes not.  I will be VERY surprised if we've agreed terms with Rashford should we want him at the end of his loan.  I suspect he'll have a lot of options, so it would be quite naive for him to have something agreed already.

When we brought Archer back from Sheff Utd, those wages were all agreed with Archer in the event we triggered the buy-back, but it's unusual.

My guess is we've got our fee agreed with Man Utd, which is great, but that they're under no obligation to turn down other offers, so if the loan goes well, we'll have to make an offer to Marcus that makes him want to stay with us.

Obviously it's hard to tell without knowing what's in the contract, but my gut-feeling is that there is more already agreed than this.

Take the £40m "option" that we have. I'm pretty sure that if we want Rashford to join and he wants to join us, he will, for £40m regardless of what other teams want to do. Otherwise we don't have an option to buy him, we've got an opportunity to enter the market and negotiate a fee for a player available for transfer.

And to even put that option in place, we need to have had a pretty good idea of what terms Rashford would be signing with us and that his future Villa contract was acceptable to both him and the club. There would be no point agreeing that £40m option if we have no idea what Rashford would want in order to sign. If we said we wanted to take up the option, and he then said "I want my Man Utd contract paying up in full and for Villa to then pay me £1m per week", then once again, we don't really have an option to buy him.

I wouldn't be surprised if (as I think paul_e mooted), Villa / Man Utd / Rashford have all agreed and signed something along the lines of "if Villa are in the 25/26 Champions League, then Rashford is joining Villa on a contract that looks like this. If Villa are not in the 25/26 Champions League then Marcus doesn't want to go and Villa can't afford him anyway, so it's back to Old Trafford he goes".

I hope you're right, but I would be genuinely surprised if Rashford has agreed to sign for us permanently, with wages agreed, should certain milestones (like champions league qualification) be reached.  That's a LOT of negotiating to do in a very short space of time at the end of the January window.  It's relatively easy for an unhappy player to make a 5-month commitment, but it's much more difficult to make a 5 year one.  Especially a player who KNOWS he will have options.

Given the interest he's had from abroad (I'm thinking Barcelona specifically), I just don't see him agreeing to something that means he could be here for 4/5 years BEFORE he's even kicked a ball for us or spent any time being coached by Unai.

My guess is that all we've agreed on is the fee, and Man Utd HAVE to accept our £40m bid (if we make one), but everything else is up for grabs.

I hope that come the end of May we're all united in our desire to see the club do whatever it can to keep him.

I'd imagine the trust lies somewhere between the two.

We didn't need to sort out the specifics of the Rashford deal before the deadline, as we've go a good 4-5 months to bash out those figures.  However, my guess is that we will have known that the player was open to a permanent move, and probably had some kind of ballpark figures to work off in terms of wages.  My guess is that - whilst it's not a done deal - the expectation from all parties is that there's a good chance that we will sign him in the summer, and we've already the £40m fee.  (EDIT: which is basically what Dave's written)

I suspected when he'd signed on loan that he'd thrive at a club like ours, and that 30mins against Spurs has done nothing but strengthen that view.  I think he's a perfect player for us - a clear step up from some of the players we started the window with, and fits perfectly in to the way we play.

Asensio was the surprise for me.  I'd had him down as a bit of a Zaniolo-type signing, where he'd be alright but be gone and mostly forgotten come the end of the season.  But my word, he's a player and a half.  If he can keep that up, we are going to look bloody scary in attack.  Him, Rogers, and Rashford are going to have an absolute field day.

Liked that Andres Garcia chap.  Kind of player that back in the day Coventry would've signed for £250k and then 12 months later sold to us for £8m.  Real bargain.

[ChicagoLion]

Yes, all those points are sound. And I'm 100% certain that there's nothing agreed that Rashford couldn't walk away from if he thought it was in his best interest to do so.

But at the very least we must have an idea, in a world where we are opting to hand Man Utd £40m, we're doing so with the prior knowledge of what the player would want in those circumstances and that it's acceptable to us.

Agree, the option is to all intents and purpose a done deal, the 40million fee will to some extent be paying off his contract and the balance they keep as profit, his renumeration package with us would reflect this.

[paul_e]

Yes, all those points are sound. And I'm 100% certain that there's nothing agreed that Rashford couldn't walk away from if he thought it was in his best interest to do so.

But at the very least we must have an idea, in a world where we are opting to hand Man Utd £40m, we're doing so with the prior knowledge of what the player would want in those circumstances and that it's acceptable to us.

Agree, the option is to all intents and purpose a done deal, the 40million fee will to some extent be paying off his contract and the balance they keep as profit, his renumeration package with us would reflect this.

Yep, that's my thinking as well. Whatever else he might be Rashford isn't dumb. He knows that no one is going to give him the same deal as he has now so I'd be surprised if the conversation of "if we make the CL and you meet these targets and MU pay you £xm to settle the contract then we'll be looking for something like £xm as the package to stay here".

It doesn't have to have been agreed but I just don't see anyone signing off on the option without that having happened because, as Dave says, the option is completely worthless without it.

[AV84]

^ It does sound like the kind of dumb shit Man Utd would do though. We may have no intention of buying him permanently but we agreed to their price to get the loan deal through.