Wesley Fofana - He is no more - finished - forgotten.

[PAPA LAZAROU]

51 minutes ago, Beechey said:

That's nonsense, it depends who we sign.

If you assume we will sign dross, then obviously it's a negative, that's not a given, though.

At this stage of the transfer window, what caliber of player do you think is left? if we sign anyone it is going to be a massive downgrade on Fofana now that is a given.

[ARM1968]

29 minutes ago, Dahnsouff said:

Exactly like the sales of Mahrez, Chilwell. Kante different as he had a release clause. Maguire was different because he was secretly shit.

Different times friend, different times. 

[Beechey]

Just now, PAPA LAZAROU said:

At this stage of the transfer window, what caliber of player do you think is left? if we sign anyone it is going to be a massive downgrade on Fofana now that is a given.

That’s my main worry. I feel like if we try to buy now it’s going to be panic stations. I just hope the recruitment team are still working.

[STEVIE B]

12 minutes ago, Foxxed said:

Not getting European football has really buggered the club. If what I read above is true, Fofana’s transfer funds won’t help us with the main problem, our wage bill, anyway. Vestergaard wanting to stay here on his current salary was and is bigger and more troubling news. 

Vesty can wave goodbye to Denmark's WC squad, if that's his game. I'm amazed he gets picked anyway. 

[ARM1968]

25 minutes ago, turtmcfly said:

 

It's simply not possible to buy a better than reasonable player for £35 million. I did not know this. 

 

Given that's about as high as we'd ever go it certainly helps take the worry out of us not signing anyone. 

 

 

(it is clearly possible. That last para is risible) 

 

Let’s see the Lord Vader (might be too obscure for you that, but you never know).

 

Also - are you taking your meds?  Do you think we will spend ALL the money generated on two players? Not a chance. We have already shown that we can spend £30 million on dross. 

Edited 9 August 2022 by ARM1968

[lcfcbluearmy]

2 hours ago, Ric Flair said:

I'd be shocked if we wouldn't sell him at £85m. We're at a complete standstill in incomings and outgoings and got a massive imbalance in certain areas of our squad and I cannot believe the board and Top think that's not an issue that must be corrected this summer, as opposed to next. Likewise if its more they no longer trust Brendan but don't have the money to pay him off then again you'd want the financial flexibility to be able to do so in the short to medium term.

 

In all my years as a fan, this summer and our conflicting actions are stranger than anything I've witnessed. Can somebody please make sense of it? Top claimed he was confident we'd get some signings in this month still, but based on what scenario? He said that at a point where he must have been informed that we are getting either lowball bids for players we want rid of and aren't prepared to accept them for some reason or we aren't getting any bids for the players we expected such as Tielemans and Soyuncu, so surely you'd be even more conservative about what's to happen this window than previously planned at the end of last season? Our heads are up our arseholes.

I would agree if it was early in the window but at this point any player that we want to buy is going to have a massively inflated price so we would struggle to replace and strengthen in other areas. I don't think we will sell this window. Next summer or even January is a different story

[turlo]

22 minutes ago, Foxxed said:

Not getting European football has really buggered the club. If what I read above is true, Fofana’s transfer funds won’t help us with the main problem, our wage bill, anyway. Vestergaard wanting to stay here on his current salary was and is bigger and more troubling news. 

Over paying squad players & dishing out new contracts based on us having regular income from European Football has really buggered the club up and could take a couple of transfer windows to get things back in order.

[stu]

Decent article by Tanner, explains why selling Fofana won't solve our issues in that it would only release one squad place and the need is to move on senior players who are not contributing to the first team to bring the squad size down, not to sell assets such as Fofana and Maddision.

 

The stance still remains that we won't sell as it would significantly weaken the squad, as a replacement that reflects Fofana's quality would be a difficult task.

 

Also, he suggests Chelsea bid was closer to £60m rather than the £70m reported. Chelsea would have to signifcantly increase the offer for us to consider it this transfer window. They have also noted the fee they paid to Brighton for Cucurella being £63m.

Edited 9 August 2022 by stu

[CrispinLA in Texas]

PSG interested him now.....so we definitely going to get 100m+ ....... happy days!

[Number 6]

Issue with a dwindling time limit, bloated wages, and players we want to shift is that any potential suitor will probably look to wait it out and save the money. Whereas we do have power in the Fofana bargaining, I think we are weak in these transfers. If clubs know we have players who won't make it into our 25 then clearly they're gonna wait and save a few quid - think we need to be pragmatic with shifting those players.

[Beechey]

1 minute ago, stu said:

Decent article by Tanner, explains why selling Fofana won't solve our issues in that it would only release one squad place and the need is to move on senior players who are not contributing to the first team to bring the squad size down, not to sell assets such as Fofana and Maddision.

 

The stance still remains that we won't sell as it would significantly weaken the squad, as a replacement that reflects Fofana's quality would be a difficult task.

 

Also, he suggests Chelsea bid was closer to £60m rather than the £70 reported. Chelsea would have to signifcantly increase the offer for us to consider it this transfer window.

Should definitely not sell for closer to £60m, I'd question how serious they are. They know roughly what Leicester want.

[Ric Flair]

26 minutes ago, City1884 said:

Some people still seem to not actually be listening to the problems that are causing our stale transfer window…….
 

Let’s say we do sell Fofana for £85m, that means currently we’ve lost 2 players from an already bloated squad. 
 

Realistically that means we have the squad room to sign a maximum of one new player without being right back to where we started. 
 

Our transfer record is currently in the region of £40m for Tielemans. It’s unlikely we would sign any one player for more than £50m, especially not a centre back to replace Fofana.

 

Realistically we would end up probably buying a replacement CB for up to a maximum of around £35m.

 

Where does that leave us? (Up to) £50m in profit, with still no space in the squad for new signings, and a weakened back line. 
The money only becomes useful if we offload deadwood to make space, and guess what? We are struggling to do that.

 

The transfer fee for Fofana is pretty irrelevant. It could be £85m or £200m, we still need space in the squad (and a reduction in the wage bill) by offloading the players we actually don’t want!

 

The sale of Fofana would be a dreadful move, at any price, unless we also get rid of multiple unused, overpaid players. (Choudhury, Vestergaard, Bertrand, Perez, etc etc)

 

The only other thing it would make possible is paying off some of these players contracts, but that’s seen (quite rightly) as just pouring money down the drain…………

We have already rejected bids for Soumare, Praet, Castagne, Maddison and Fofana. There's also talk that we aren't prepared to be lowballed or cover the majority of wages for fringe players but the nearer we get to the end of the window we will have to do that if we want to get rid of players.

 

Selling Fofana would also allow us to take a hit on certain players, whether that means take £15m instead of £20m for Soumare, the same with Praet and maybe we agree to cover a chunk of Choudhury, Perez and Vestergaards wages. It gives us that flexibility to free up what we've all been insinuated is the issue and then we have the freedom to replace Fofana, get a right winger in and depending on what players have gone additions in those areas if needs be.

 

I think its the only way we can operate this transfer window. Leaving it until deadline day to move players out and bring players in will be a bloodbath, especially as we're playing rhythm day too. 

[Ric Flair]

25 minutes ago, lcfcbluearmy said:

I would agree if it was early in the window but at this point any player that we want to buy is going to have a massively inflated price so we would struggle to replace and strengthen in other areas. I don't think we will sell this window. Next summer or even January is a different story

Loan deals with a decent fee is one way of dealing with the tag around our necks of having £90m to spend.

[An Sionnach]

1 minute ago, Ric Flair said:

Loan deals with a decent fee is one way of dealing with the tag around our necks of having £90m to spend.

Do we loan out our core players? No we don't , and neither do any of our competitors. You get their equivalent of Perez.

[Dames]

8 minutes ago, stu said:

Decent article by Tanner, explains why selling Fofana won't solve our issues in that it would only release one squad place and the need is to move on senior players who are not contributing to the first team to bring the squad size down, not to sell assets such as Fofana and Maddision.

 

The stance still remains that we won't sell as it would significantly weaken the squad, as a replacement that reflects Fofana's quality would be a difficult task.

 

Also, he suggests Chelsea bid was closer to £60m rather than the £70m reported. Chelsea would have to signifcantly increase the offer for us to consider it this transfer window. They have also noted the fee they paid to Brighton for Cucurella being £63m.

So all in all basically even if we sell for 80 odd million we still don't have enough room in the budget to sign players.

 

We really are up the creek without a paddle aint we. 

[Dames]

1 minute ago, An Sionnach said:

Do we loan out our core players? No we don't , and neither do any of our competitors. You get their equivalent of Perez.

We'll end up with either Mings, Bednarek or Winks maybe even all 3 if we took the loan approach.

[Ric Flair]

5 minutes ago, An Sionnach said:

Do we loan out our core players? No we don't , and neither do any of our competitors. You get their equivalent of Perez.

Not always, every summer and January there are loan deals that occur for coveted players.

[coolhandfox]

3 minutes ago, Dames said:

So all in all basically even if we sell for 80 odd million we still don't have enough room in the budget to sign players.

 

We really are up the creek without a paddle aint we. 

We want to move on the deadwood, not sell our best players.

[foxinsocks]

When fulham bid for vesty we should have told  him to take it... or play with the academy 

[Claudio Fannieri]

4 minutes ago, Dames said:

We'll end up with either Mings, Bednarek or Winks maybe even all 3 if we took the loan approach.

Why have the club even bothered to hire a new Head of Recruitment when so many of our fans already tell us who we are going to sign. 
 

I think If we do shift the deadwood it’s more likely we will look for decent value additions/players with future sell on potential. I think if players like Praet, Choudhury and Perez leave we will look to replace them with players like James Garner or take a punt on a talented yongster like Alex Scott from the Championship. 
 

if we sell Youri then I think it will be a ready made replacement like Aaour or Kokcu 

[ClaphamFox]

2 minutes ago, foxinsocks said:

When fulham bid for vesty we should have told  him to take it... or play with the academy 

His exclusion from the matchday squad on Sunday was presumably a message. However, if we find we're short of CBs at the end of the window we won't be leaving him out of the Prem squad, no matter how frustrated we are with him...

[foxinsocks]

Vesty is holding out..but we should read him the riot act.  I presume insurance covers Bertrand.   

Soumare needs to be given to monaco foc. We will have to let hamza go cheap so that wba pr watford can pay his wages.  Youri and lil wes will go.  I am not sure about options for ayoze. Keep praet.

Edited 9 August 2022 by foxinsocks

[foxinsocks]

Just now, ClaphamFox said:

His exclusion from the matchday squad on Sunday was presumably a message. However, if we find we're short of CBs at the end of the window we won't be leaving him out of the Prem squad, no matter how frustrated we are with him...

Play ndidi

 

[FoxinNotts]

1 minute ago, foxinsocks said:

Play ndidi

 

NO NO NO

[Dames]

3 minutes ago, Claudio Fannieri said:

Why have the club even bothered to hire a new Head of Recruitment when so many of our fans already tell us who we are going to sign. 
 

I think If we do shift the deadwood it’s more likely we will look for decent value additions/players with future sell on potential. I think if players like Praet, Choudhury and Perez leave we will look to replace them with players like James Garner or take a punt on a talented yongster like Alex Scott from the Championship. 
 

if we sell Youri then I think it will be a ready made replacement like Aaour or Kokcu 

Well considering he's not starting until after the window shuts somebody has to do the job right?

 

The way things are going is that its going to be late, its going to be panicked and that's when 'PL Experience' becomes the overriding factor in any deal.

 

If we do any deals late you can imagine PL Experience will be at the top of the list as we'll need players hitting the ground running, as posters have mentioned if we take the loan route we won't be able to loan clubs best players so we'll be stuck sniffing around for out of favour players that Rodgers or the recruitment team think they can work with.