John Stones transfer saga

[kenada_blue]

Even at £30M that'd be a massive price for a player who still has a lot of skills to acquire.

In a perfect world we'd keep him and add to the number of young players comfortable on the ball. However, because of who owns us we cant afford to turn down that kind of cash for a player at his stage of development.

The bottom line for me is that Stones is very good but hyped up beyond belief. At last we're the club getting the benefit from the media bubble surrounding the next big thing.

Let's put it this way (and I'm no massive admirer of him) but if I were given the choice of retaining Stones or Jagielka I'd go with Jagielka every single time. We'll replace Stones with a very good CB.

Not for me. Stones will be a new Rio Ferdinand or even better.

Wouldn't say Maldini class either, but he could easily be shaped that way.

 

[Kev The Rat]

A lot of unknowns/question marks over Stones current performance let alone any future potential. Makes me wonder in a way why Chelski, who presumably can attract and afford to buy any centre half in the world, seem so desperate to sign him.

 

[Jason Allen]

Question is... Who can honestly see him staying? I think we would crumble at £30 million+....

 

[ijjysmith]

Question is... Who can honestly see him staying? I think we would crumble at £30 million+....

We'd be daft to think he's staying here forever, but this summer is the wrong time for him to go for a lot of reasons. No matter the price.

 

[Alex Hindmarsh]

A lot of unknowns/question marks over Stones current performance let alone any future potential. Makes me wonder in a way why Chelski, who presumably can attract and afford to buy any centre half in the world, seem so desperate to sign him.

Because in a few years, he'll be worth substantially more. It makes absolute sense for Chelsea, him and Zouma would be unbelievable.

 

[oldblue]

And thta is why his price so so high at such a young age yeah.

But the novelty of having money in the game is being able to sign whoever you want to sign, sadly as we are currently only 2 players in and the lowest spending team in the league we, as fans, have no idea what that is like.

price may seem high but if it was a goalscorer then we wouldn't even be considering 30 million. Hard to compare the two but decent goalscorers are much more common than players like Stones. Centre halves with his composure, recovery, technique are more reliable and do tend to fulfill potential, become captain of both club and country, become the driving force behind succcesful sides. Managers value them really highly and in two years time I feel certain every team in Europe will be looking at Stones with envy. He will be one of the first names on an England teamsheet and maybe happy enough to stay at a team pushing for top four while we make a lot more from his high profile than we would have from any sale. That has to be the aim I think

 

[Whistlin' Dixie]

price may seem high but if it was a goalscorer then we wouldn't even be considering 30 million. Hard to compare the two but decent goalscorers are much more common than players like Stones. Centre halves with his composure, recovery, technique are more reliable and do tend to fulfill potential, become captain of both club and country, become the driving force behind succcesful sides. Managers value them really highly and in two years time I feel certain every team in Europe will be looking at Stones with envy. He will be one of the first names on an England teamsheet and maybe happy enough to stay at a team pushing for top four while we make a lot more from his high profile than we would have from any sale. That has to be the aim I think

Aye. A footballing centre-half of Stones' calibre comes along only once in a generation in this country. Worldwide, although more common, they're still a rarity.

He deserves a once-in-a-generation price tag (Not that I'd sell him)

 

[bluelife]

He'll go for £30m before the season starts

 

[bobafro]

I do not know who, but our chief scout in Colemans era maybe Stones too was snapped up by Chelski!

Yup, yer man Mick Doherty is the fella you're talking about.

 

[USABlue]

A lot of unknowns/question marks over Stones current performance let alone any future potential. Makes me wonder in a way why Chelski, who presumably can attract and afford to buy any centre half in the world, seem so desperate to sign him.

Because he's boss

 

[bluelife]

 

[njligernj]

Someone made a very good point the other day, about how selling your best players to the top teams never really works, and how Liverpool would have been far worse off had they sold Gerrard for big money about 10 years ago.

Yeah I agree that was a really great point!

I can't really argue with that because it is the truth, however if we were to buy say Shaqiri (LW), Mertens (ACM) and Dragovich (CM) with the Stones money, then I think our team would be stronger than if we just kept John Stones. Chelsea's team may also become stronger as a result of buying Stones, but so would our's.

It looks decent on paper (although you didn't buy us a third CB which we need) but we have to look at the delta between not selling Stones and selling him. I have as little faith in the board as the next person BUT RM has said we are in for two more players. The vast majority of us think we have 10-20m left to spend and will buy a playmaker and CB.

So if the choice is Stones, Shaqiri, Dragovich (or insert the playmaker and CB of your choice ... the bloke from Scotland and Praet if you prefer)

OR

All of the above aside from no Stones plus Mertens ... plus? ... now we have filled the two obvious gaps. Do we get a goalie and a backup striker? We *need* those but more than we need a player like Stones?

It's not a fair comparison to add in players we could potentially afford without selling Stones. Two of those should not be dependant on selling Stones. We didn't think we had to sell to buy to fill those gaps before the Stones saga started.

Once we fill those gaps (which it's not unreasonable to think we can fill with current funds) well now who do we buy? It gets tricky to attract players better than our existing starting 11 at that point which is the point I always make about teams like us and Spurs. We have a bunch of 7/10 players and 8+ players want CL. So what good is that giant pile of money? We buy a bunch of 7's to sit on our bench and give us depth for our non-Euro season? Plus our wage bill is now significantly higher than even if we paid Stones exactly what Chelski would.

Depth is great but Stones is greater.

... even if you want to sell I don't understand why you'd sell this year when his value is only likely to increase and we'd have more time to plan how to spend the funds.

There is rumours United are sniffing.

They won't mess about and throw £35mill at him first bid.

Either way, we're getting £30mill for him which is great business for a 20 year old who cost £3mill

"Great business." You know what would be great business? Finishing 17th and keeping costs as low as possible. If you want them to run this club like a business then that's probably ideal. We'll sell anyone worth more than 10-15m. Keep a kitty aside for potential relegation -- that plus parachute means we could easily spend our way to promotion in a year Newcastle style and get back on the Prem TV money train. "Great business."

The Prem is currently running at almost -300m euro net spend. All those billionaires must be really bad at business! OR its driven by a bunch of teams who don't give a crap about "great business" ... they just want "great players." That's why they win all the time because they make money in their real businesses and in football they just try to win ... they know what real business looks like and it looks absolutely nothing like football.

Even messi has a price in the game, everyone is for sale.

Why wouldn't City buy him then? They have the money and they've cheat mode-d FFP. They just don't rate him? I don't think the "everyone is for sale" thing is true. Only in a thought experiment sense that if someone said "here's three billion for Messi" you'd have to accept. But in terms of amounts that would actually fit into the football economy? 200m? Barca would be worse off. What would they do? Try to buy Ronaldo for 200m? What's the point? I wouldn't sell Messi for 200m. If you sell a top player for a certain amount that establishes a price for those elite players. But all those teams want is elite players. So whatever the amount is it doesn't make sense to sell (unless they were no longer wanting to compete on that level).

 

[AndyC]

Never heard of the lid, but it's always a pleasure to hear from older, more knowledgable Blues who've been there, saw that.

Highlight of my Everton life is standing on a wall in Liverpool when I was 10 and we won the FA Cup, watching the team parade the trophy on their open top bus. Remember it like it was yesterday, sadly enough. One real trophy!

Ken NcNaught wasn't as classy on the ball as Stonesy looks, but he was one very effective and uncompromising centre half. He knew his job and did it well, as Khalekan said, a rank bad piece of business that definitely favoured Aston Vanilla.

 

[Carlito]

Someone made a very good point the other day, about how selling your best players to the top teams never really works, and how Liverpool would have been far worse off had they sold Gerrard for big money about 10 years ago. I can't really argue with that because it is the truth, however if we were to buy say Shaqiri (LW), Mertens (ACM) and Dragovich (CM) with the Stones money, then I think our team would be stronger than if we just kept John Stones. Chelsea's team may also become stronger as a result of buying Stones, but so would our's.

It's a tough one. As you say, selling for big money has never really helped anyone bridge the gap at the top, but is that what Everton are trying to do anyway?

While I imagine it's true that it's no longer a case of sell to pay the bills, I also fear that Deulofeu and Cleverley amount to the sum of Martinez's summer budget if no one leaves. As somebody who believes this to be a mediocre team filled with mostly run of the mill players, this worries me.

 

[Carlito]

I wouldn't be. Maureen has had a couple of days to come up with some more witty one-liners about the FSW and his wife.

Pull up a deckchair and grab your popcorn mate.

Mourinho calling a press conference to further insult Benitez's wife would be the pinnacle of my football watching life.