bluestevon
Player Valuation: £80m
Think the model the top teams use is slightly different to that though mate, they upgrade the starter and the old one then becomes surplus as a squad player (their value is too high) so they promote the younger player up to be the squad one (increasing their value in the bargain by getting them more time) and the old starter then gets sold
See what United will do with Mata as a classic case, Mikki comes in to start, Mata gets sold, will be the same if they bring in a top quality centre mid as well and Schneiderlin will be sold
IF the starter is old like say Carrick, Barry etc then yeah they may do a back up role for a bit, due to not having any significant resale value
Say for example we buy Witsel and Strootman/whoever, then we will have an overload on players in the centre
McCarthy and Barry go from first team starters to squad players, the old squad players then get pushed back further (Besic and Cleverley) and Davies and Dowell have more in front of them, which is exactly the type of situation you want to avoid if you wish to bring ANY youth through
In that situation you'd want to sell the most highest price backups (if you judge them all to be around similar level of ability) so for us - sell McCarthy and possibly Cleverley would be the logical and from a business sense the wise move, then Barry and Besic become the squad players and we have two young lads behind them, with a better level of starting player - we have more opportunity to blood a young player now and again as they can to a degree be protected/carried a little bit by the quality player around them, then when Barry hangs his boots up in a season or two you have the spot for a young academy lad who has gotten experience to naturally take that squad position etc
