Why do I keep reading that we have named our price for him. He shouldn't be for sale. He should be given an opportunity to see if he can make the step up to the Prem full time. I think he can/will. These types of players should be the ones we are looking for going forward.
Sadly I don't think this is quite as clear cut as you might think - if we're still sailing very close to the margin of the P+L rules (and we might not be to be fair, the P+L investigation seems to relate to the reporting of prior transfer windows), £35m for Branthwaite would allow us to do far more than £50m for Onana because of the cheap fee/contract we paid for young Jarrad.
Moreover, are we really sure that Branthwaite can come in and replace Mina? I'd like to think that he could given a full preseason, perhaps even a dedicated defensive midfielder ahead of him and Tarkowski, but I can understand why the club might want a CB who has performed well in a stronger league than the Netherlands (whom you can probably acquire for, what, £20m? Half of what you get for Branthwaite). The rest of the dough then goes on a forward or fullbacks, both typically being more expensive than CBs.
Players like Branthwaite certainly are the ones we should be looking for going forward, but by extension, the club needs to get far, far better at striking while the iron is hot and selling whilst prices are high - it's not hard to imagine Branthwaite coming into this side and struggling having been in a mostly dominant PSV team and knocking a few £m off of his price tag.
Personally - I really hope we don't sell him, and I hope we've got more money in the transfer kitty than I think we actually do; but I can't say it would surprise me if it did happen, and I think he'd go on to be another casualty of our decade of mismanagement (Stones, Deulofeu, Barkley, Lukaku etc)
