24 Jun 2025 21:05:01
Elanga sold by us for approx £17m and now Forest turn down £45m!
24 Jun 2025 22:10:06
Nice sell on clause there 30% of profit i believe.
25 Jun 2025 01:36:50
Different kettle of fish at United. Iv enjoyed watching Forest this year but Elanga has the benefit of being able to go missing for extended periods and no one notices.
Was a decent price for him at the time and he's had a good couple of seasons. We should be selling off squad players every season.
Chelsea, Liverpool, City all sell their academy graduates, squad players for very good money. It's something we've never been competent at. As Ken pointed out, getting a peice of his future transfer is good business.
I understand not getting any money for Sancho and the talk of Rashford for £35/ £40 million because of their obscene wages, that's just out medicine we have to take for being idiotic handing out bumper transfers for mediocrity.
All partof becoming a proper club.
25 Jun 2025 08:58:02
He's a good player, and would have probably been a starter in one of the wingback positions for us last season, but he isn't and probably won't ever be at the level we need if we are to get back to where we want to be.
He's actually a perfect example of how are academy should be working. We bring a player from the academy into the first team squad, give them a couple of seasons to see if they will be at the level we need and then if not sold for a good profit, maybe with a sell-on or buy back clause to either generate more money in the future or to have the option to bring them back if they kick on.
We shouldn't be hoarding them as squad players who play 100 minutes a season for 3-4 years before leaving on a free transfer.
Garner at Everton is another example of it done well. Given a couple of seasons, when it was clear he wasn't going to be what we needed him to be we sold him.
The other flip side of this is that when we keep hold of them for too long they stagnate and miss a large chunk of key development time which ultimately limits their chances of reaching their full potential.
Players like Elanga and Garner do wonders for our academy and our club by raising the profile of our former academy players. It makes buying those players from United look like a great way for mid-table EPL clubs to bring in a top quality young player who they are fairly sure will do well for them. That'll increase the amount of money we can sell them for and drive up the profit we can make from our academy.
We will always struggle to sell players who we have bought for the first team and who haven't made it. Firstly we need to sell them for at least what they owe us on the books. Secondly they are at a low ebb in their career having been seen as a failure at a top club. And finally they will still likely be on high wages for the clubs they will likely be moving to.
We will rarely make money back from players we sign. But we can make a huge potential profit from our academy players who fall just short of what we need. It's a big reason behind Chelsea being able to spend how they do.
We shouldn't be lamenting should we have kept Elanga. We should be lamenting how if we sold a few more academy players sooner then maybe we wouldn't be in as much financial difficulty as we are right now.
25 Jun 2025 22:16:49
First time I've read one of your posts all the way through that Shappy. Spot on mate.