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West Brom are involved in a three-way fight with Southampton and Charlton to land Norwich midfielder Youssef Safri. (Daily Mirror)

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I''d bite their hands off for £1.5m!

Last year of his contract, inconsistent and injury prone.

We need somebody with his ability who is reliable!

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Great news, the more competition, the more chance we have of getting even better money for him.£3 million anyone!

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So three of our Championship rivals want to sign one of our midfielders, and people are happy to see him go?? There wasn''t this much interest in Earnie!

Obviously you must know of a better replacement for Safri we can get with the money than the scouts of these three teams..

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As much as I have enjoyed watching him on what has become his rare outings and still feel he can do a good job here. As long as there are plans in place to replace him with a strong creative midfielder who can fill a similar role week in and week out then £1.5 m should be grabbed but only if the gap can be filled because we dont have anyone else of his ability to do a similar job. When on song he installs confidence and stops us sitting to deep. Without a similar player I feel we could revert back to much to hoofball and we all know where that has left us in the past.

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After recent sale of Earnshaw we dont need the money so why sell him to one of our rivals? Sure we could buy a new player but they will take time to bed in. We should hold on to our best players plus our squad is still thin, despite safri being away with Morocco and injury prone we are better off keeping him imo.

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I think 1.5 million is a good deal for us, he had his moments but was too injury prone or inconsistent for my liking.

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Unless Grant has an equally good or better replacement lined up, then selling Safri would be a very bad idea. Even if you assume Brellier and Etuhu will be first choice in the centre next season, one of them will get injured, suspended, or simply lose form at some stage. Who does that leave to come in? Fotheringham, Hughes, Lappin? Not exactly a bundle of talent there.Personally I have no idea how good Brellier is. So for me, letting Safri leave would be a real gamble. But it''s been the cards for a while now.

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Unless Grant has an equally good or better replacement lined up, then selling Safri would be a very bad idea. Even if you assume Brellier and Etuhu will be first choice in the centre next season, one of them will get injured, suspended, or simply lose form at some stage. Who does that leave to come in? Fotheringham, Hughes, Lappin? Not exactly a bundle of talent there.Personally I have no idea how good Brellier is. So for me, letting Safri leave would be a real gamble. But it''s been on the cards for a while now.

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I''ve just purchased a magnum of Moet and will put it on ice as soon as a deal is done. [D][<:o)]

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Hopefully we''ll have a small bidding war between West Brom, Charlton and Southampton for him, may even push up his fee to £2 Million

...or in turn is there any players we''d like to take in part exchange????

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Providing the money is spent on a centre back and one more striker then I think it would be good business to sell him for 1.5 million as he is in the final year of his contract in a season when he will miss 5 weeks due to the African Nations as well.

My biggest issue is that he gives away a lot of silly free kicks around the edge of our penalty area which we then struggle to defend properly, I''ve lost count of the amount of times I''ve seen him hacking away at a strikers legs and getting nowhere near the ball.

He always seems to come back knackered or injured  from international duty.

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If three clubs with some real money to spend have identified Safri as the best man for this league it should tell us there isnt much better out there as an alternative;  and certainly not many for £1.5m as an alternative.  If its going to cost us more to replace him then we should demand a larger fee;  

And like Brellier signing another similar player will not guarantee they will settle or play, whether for 40 or 20 games a season.

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Unless Safri has asked to leave, or he has had a big disagreement with Grant,  it just doesn''t make sense to sell one of your best players to a rival club in the Championship.  Safri and Brellier between them should prevent any other opposition midfielders from controlling the game;  which happened to us a number of times last season.

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Nobody is doubting Safri''s ability - it''s the fact that he doesn''t play a satisfactory number of games in a season for us that some are rightly perturbed about - he missed something in the region of 33 points worth of matches last season.

If the preferred option of a similar or better DMC can''t be had to replace Safri, then one to one & a half million quid would surely secure the services of a good, long-term loan from the Premier.

 

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[quote user="Shyster"]

Nobody is doubting Safri''s ability - it''s the fact that he doesn''t play a satisfactory number of games in a season for us that some are rightly perturbed about - he missed something in the region of 33 points worth of matches last season.

If the preferred option of a similar or better DMC can''t be had to replace Safri, then one to one & a half million quid would surely secure the services of a good, long-term loan from the Premier.

[/quote]Spot on Shys. One thing that hasn''t been mentioned though - do any of these clubs represent a move up for him? Prospects wise, i wouldn''t bet on any of the interested clubs to neccessarily have a better chance of going up than us. Except maybe Charlton but i''ve yet to be really impressed by the post relegation squad Pardew is building. Presumably Charlton can offer a bit more in wages, but probably not too much more, and WBA about the same and Saints less i''d imagine. None of them offer him any enhanced international prospects than he already has, none offer a better quality of life unless he fancies a move to Laaaaandon. So i  can''t really see him wanting to leave unless he and Grant don''t see eye to eye. Which is probabaly the most likely scenario but i still think that reports of a rift have been exagerated. Grant always has appreciated his ability and wants a fully fit and operational Safri in his team. And by having Brellier and Dickson that should take the pressure off him a bit. We relied on him too much last year to hold the midfield together and when he wasn''t there we were rubbish and when he was he was often knackered. It''s a bit like relying on Hucks to do ALL our attacking. I totally appreciate his unreliability to date but i reckon the Brellier signing puts a whole different slant on things and really strengthens our midfield options and takes the pressure off Saf. So why would he want to go? I''m going to stick my neck out and say  he will stay.

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I think that when change is involved there will always be a certain amount of unease between people. Players will have their own views and the manager and supporting staff their own also.

So far as I am aware if there was an issue between Safri and Grant there is no longer one.

Safri was obviously the favourite partner to Etuhu and played most of the games he was fit for.

However I still think that there is more to come from him. When he plays alongside Etuhu he attacks less because Etuhu is seen as the goal getter. I think the brilliant thing about getting Brellier in is that he will push BOTH players for a place in that Safri could be released to play a more attacking role. And we all know he can hit them!

Infact other than Lappin he seems to be the only player that can take a set piece so should as people have already suggested, Lappin only be on the bench I think we have to have one person on the pitch who is at least half decent with free kicks!

 

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