Alejandro Garnacho - loan deal agreed

[PaulWinch again]

Some of the takes - external and on here - are very over the top. When the link emerged I wasn’t thrilled, but if it’s accurate Unai wants him that will be big. It doesn’t guarantee anything clearly, he has had a patchy career to date but I think it’s too easy to say that’s all about him given the circumstances he faced at his previous club’s. He is undoubtedly talented and having a manager who advocates for him might be what he needs. He’s a risk, but the upside is pretty high.

[PaulWinch again]

To replace Rogers with Garnacho is one thing, but to replace him with Garnacho in a way that UEFA are nailed-on guaranteed to find some kind of fault with, and thus make us lose out on most of the profit, is something else.

Make a note of this because this is exactly how it will unfold.They will value Rogers at £60m and Garnacho  at £50m, giving us just £10m profit. I would value Rogers at £130m and Garnacho at £28m

If it happened in a vacuum that might make sense, but value’s are inherently influenced by the market. It’s pretty obvious for us to be able to point to market comparisons and show the fee paid for Rogers is not out of step.

[aev]

He is a player who prob needs a bit of guidance, which is fine.

What should be our primary consideration is getting our finances in order - we have £117m in which should put us well on the way to being able to act with greater flexibility going forward.

If we sign AG, and UEFA aren't happy with the deal, it would be a pretty stupid signing.

So my enthusiasm for the deal is dependant upon UEFA interpretation of 2 transfers , which pretty much sums up modern football.

[London Villan]

And the loan to buy activation will probably be in next years figures too.

[Smithy]

I don't see how UEFA could ever see it as a swap deal based on a conditional loan agreement, given how we treated Harvey Elliot last season. We've already shown - very publicly - that a loan with an easily achievable milestone that requires us to buy them, doesn't automatically mean we WILL buy them. 

I will be stunned if we've agreed to another "appear 10 times and we buy you" deal, but I also think it will be at a level where we can simply stop playing him if it's not working out.

[frank black]

I’m not entirely convinced this is driven by Unai. It may just be a case that the owners have told him that we have FFP/PSR deal going on with Chelsea for Rogers, but we must take one of these in return for it to work… which one do you want Unai? Player x or y

[ChicagoLion]

I don't see how UEFA could ever see it as a swap deal based on a conditional loan agreement, given how we treated Harvey Elliot last season. We've already shown - very publicly - that a loan with an easily achievable milestone that requires us to buy them, doesn't automatically mean we WILL buy them. 

I will be stunned if we've agreed to another "appear 10 times and we buy you" deal, but I also think it will be at a level where we can simply stop playing him if it's not working out.

I can not see any other method other than being based on  appearance's to contract a conditional loan deal.

[john e]

The biggest difference between comparing Sancho to Garnacho for me is Sancho couldn’t beat a man for pace He never went by anyone very often if at all using natural pace, same for Bailey actually they just stop turn back and play it backwards, they sometimes might do a little dribble but that’s not very often wide on the wing

Garnacho can beat his man and he regularly takes the defender on, he’s not scared to the others are ,
now he does lose it quite a few times as well, but you’re gonna get that when you’re taking the high risk. Also what he does with it after he’s beaten his man is up for question.

So I’m not saying it’s all strawberries and cream but the one thing i’ve seen Garnacho do is have a go, take on his defender and try and get around him, which is something we’ve not had for… well ages

[ChicagoLion]

I’m not entirely convinced this is driven by Unai. It may just be a case that the owners have told him that we have FFP/PSR deal going on with Chelsea for Rogers, but we must take one of these in return for it to work… which one do you want Unai? Player x or y

Do you really believe that the club would treat this manager like that?

[andyh]

I’m not entirely convinced this is driven by Unai. It may just be a case that the owners have told him that we have FFP/PSR deal going on with Chelsea for Rogers, but we must take one of these in return for it to work… which one do you want Unai? Player x or y

We know for sure Unai wanted him last summer.
I can’t see why that would change.

[chrisw1]

To replace Rogers with Garnacho is one thing, but to replace him with Garnacho in a way that UEFA are nailed-on guaranteed to find some kind of fault with, and thus make us lose out on most of the profit, is something else.

Make a note of this because this is exactly how it will unfold.They will value Rogers at £60m and Garnacho  at £50m, giving us just £10m profit. I would value Rogers at £130m and Garnacho at £28m

If it happened in a vacuum that might make sense, but value’s are inherently influenced by the market. It’s pretty obvious for us to be able to point to market comparisons and show the fee paid for Rogers is not out of step.

Do you actually get the opportunity to make that representation though?  My reading of the rules is that if Garnacho is deemed a guaranteed obligation, they simply wipe his entire fee off the Rogers fee and we only get to book the difference - so about £75m.

It seems brutal, but that was my reading of the wording.  And IF we have put ourselves in that position, it seems incredibly naive.

[Grumpy]

He’s better than anyone else we have currently who can play out there.

Think folks started applying grease (or their own choice of self love lotion) too soon when they saw other linked wingers and are now just feeling a bit sad.

And unnecessarily fluffed.

[frank black]

I’m not entirely convinced this is driven by Unai. It may just be a case that the owners have told him that we have FFP/PSR deal going on with Chelsea for Rogers, but we must take one of these in return for it to work… which one do you want Unai? Player x or y

Do you really believe that the club would treat this manager like that?

Maybe he was given Arsenals 80/90 mil or Chelsea’s wheeling and dealing.  I’m sure Unai had the final decision, but I’m not convinced he has sought out Garnacho. Perhaps he was number 3/4/5 on his possible target list. You wouldn’t sensibly put him near the top of a shopping list.

[boozey182]

I'll admit I haven't really been paying attention, but I'm a little shocked by the reaction to this. Presumably a lot of it is because we don't know exactly how much of our total budget for the summer this will make up? Because £40 million for an Argentinian international winger who's only just turned 22 sounds like a bit of a bargain. Especially one that has bags of pace - the exact thing we've been lacking for years.

I've found this summer really exciting so far. For a long period last season I thought we were dreadful - too slow, too passive and in some cases, incapable of passing the ball to a team mate. Judging from the signings so far, Unai agreed. I think we needed an overhaul of the squad because other than an incredible run between September - December (with another little spike at the end), we weren't very good. Even as recently as the semi-final first leg against Forest, I'd have gotten rid of most of the team! (I vividly remember saying that if we could somehow swap Rogers for MGW and make a profit it would be a stroke of genius, but in my defence I hadn't seen Manzambi play at that point!). It may take a little while for it all to gel, so please don't expect us to get off to a flyer like we did last year...

I think we were desperate for a younger squad, with more pace. Unai knows how difficult it can be to adapt to the Premier League, so experience over here is important. Garnacho ticks a lot of boxes. We're not in a position where we can spend £100 million on a player, so we have to take a few risks. Get a player whose value is lower than their potential. £40 million isn't that much these days (Max Kilman anybody?), and if we can get him playing with any type of consistency he'll be one of the best wingers in the league and worth double that.

So, at the risk of ruling myself out for a position with the tabloid press, I'm going to go out on a limb and say this is a smart signing. (With the pretty major caveat that this is only as long as we haven't done something stupid with the UEFA rules. Surely we're not going to do that, are we...?)

[Bosco81]

That’s the thing with managers you like, any deals you don’t like the look of you pin on the Director of Football, even if all evidence is pointing to Unai actually thinking he can get a tune out of him.

The difference with this deal and Sancho is that we’re 6 weeks away from deadline day, Sancho and Elliott were complete panic buys to bring bodies in, and none of us know how much input Unai had on them, we can only guess.