I don’t think you can accuse Solak of that, when we announced we were sticking with Tonda it raised more eyebrows than a Beverly Hills plastic surgeon. It was certainly a brave decision, which caught me by surprise.
I thought he had to go and TBH I’m still not entirely convinced keeping him was the right decision. Maybe with two or three signings in key areas we will be rejuvenated and start looking like we did last year but right now it’s all a bit Will Still.
We've just signed three strikers, we're not getting two more. Maybe one if DD, BBD and Archer all leave but even then it wouldn't be a given.
I'd reasonably expect a CM, CB (two if JQ leaves), a backup goalkeeper and not much more else.
The point being that you’d say this when we’re selling players but wouldn’t expect us to pay ridiculous money when signing players. Football is a business, we buy and sell players for what we think is a reasonable price, depending on the specific conditions.
Shawshank, Jaws, Jurassic Park, the LOTR trilogy, Gladiator, Master and Commander, The Dark Knight, Saving Private Ryan, Inside Man and for me you can’t beat Hot Fuzz.
Which will be about £10-15m next summer and £0 the summer after. We aren’t going to let a player run down his contract and lose up to £25m, especially if he doesn’t even want to be here.
£10m should buy us a very good replacement for Championship level, with a net surplus of £15m.
Ahhhh this is what I love about the PL. At any given moment in time the glory supporting armchair fans of at least three ‘big clubs’ are having an absolute mare.
It’s a bit more than we paid for him, which makes sense as he hasn’t really gone beyond what he was back then. When we agreed a fee of part of his loan, he was a top quality Championship player who’d just got promoted with Burnley. Now he’s a top quality Championship player who’s just reached the playoffs with Southampton.
We can’t just demand more because we want it. £25m is about the ceiling for a Championship defender, I can’t think of any off hand who’ve sold for more. It’d be our record signing if we were buying him.