Winter 25-26 Transfer Window - hopes, speculation, rumours etc.

[brontebilly]

Thought he did ok in the second half at Brighton to be fair. At least got into good positions in the box. First half he was lost. He might bundle in a few goals and help Cash out defensively but you can't correct his basic lack of technical ability. Sadly I think some of his team mates have the same view. That standard ball from Cash up the line to his feet is not his friend. McGinn on the other hand loves that pass as he can drag the full back in close and turn into midfield.

Combine Sancho's technical skills with Guessand's workrate and you'd have a decent player.

[Drummond]

What's with the smoke and mirrors around the Malen deal? Villa saying gone for an undisclosed fee, Roma saying its a loan with an option to buy?

We never seem to announce details of the deals we do.

[Dante Lavelli]

Didn't we go through a period under Lerner where we never sold anyone for any actual money, like years? At least we're very good at optimising our sales now.

I remember that. A bomb squad which got bigger with each new manager.

It’s another reason why selling “Malens” makes sense as it keeps the squad fresh and generates a small profit.

Also - because we are good - there’s only a handful of clubs that can afford our best players, so fewer offers. 

[ChicagoLion]

If I could choose Malen and not have Sancho and or Guessand I would choose Malen every time.

[Olneythelonely]

What's with the smoke and mirrors around the Malen deal? Villa saying gone for an undisclosed fee, Roma saying its a loan with an option to buy?

We never seem to announce details of the deals we do.

But we don’t usually say the opposite to the buying club.

[berneboy]

If I could choose Malen and not have Sancho and or Guessand I would choose Malen every time.

I agree

[LeeB]

Of course, we’ve also spent a fair chunk of our money pretty bloody badly. I mentioned a few pages back, or on another thread, we have made some really good signings in the last few years but it doesn’t feel like our strategy is coherent and we’ve made some poor errors - at least in terms of whether the manager rates the players we’re signing.

There is obviously some really good examples of really bad transfer strategies, Everton a few years back, Man utd for ever, but other than the Brentford & Brighton model, it feels like most team have a degree of chance about it all. Just some clubs waft more money about.
Im not overly concerned about our transfer strategy in terms of coherency, i think we’ve had more hits than misses, not including kids bought.

Off the top of my head in Emery’s time, hits include Duran, Rashford, Asensio, Rogers, Torres,Maatsen, Lindelof, Diaby (for a time), Tielemans, Onana (when fit), Bizot, Malen.

Misses, Elliot, Sancho (so far), Guessand (so far), Disasi,

Somewhere in between -Barkley.

No one ever gets it perfect in the transfer market, it's impossible.  The best you have hope for, is more hits than misses, and that the misses don't prove TOO expensive.  The very fact that our squad today is better than the one Emery inherited when he joined, and his net transfer spend over those three years is basically a couple of buttons, suggests to me that we're one of the better movers in the transfer market.

We make mistakes, all clubs do, but our transfer business since Unai came in has been pretty bloody good in my opinion, and certainly better than it's been generally in the last 20 years.

I think there is something uniquely odd about last summer, across the whole league and how successful the big transfers made have been.

I reckon the hits (and restricting it to outfield players who went for say, £25m or more) reads something like:

Ekitike, Zubimendi, Cherki, Dewsbury-Hall, Cunha, Mbuemo, Woltemade, Kudus. And I think the last five of those eight are still not exactly explosive in how successful they've been, more a "yeah, they've been fine".

The (selected) list of misses as things currently stand, while obviously accepting that lots of them have had their moments and could still go on to improve:

Eze, Madueke, Gyokeres, Guessand, Delap, Joao Pedro, Gittens, Garnacho, Hato, Barry, Dibling, Frimpong, Wirtz, Kerkez, Isak, Sesko, Elanga, Wissa, Ramsey, Ndoye, Hutchinson, McAtee, Kalimuendo, Bakwa, Xavi Simons.

That feels a lot worse than it usually would be across the league.

Could it be down to the increasingly systemised approach of teams makes it harder for players to transition rather than the 'do your own thing' approach of days of old?

[Dave]

Could it be down to the increasingly systemised approach of teams makes it harder for players to transition rather than the 'do your own thing' approach of days of old?

Probably a load of things. I'd add the fact that lots of players going to bigger clubs are going there to be part of a squad - so if Eze, Madueke, the Chelsea lads, the Forest lads had all played 25 games then they might look like they've done a whole lot more. Getting ten minutes here and there makes it harder to make an impression.

Quite a lot of that list have had injuries to keep them out the side for a while.

One thing's for sure though, our lacklustre summer is certainly mitigated by the fact that loads of other rival clubs spent a lot more than us to end up no better off than us as a result of their spending.

Newcastle in particular - our £25m on Guessand, versus their £220m or so on Ramsey, Wissa, Elanga and Woltemade.

[PeterWithesShin]

The majority of signings fail and have done so for decades. And will continue to do so for years to come.

[Ian.]

The majority of signings fail and have done so for decades. And will continue to do so for years to come.

Which takes us back to the post (I forgot who) about teams in Germany see it as a failure if they do not develop and bring players through from their youth system.

[Smithy]

The majority of signings fail and have done so for decades. And will continue to do so for years to come.

If that were true, then the majority of clubs 'sell well'.  I personally think there are some signings that fail, some that do brilliantly, but that the majority are just 'okay', doing the job to roughly the standard expected for the price paid for them.  I think we've had very few failures, a handful of very decent successes, and another group that have done perfectly okay without setting the world alight.

[paul_e]

The majority of signings fail and have done so for decades. And will continue to do so for years to come.

If that were true, then the majority of clubs 'sell well'.  I personally think there are some signings that fail, some that do brilliantly, but that the majority are just 'okay', doing the job to roughly the standard expected for the price paid for them.  I think we've had very few failures, a handful of very decent successes, and another group that have done perfectly okay without setting the world alight.

I agree, that's basically the point I was making about Disasi, I think part of the problem is how polarised everything has become which makes 'just ok' easily the rarest response to things where the standards are great or utter shit and very little required to shift from one to the other (but frequently former to latter).

[PaulWinch again]

If Kamara is going to be out for longer our squad is starting to look thin.

[Beard82]

If you take Barkley, Onana and Kamara out of any squad its a pretty big impact

[PeterWithesShin]

I class Malen as a failure for example, for the money we paid 7 league starts in a year is shit. And it's why he's no longer a Villa player. Many would class him as ok as he did contribute off the bench and we got our money back, but we didn't sign him to be a bench player for 12 months.

Doesn't mean he's a bad player, but signing him didn't work out how we wanted. And that's how most transfers go.