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Transfer Rumour Thread Season 2021/22

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22 minutes ago, yellowrider120 said:

Agreed. Over the last couple of years it 'seems' we have signed dozens of lads like that who have basically never been heard of again.

The latest was Regan Riley from Bolton this January. What will become of him one wonders? Flynn Clarke is soon to 'enter the building' if rumours are to be believed. Ditto comment.  Soto, Sinani, Sitti (and that's just those beginning with an 'S'!!).

They're still very young though. Dan Adshead is 19, Reece McAlear is 19, Aidan Fitzpatrick is 20, Regan Riley is 18, and if Flynn Clarke joins he's 18 as well. So they're all still heavily in the U23 group or getting loans for some game time.

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3 hours ago, horsefly said:

Grealish has been a lifelong fan of Villa and they made him an exceptional wage offer too, so he happily stayed. Buendia has not been a lifelong City fan, and we could get nowhere near the wage Villa have offered him.

According to the reports Villa convinced Buendia that they are genuinely serious about recruiting sufficiently well to compete for a European place this season. All the evidence suggests this is true. City's serious ambition this season does not remotely include challenging for a European spot.

Legally we could have prevented Buendia from fulfilling his potential at a club that is genuinely pushing for a top 6 spot this season by forcing him against his will to abide by the terms of his 5-year contract. If we had done so do you really think that up-and-coming talent wouldn't be put off joining us? As it is, Buendia's progress and move is about as good PR for the cub as we could get in attracting such players with an ambition to hit the top.

 

Why on earth does not selling Buendia automatically mean we are forcing him against his will to stay at the club? I imagine there are a hatful of players in our team who would accept a move to a bigger club if they came in for them, in fact probably every single one would. So are we keeping all those players against their will too? 

IMO there is a clear middle ground between actively advertising your best player to be pawned off to the highest bidder at the start of the window and then forcing him to stay at the club against his will, which you appear to be totally ignoring. 

If we had set out our stall a little higher and not actively pursued the sale to be completed as quickly as possible, and he ended up not moving away because clubs couldn't meet the valuation / didn't show as much interest as when he'd been put in the shop window by Webber, do you really think it would be so damaging for the club?

Would he go on strike? Would he do a Peter Odemwingie and drive to Villa Park to force a move? No of course he wouldn't, he'd have got his head down again and gave it a go with us in the premier league just like he did last season. 

I can't for the life of me imagine why this would be so damaging for the team as well, as if we'd suddenly not be able to buy meaningful targets because teams couldn't meet our valuation for our most important asset? Come on now. 

And the Grealish comparison holds total weight, him supporting Villa means nothing. They have the financial clout to scare clubs away from Buendia too and they can and will do the exact same thing for him whether he supports Villa or not. To think they would step aside for him to move on to a top club like we did for him is delusional. 

 

Edited by Hank shoots Skyler
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42 minutes ago, Trevor Hockey's Beard said:

Re Grealish. If my memory serves me his value has increased considerably during the time he has been "forced" to stay on at Villa, so combined with a hefty wage hike it has not done Grealish much harm by staying put. I don't think we could have done the same had we 2forced" Buendia to stay - with regards to value or wages.

Actually, I feel we might well have done this. I don't claim to have any "inside knowledge" or anything but I think it was pretty clear that he was interested in moving last year after relegation. Ditto Todd.

His value certainly increased as a result of last season, but my guess, and it is purely that, is that some sort of "gentleman's agreement" was struck up for this year. This would have been enough to keep him "onside," so that the situation did not deteriorate.

I also strongly suspect that there was a similar agreement with Grealish if Villa has been relegated.

 

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19 minutes ago, Hank shoots Skyler said:

Why on earth does not selling Buendia automatically mean we are forcing him against his will to stay at the club? I imagine there are a hatful of players in our team who would accept a move to a bigger club if they came in for them, in fact probably every single one would. So are we keeping all those players against their will too? 

IMO there is a clear middle ground between actively advertising your best player to be pawned off to the highest bidder at the start of the window and then forcing him to stay at the club against his will, which you appear to be totally ignoring. 

If we had set out our stall a little higher and not actively pursued the sale to be completed as quickly as possible, and he ended up not moving away because clubs couldn't meet the valuation / didn't show as much interest as when he'd been put in the shop window by Webber, do you really think it would be so damaging for the club?

Would he go on strike? Would he do a Peter Odemwingie and drive to Villa Park to force a move? No of course he wouldn't, he'd have got his head down again and gave it a go with us in the premier league just like he did last season. 

I can't for the life of me imagine why this would be so damaging for the team as well, as if we'd suddenly not be able to buy meaningful targets because teams couldn't meet our valuation for our most important asset? Come on now. 

And the Grealish comparison holds total weight, him supporting Villa means nothing. They have the financial clout to scare clubs away from Buendia too and they can and will do the exact same thing for him whether he supports Villa or not. To think they would step aside for him to move on to a top club like we did for him is delusional. 

 

Fine! Believe whatever you want, quite clearly there is no point in repeating the same arguments over and over. I'll just note that Liverpool conceded to Suarez's wishes, and Man U to Ronaldo's (I don't think I'm deluded in believing that to be fact).

The reality is Buendia has been sold, and the reasons lying behind that sale are presently something only fully known to Webber and Buendia. People can make their own minds up about whose accounts on here bears the greatest plausibility and verisimilitude. I remain firm in the belief that Webber has kept to personal agreements he made with Buendia, and has acted in what he considers to be the very best interests of the club. The deal is done, I nor anybody else can alter that fact. I'm over any disappointment, and am now looking forward with excitement to see who arrives.

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9 minutes ago, Tommo said:

https://www.footballinsider247.com/sources-norwich-city-pull-the-plug-on-king-pursuit-after-talks/
 

king deal off after we balked at his £60k per week salary demands 

That combined with his awful attitude (forcing a move to Everton and talking **** about Bournmouth and it's players behind their backs) only to end up rotting on Evertons bench as it seems Everton have become aware of his bad attitude issues makes me want him to not be anywhere near us in the first place thanks

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15 minutes ago, horsefly said:

Fine! Believe whatever you want, quite clearly there is no point in repeating the same arguments over and over. I'll just note that Liverpool conceded to Suarez's wishes, and Man U to Ronaldo's (I don't think I'm deluded in believing that to be fact).

I don't think you've followed what I was trying to say.

My overriding issue with the transfer is that we didn't just 'regretfully let Buendia go to the big team', we actually actively engaged in the sale and tried to drum up as much interest as possible for a quick and easy sale. 

How many clubs go out of their way to sell their best player? You state Suarez and Ronaldo. Yes even the big clubs have to sell their big players sometimes, I know this.

What I don't remember from those transfers is Liverpool putting a great big 'for sale' sign on Suarez's head, nor United for Ronaldo, to try and secure a swift sale. What I do remember is those clubs reluctantly agreeing to a price when negotiations reached that point to adhere to the players wishes. If that's what happened with Buendia then they'd be no issue from me.

Instead there was no reluctance from our part, and we put a price on Buendia's to attract the sale, not to put other clubs off, and certainly not a valuation which actually represents how important he has been for the team. 

As i've said elsehwere, if we wanted to sell a player to bolster our transfer budget, sell Aarons. He has had as much interest in him as anyone else - hell we had more interest in him last summer than we did Buendia.

Edited by Hank shoots Skyler

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4 minutes ago, Hank shoots Skyler said:

What I don't remember from those transfers is Liverpool putting a great big 'for sale' sign on Suarez's head, nor United for Ronaldo, to try and secure a swift sale.

It was the opposite in fact- both Ronaldo and Suarez had to publicly fight tooth and nail for at least a year to get their wishes.

5 minutes ago, Hank shoots Skyler said:

Instead there was no reluctance from our part, and we put a price on Buendia's to attract the sale, not to put other clubs off, and certainly not a valuation which actually represents how important he has been for the team. 

While I generally agree with you I think you might need to be a bit cautious in this as we don't know what was said behind closed doors- it could be Emi said 'if you don't accept this bid from Villa I'll kick off very publically.' Now if that was the case I'd argue we should have called his bluff but fundamentally I don't think we'll ever know how hard we fought. 

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For the Emi deal to have happened, two things have to be true:

• player wanted to leave

• club felt it could use the money to gain & grow further

I don't think it's simply that we just rolled over- call it 'turning into the skid'. Emi wanted to go and our asking price was met- why after that waste energy trying to prevent it? 

As keeps getting repeated by certain sources, judge in August, not in June.

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11 minutes ago, cambridgeshire canary said:

That combined with his awful attitude (forcing a move to Everton and talking **** about Bournmouth and it's players behind their backs) only to end up rotting on Evertons bench as it seems Everton have become aware of his bad attitude issues makes me want him to not be anywhere near us in the first place thanks

Agreed definitely best avoiding signing this player, at his age, attitude and salary demands it would be crazy to pay him 60k a week. 
 

on to hopefully better younger striker targets! 

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5 minutes ago, king canary said:

While I generally agree with you I think you might need to be a bit cautious in this as we don't know what was said behind closed doors- it could be Emi said 'if you don't accept this bid from Villa I'll kick off very publically.' Now if that was the case I'd argue we should have called his bluff but fundamentally I don't think we'll ever know how hard we fought. 

No we won't ever know sadly. But we've seen clubs actively block transfers / try to detract clubs by setting ridiculous price tags, presumably also against the players' long-term desires, without the sky falling in. In fact Villa doing it with Grealish doesn't appear to have deterred Buendia one bit.  

An ultimatum from Buendia behind-the-scenes pre-the starting of the window could be possible like you say, but I don't really see it. The absolute worst case scenario for Buendia would be playing another season for us, in the premier league and on likely a good 25-30% pay increase from the prior season.

So I don't see the reason for the big kick off, its a much better deal than he got for the last campaign in the league below (but perhaps he sees it as 'serving his time'). 

Either way I just find it hard to believe that any 'gentleman's agreement' to agree to sell him if the right offer came in stipulated that it also has to be a quick and early sale at a modest price. 

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Thank goodness  the transfer window officially opens tomorrow, maybe that will  gradually kick start transfers.

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Wilfred Zaha has told Crystal Palace he wants to leave the club this summer.

He's heard the biggest club in East Anglia is soon to have a vacancy and wants the chance to move to a big club 

😂

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14 hours ago, king canary said:

Him being a fan or not is irrelevent to the point I'm making.

My point is, if we'd have held onto Emi for this summer in the face of interest and bids from Villa, do we really think it would then mean other players wouldn't sign for us? I don't. Sure if we kept him for the rest of his deal and turned down bids from clubs in Europe until he left on a free then fine, I can see that. But lets take the young lad from Peterborough- do we really think he'd be put off from signing for us if we kept Emi this summer? Not for me.

What?! Didn’t you bring up Grealish as an example? It certainly wasn’t myself. 

It’s ok sometimes to be wrong and admit you’re talking bo110cks as a man, Kingo 👍

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15 hours ago, Hank shoots Skyler said:

I don't think you've followed what I was trying to say.

My overriding issue with the transfer is that we didn't just 'regretfully let Buendia go to the big team', we actually actively engaged in the sale and tried to drum up as much interest as possible for a quick and easy sale. 

 

Surely if you accept we have an agreement to let him go and he always was going to go this window. Then you want to encourage as many bids as possible to drive up the price.

Edited by CarrowCanario

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7 hours ago, Terminally Yellow said:

 

A little gutted about Pereira, but it’s likely he’s going to get a move for 20 million or so which would basically mean we could get him and then a bunch of loans for the season. That’s not going to happen. Fingers crossed they are on it with their first choice who will be starting in Emi’s old position… I’m being careful not to say replacement as that’s what Pereira would have been in terms of style, perhaps it’s more likely we will be looking for more of a fast paced winger instead of a technician.

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15 hours ago, Tommo said:

https://www.footballinsider247.com/sources-norwich-city-pull-the-plug-on-king-pursuit-after-talks/
 

king deal off after we balked at his £60k per week salary demands 

That is a little worrying because £60k a week is not actually that much by premier league standards (nor actually is the reported £75k Buendia is getting at Villa). Sooner or later we are going to have to oAy wages approaching that level to compete. Perhaps King wasn’t seen as the right player to start with or wouldn’t accept a relegation wage cut clause. 

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Just now, CarrowCanario said:

Surely if you accept we have an agreement to let him go and he always was going to go this window. Then you want to encourage as many bids as possible to drive up the price.

If Webber is making a gentleman’s agreement with a player who has 4 years left on his deal that we will sell him regardless of which division we are in then that’s ridiculous in itself and unnecessary pandering to players. 

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15 minutes ago, Jim Smith said:

If Webber is making a gentleman’s agreement with a player who has 4 years left on his deal that we will sell him regardless of which division we are in then that’s ridiculous in itself and unnecessary pandering to players. 

Well that's a different issue. Rightly or wrongly our current model is to buy players, mostly young players who we can buy relatively cheaply and sell of at a good profit, having developed them. In order to get the best money when moving them on we need to have them on long contracts. If we get a reputation amongst developing players that we sign them on long contracts and then hinder their development by not selling them, when there ability / ambition outgrows the clubs, then we will not attract those players in the first place. It could be that the agreement, assuming there was one, was a condition of him signing the 4 year deal in the first place.

Edited by CarrowCanario
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4 minutes ago, CarrowCanario said:

Well that's a different issue. Rightly or wrongly our current model is to buy players, mostly young players who we can buy relatively cheaply and sell of at a good profit. In order to get the best money when moving them on we need to have them on long contracts. If we get a reputation amongst developing players that we sign them on long contracts and then hinder their development by not selling them, when there ability / ambition outgrows the clubs, then we will not attract those players in the first place.

How about an ambition to be one one of those bigger clubs ourselves and keep them with us playing regularly in the first team at premier league level. Once again the club is making itself small. Delia recent comments about Aarons went a bit under the radar but were actually profoundly depressing. “He will be a top player but not with us.” Give me strength. Why do people accept this? They get up in arms about a new gambling sponsor having a few scantily clad girls on its website but the club flogs our best player for relative peanuts immediately after promotion and everyone just accepts it?

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12 minutes ago, Jim Smith said:

How about an ambition to be one one of those bigger clubs ourselves and keep them with us playing regularly in the first team at premier league level. Once again the club is making itself small. Delia recent comments about Aarons went a bit under the radar but were actually profoundly depressing. “He will be a top player but not with us.” Give me strength. Why do people accept this? They get up in arms about a new gambling sponsor having a few scantily clad girls on its website but the club flogs our best player for relative peanuts immediately after promotion and everyone just accepts it?

Well you raise a number of new issues there. Who says we don't have an ambition to be a 'bigger' club than we currently are, certainly not Webber. He may have differing views from you in respect of a number of factors such as time frame, the risk he's willing to take to achieve this etc, but I don't think his ambition is to make the club 'smaller'. It's hard being a fan because your dreams for the club are just that dreams, whereas the club has to deal with reality. If we don't then we gamble the longer term survival of the club on a turn of the cards, and the odds are very much against us. Much better in my view to still be a yoyo club in 10 years time than have no club at all.

Edited by CarrowCanario
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26 minutes ago, CarrowCanario said:

Surely if you accept we have an agreement to let him go and he always was going to go this window. Then you want to encourage as many bids as possible to drive up the price.

It depends. If the agreement was that we would set a low price, encourage bids and flog him off, then yes you’re right (but I find this hard to believe). If the agreement was we would let him move on but only if a club met our valuation (most likely IMO) then no I don’t agree. In this instance I’m not sure why we set our stall out so low nor why we encouraged the transfer.

Of course none of us actually know what the terms of the agreement were, hell nor even if there was actually an agreement in place in the first place!

I just don’t like the way we’ve pawned off our heart and soul.

Nor have I enjoyed the majority of the (normally) reasonable posters apparently rejoicing at and celebrating the sale because of all those profits. It really feels like some posters have been bending over backwards to try and fool themselves into thinking it’s already great. 

A very healthy profit on a transfer isn’t going to keep us up guys and we will do very well to replace the impact of Buendia with the money received (even with multiple signings across various positions). That’s why I’m struggling to default to a positive position on this one, of course we still have a chance but we’re undoubtedly in a tougher position to do it.

Also the argument of ‘incoming transfer targets will be put off if we keep Buendia against his will’ is utter tosh IMO. There’s an equal argument for the exact opposite, I.e. Cantwell, Pukki, Aarons now seeing the club as lacking ambition and wanting to move. I’d certainly be pretty upset if I was any of those players right now.

Its nice people want to put a positive spin on it, and I’d usually agree as ‘supporters’ it should be our default to try and look at things optimistically. But I just can’t automatically think the auctioning and quick sale of our best ever player is anything other than gutting for the players, coaching staff and fans.

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1 minute ago, Hank shoots Skyler said:

Nor have I enjoyed the majority of the (normally) reasonable posters apparently rejoicing at and celebrating the sale because of all those profits. It really feels like some posters have been bending over backwards to try and fool themselves into thinking it’s already great. 

I'm certainly not rejoicing at the sale, nor do I think it's great because transfer record, loads of money etc.

Given the choice, I'd much rather we'd had Emi for at least 1 more year, and if that wasn't an option, I'd rather he'd have gone to a bigger club (prefereably Atheltico).

But I also genuinely believe that the player wanted out, that some sort of agreement had been made last year regarding this summer, and that he was never going to stay regardless, and as long as an offer came in that we agreed with and Emi was happy with the club to move to, he would go, be it Arsenal, Villa or any other decent sized club who he felt would match his ambitions and wage demands.

This isn't about being happy Emi has gone, it's NOT great, but it is what it is, and I have full faith that we'll make some shrewd signings with the money that will enable us to stay up and build again next season.

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5 hours ago, Alex Moss said:

What?! Didn’t you bring up Grealish as an example? It certainly wasn’t myself. 

It’s ok sometimes to be wrong and admit you’re talking bo110cks as a man, Kingo 👍

Were you on the sauce last night? Unlike you to both hugely miss the point (which others seem to have grasped) and to be a bit of a **** about it too.

My point wasn't 'why can Villa keep grealish but we can't keep emi?' In that case him being a fan would be relevant. 

My point was that we're told quite regularly on here that if we tried to hang on to Emi even if he wished to move it would have put other players off signing for us in the future. If thats the case then why did Villa keeping Grealish in the face of interest from big clubs when he was keen to leave not suddenly stop other players from wanting to sign for Villa? 

If you want another example, why did Palace not selling Zaha to Everton even after a transfer request put off Eze joining them? 

Nothing to do with who is or isn't a fan.

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1 minute ago, CarrowCanario said:

Well you raise a number of new issues there. Who says we don't have an ambition to be a 'bigger' club than we currently are, certainly not Webber. He may have differing views for you in respect of a number of factors such as time frame, the risk he's willing to take to achieve this etc, but I don't think his ambition is to make the club 'smaller'. It's hard being a fan because your dreams for the club are just that dreams, whereas the club has to deal with reality. If we don't then we gamble the longer term survival of the clubs on a turn of the cards, and the odds are very much against us. Much better in my view to still be a yoyo club in 10 years time than have no club at all.

Spot on! I just don't understand those who think it's simply a "lack of ambition" that is the reason we are not spending tens of millions on players and offering them £75 grand a week contracts. Where on earth do they think we could get that kind of money? No one has identified a beneficent billionaire willing to chuck such money at us, so the only alternative would be to leverage such funding against our saleable assets. How many more examples like Bolton, Portsmouth, Sunderland et al, do people need to show the folly of following that example. Indeed, I suggest they take a look a few miles south of City to find an example of a club who found a not-so-beneficent billionaire who managed to sell off their assets and lead them to the glory league 1 mid-table obscurity. Take a look at their fan site and contemplate just how depressing it would be to find yourself claiming that journeyman signings from Fleetwood, Wigan, and Rotherham are "massively exciting".

I'm unrepentantly a happy happy-clapper. Happy that this club has remarkably transformed itself in a few years from potential financial extinction to a solvent, self-funding PL club playing the possibly the best football ever seen at Carrow Road. Find me that beneficent billionaire and I'll be an even more happy happy-clapper, but until that happens I will remain extremely grateful for the incredible efforts of all those at club responsible for its recent renaissance. I applaud the fact that they have the resolve not to spaff that progress up the wall on a transfer spree gamble (somewhat ironic given the new shirt sponsors).

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10 minutes ago, king canary said:

My point was that we're told quite regularly on here that if we tried to hang on to Emi even if he wished to move it would have put other players off signing for us in the future. If thats the case then why did Villa keeping Grealish in the face of interest from big clubs when he was keen to leave not suddenly stop other players from wanting to sign for Villa? 

If you want another example, why did Palace not selling Zaha to Everton even after a transfer request put off Eze joining them? 

If the recent speculation linking Man City with an interest in Grealish turns out to be true these words may well come back to haunt you. Why you continue ignore the significance of the fact that Grealish is a life-long Villa fan I really don't understand, the player himself has given many interviews citing this as a factor in his willingness to stay (he tended not to mention the massive pay increase). Further, Grealish has not publicly expressed a desire to leave, whereas Buendia made many not-so-subtle comments about his desire to play at the very highest level which were interpreted by most as a "come and get me" plea to other clubs. Frankly, the fact we managed to hold on to him for the year after relegation still astounds me, and that's why I, like many others, believe a gentlemen's agreement was reached between him and Weber that he would be allowed to leave this year if certain conditions were met.

Regarding your Eze claim, I have no idea whether he negotiated a release clause in his contract to mitigate against the sort of problem Zaha has faced (perhaps you might have some info on this?). Secondly, moving to Palace enabled him to get "promotion" to the PL. Thirdly,  I suspect he has increased his weekly wage enormously (much more so than could have been offered by a club like City). Finally, ceteris paribus, given a choice between a club that has a reputation for not standing in the way of the progress of a talented player if his performance outgrows the club's status, and a club with a reputation for forcing a player to see out the full term of his contract irrespective of his progress and ambition, simple psychology suggests the former would be far more attractive. Who knows how many players have been put off moving to Palace because of the Zaha saga, that's impossible to assess. However, I fail to see how Buendia's career progress since arriving at and leaving City can be seen as anything other than fantastic PR for the club in the eyes of potential signings.

 

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1 hour ago, Jim Smith said:

How about an ambition to be one one of those bigger clubs ourselves and keep them with us playing regularly in the first team at premier league level. Once again the club is making itself small. Delia recent comments about Aarons went a bit under the radar but were actually profoundly depressing. “He will be a top player but not with us.” Give me strength. Why do people accept this? They get up in arms about a new gambling sponsor having a few scantily clad girls on its website but the club flogs our best player for relative peanuts immediately after promotion and everyone just accepts it?

Here's a challenge for you Jimbo. Tell us, in great detail, over and over again, about something, anything, that you are Happy about, if it is Norwich related, you get a bonus point.

Thanks.

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3 minutes ago, wcorkcanary said:

Here's a challenge for you Jimbo. Tell us, in great detail, over and over again, about something, anything, that you are Happy about, if it is Norwich related, you get a bonus point.

Thanks.

What can you do with these Jim-points, wcork? Can you win a prize? Perhaps a place on the new sponsor's next promotional video? 

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