Zatara
Player Valuation: £100m
I can see why people roll their eyes about this plan - the likelihood of getting all of these transfers done within our financial constraints is close to zero.
I do agree with Zat's general concept though. We have too many players on huge wages who make marginal contributions at most, and the sooner we get rid of them the better.
Of Zat's list of "outs", DCL and Beto are the last two I'd let go. If the others all went and we received £5m each for Godfrey, Keane, Holgate, Doucouré, Gomes, Gana and Maupay we'd have enough of a task on our hands to re-stock the squad. Selling DCL and Beto on top of that wouldn't bring in enough cash to buy one striker so there would be no point, IMHO.
The key to this type of approach would be somehow fleecing a Saudi club, getting some absurd fee for Doucouré and/or Gomes. If the DoF can pull that off then we can keep Onana and Branthwaite and still have funds to spend.
The key point that some posters are missing is the number of out of contract players: Lonergan, Young, Gomes, Coleman, Gana, Dele + Harrison & Danjuma finishing their loans = 8 players before any work needs to be done.
So, we should have sold Gomes last summer but we do have Doucoure that we could try and sell to Saudi as you suggest.
Holgate, Keane and Godfrey could be transfer listed with Maupay, DCL & Beto. Potentially thats enough for a 3rd choice centre back & a starting centre forward.
In total it would mean 8 players out of contract & 7 players for sale.
As ive previously mentioned, this takes us down to 12 players -- however, this season weve only had 17 players with over 5 matches worth of game time.
The wages saved would be astronomical and fees reinvested into high potential youth with loans to act as cover.