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2022/23 Alex Iwobi

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Neiler said:
Wouldn't be on board with that wholly mate, maybe our own self identity and confidence has been battered a bit in recent years. The very fact lets say Ward Prowse, Maddison and lets say someone like Gibbs White are at clubs we are directly competing against, i think only suggests that even at the lower level we are punching at having access to this players isnt beyond the realms of possibility. Id accept Maddison is prob beyond on us in terms of career trajectory - but Ward Prowse - Gibbs White - im no so sure - which of the CL clubs really need a play maker. You can look elsewhere, Silva went out and picked up Pereira and Willian for a bit of playmaking stardust. These players arent beyond our reach or as inaccessible or as expensive as some may think. Someone like Reiss Nelson has 3 goals and 3 assists this season from a 146 mmins of football in the PL and is on a free. Iwobi has 2 and 8 from 3100 mins.

On the finance piece, im not saying we are brewstered but there has been £70 mill in revenue that has come into the club this financial year, while granted we have to have a wide eye on profit and sustainability rules and our loss situation - we should be in profit this year and as fees can be ammortised over the course of a contract - i dont think we should be afraid of investing money at all if we can do deals. we are in a much better position then we were 24 or 12 months ago - providing we stay in the league of course which is the massive unknown.

So for me an area of the squad we can improve is Iwobi's, hes not a 5.2 mill player, he doesn't make that level of contribution and can we improve the position with resources at hand - absolutely.
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Gibbs white cost 40m though. Ward Prowse similar. Iwobi's renewal is free.
 

catcherintherye said:
Gibbs white cost 40m though. Ward Prowse similar. Iwobi's renewal is free.
Click to expand...

You have to factor in value and influence mate.

Our wage ceiling in about 5.2 mill a year - reported that is what he is looking for. We can only give that to prob max 4 players in the squad, those players have to be worth it, if they aren't then they have to be traded.

Currently our highest earners on that type of money are, Gomes, Mina, probably Dele and Onana not far off reportedly. Overall that's woeful value for their contribution - adding Iwobi to that cohort is a really poor value decision in my opinion. we simly have to be cut throat with our highest earners - they aren't contributing enough - its ridiculous. Its not value at all and if we give Iwobi a 100k contract its repeating the same mistake.

I take your point, dont invest another 35 mill - 40 mill of a fee and increase that wage. Yet as i showed we know the calibre of player and how that player can be enabling and influential elsewhere in this league for that wage and its far higher in terms of influence and end product then Iwobi. We know where Iwobi on a high wage brings us, its exactly where we are.

If we could sell him, recoup some revenue, save his wage and reinvest and take on some investment (which we can} in a new purchase - then i think its much better value getting a player more competent and influential to give us a better chance of pushing us up the league which reaps its own financial rewards. In a way you are never buying players, you are investing in players in my opinion.
 
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Neiler said:
Wouldn't be on board with that wholly mate, maybe our own self identity and confidence has been battered a bit in recent years. The very fact lets say Ward Prowse, Maddison and lets say someone like Gibbs White are at clubs we are directly competing against, i think only suggests that even at the lower level we are punching at having access to this players isnt beyond the realms of possibility. Id accept Maddison is prob beyond on us in terms of career trajectory - but Ward Prowse - Gibbs White - im no so sure - which of the CL clubs really need a play maker. You can look elsewhere, Silva went out and picked up Pereira and Willian for a bit of playmaking stardust. These players arent beyond our reach or as inaccessible or as expensive as some may think. Someone like Reiss Nelson has 3 goals and 3 assists this season from a 146 mmins of football in the PL and is on a free. Iwobi has 2 and 8 from 3100 mins.

On the finance piece, im not saying we are brewstered but there has been £70 mill in revenue that has come into the club this financial year, while granted we have to have a wide eye on profit and sustainability rules and our loss situation - we should be in profit this year and as fees can be ammortised over the course of a contract - i dont think we should be afraid of investing money at all if we can do deals. we are in a much better position then we were 24 or 12 months ago - providing we stay in the league of course which is the massive unknown.

So for me an area of the squad we can improve is Iwobi's, hes not a 5.2 mill player, he doesn't make that level of contribution and can we improve the position with resources at hand - absolutely.
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Willian is exactly the kind of player we would have picked up, only to find he isnt massively keen on the north west and we’d be stuck with another aging prima dona on massive wages
How come we are the only ones that can’t make these transfers work?
Edit - Fulham is the kind of club iwobe would likely join if we don’t sign him. Likely start looking like some 40m footballer too
 
Neiler said:
You have to factor in value and influence mate.

Our wage ceiling in about 5.2 mill a year - reported that is what he is looking for. We can only give that to prob max 4 players in the squad, those players have to be worth it, if they aren't then they have to be traded.

Currently our highest earners on that type of money are, Gomes, Mina, probably Dele and Onana not far off reportedly. Overall that's woeful value for their contribution - adding Iwobi to that cohort is a really poor value decision in my opinion. we simly have to be cut throat with our highest earners - they aren't contributing enough - its ridiculous. Its not value at all and if we give Iwobi a 100k contract its repeating the same mistake.

I take your point, dont invest another 35 mill - 40 mill of a fee and increase that wage. Yet as i showed we know the calibre of player and how that player can be enabling and influential elsewhere in this league for that wage and its far higher in terms of influence and end product then Iwobi. We know where Iwobi on a high wage brings us, its exactly where we are.

If we could sell him, recoup some revenue, save his wage and reinvest and take on some investment (which we can} in a new purchase - then i think its much better value getting a player more competent and influential to give us a better chance of pushing us up the league which reaps its own financial rewards. In a way you are never buying players, you are investing in players in my opinion.
Click to expand...

A lot of interesting thoughts there, I'll try and address.

The first mistake re Iwobi was probably the initial purchase. We paid too much, and needed to negotiate better. There are better markets for us to shop in, unless we are getting a decent discount for cast offs. So I am in agreement there. However that's not where we find ourselves.

The wages point is also fair, I am in favour of a tight limit, and basically moving people on when they hit that. However he is a key pkayer for us now, so to me its not unfair he would receive those wages. I'd just want to see the contract for 3, rather than 5 years.

The players you have are good examples, but suspect they would want even bigger wages now. But let's work on the premise they would sign for 100k p/w, for MGW that would also be a transfer payment of £8m per year. His true cost would be around would be around double that of Iwobis. His attacking returns are not double, they are comparable, and Iwobi gives us more defensively. I'm not sure we can justify double the annual outlay.

Our issue is that we cant just have young potential players, or you risk becoming Southampton. It's a tough balancing act, but at this point, on a 3 year deal I can see sense in renewing Iwobi as a consistent(ish) performer while we try to find better.

The alternative of selling is fair, but I'm not sure how much we get with 1 year on a deal? Maybe 10m? And we are back to the point it will cost more to replace and a transition period while they bed in.

For me, we should be looking at players like the lad at Sheffield United, give him 12-18 months to bed in, and then we can start to phase Iwobi out when we have the replacement settled in.
 
catcherintherye said:
A lot of interesting thoughts there, I'll try and address.

The first mistake re Iwobi was probably the initial purchase. We paid too much, and needed to negotiate better. There are better markets for us to shop in, unless we are getting a decent discount for cast offs. So I am in agreement there. However that's not where we find ourselves.

The wages point is also fair, I am in favour of a tight limit, and basically moving people on when they hit that. However he is a key pkayer for us now, so to me its not unfair he would receive those wages. I'd just want to see the contract for 3, rather than 5 years.

The players you have are good examples, but suspect they would want even bigger wages now. But let's work on the premise they would sign for 100k p/w, for MGW that would also be a transfer payment of £8m per year. His true cost would be around would be around double that of Iwobis. His attacking returns are not double, they are comparable, and Iwobi gives us more defensively. I'm not sure we can justify double the annual outlay.

Our issue is that we cant just have young potential players, or you risk becoming Southampton. It's a tough balancing act, but at this point, on a 3 year deal I can see sense in renewing Iwobi as a consistent(ish) performer while we try to find better.

The alternative of selling is fair, but I'm not sure how much we get with 1 year on a deal? Maybe 10m? And we are back to the point it will cost more to replace and a transition period while they bed in.

For me, we should be looking at players like the lad at Sheffield United, give him 12-18 months to bed in, and then we can start to phase Iwobi out when we have the replacement settled in.
Click to expand...

Wouldn't agree with that take at all mate. Admittedly you say we shouldn't have signed on the terms we did, again i feel we would be compounding that with another bad decision to reinvest in him, you are chasing losses.

The term key player i think is subjective, does his role in the team come down to necessity or is he undropable based on performance - its because we have a light squad and lack alternates, he is key because the bar has dropped from say James two years ago and Richarlison now - is that worth the highest wage we can offer at the club - not for me. I dont think hes key at all, i wouldnt be building a team aroun dhim for the next 3-5 years and i think you have to that for the wage you are talking to a degree in fact i think with what we can offer in the market in terms of the wage he is looking for i think we can defintiely improve on him.

In relacing him you can use words like cost, but you can also use words like invest, its worthwhile replacing players who haven't been value by investing in others who may be - the value increases overall. Take your example of the lad from Sheffield Utd, he could come in on a lower wage then Iwobi via a fee and we could potentially double the fee in 2-3 years time, Iwobi we know hes only depreciated since hes been here - we wont get £34 million for him ever - so why would give him the clubs top wages, when we acknowledge hes bad value and value to us of fee already spent will never be recovered - its quite mad.

We need to recoup whatever we can on him. Annually he costs us 11 mill a year. If he wasnt here next year we recoup 11 mill and then what ever fee we get for him, if its 10 million - we recoup 21 million and thats enough to be getting on with with a replacement with scope to improve and the other benefit int terms of position that come with that. Because we have spend money that shouldn't stop us, nor should we be afraid of it, there is revenue in the club.

I dont subscribe to the Southampton analogy, lets be honest its not trelfvent their are enough senior pros at the vclub for us - signing talneted young players to be prohibititve - its not an accurate comparrision or relevent to our situaiton.

Id be very much in the sell camp, i dont think hes a key player, i dont think we should be relying on him, i dont think we should be building around him, i think giving him the full whack of our wage coiling is a bad value decision and frankly compounding a bad decision in signing him in the terms we have. We can definitely improve on him and we should be targeting doing just that.
 

catcherintherye said:
A lot of interesting thoughts there, I'll try and address.

The first mistake re Iwobi was probably the initial purchase. We paid too much, and needed to negotiate better. There are better markets for us to shop in, unless we are getting a decent discount for cast offs. So I am in agreement there. However that's not where we find ourselves.

The wages point is also fair, I am in favour of a tight limit, and basically moving people on when they hit that. However he is a key pkayer for us now, so to me its not unfair he would receive those wages. I'd just want to see the contract for 3, rather than 5 years.

The players you have are good examples, but suspect they would want even bigger wages now. But let's work on the premise they would sign for 100k p/w, for MGW that would also be a transfer payment of £8m per year. His true cost would be around would be around double that of Iwobis. His attacking returns are not double, they are comparable, and Iwobi gives us more defensively. I'm not sure we can justify double the annual outlay.

Our issue is that we cant just have young potential players, or you risk becoming Southampton. It's a tough balancing act, but at this point, on a 3 year deal I can see sense in renewing Iwobi as a consistent(ish) performer while we try to find better.

The alternative of selling is fair, but I'm not sure how much we get with 1 year on a deal? Maybe 10m? And we are back to the point it will cost more to replace and a transition period while they bed in.

For me, we should be looking at players like the lad at Sheffield United, give him 12-18 months to bed in, and then we can start to phase Iwobi out when we have the replacement settled in.
Click to expand...
Basically a player we shouldn’t have signed for what we did, but he isn’t our worst player, hes just not a 40m player.
We would miss him in the squad.
The money we pay for someone shouldn’t matter, but it is a weight around the neck.
If we got him on a free we would probably be talking about him as being a decent servant through troubled times.
 

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