January 2022 Transfer Thread

[Deutsch Wolf]

You said you wanted Lukaku at 20 for £35m!

That player, having already had a good PL season on loan for Albion and being owned by Chelsea would not cost £35m in 2020.

 

[Nando]

Criminal forgetting him. As you say though he's absolutely frightening. He reminds me a lot of Bale during that first good spurs season, similar gait I think.

Very similar profile to Zlatan in his earlier years and both made very sensible career moves early on in not overfacing themselves, whilst guaranteeing game time. Not overly dissimilar in their physique either, but Haaland has just turned into an absolute goal machine since making his next step, whereas Zlatan was perhaps more technically gifted, but took a while to settle and start putting up the 25+ a season numbers.

If Haaland can stay fit, he could genuinely challenge the numbers that Messi and Ronaldo have put up across their careers.

 

[WsWolf]

€12m from Anderlecht to Chelsea. Allowing for inflation that’s still nowhere near what we paid for Silva.

He wasn't 20 then, he was 17. Everyone knows the fee was a backhander so I'm not disputing that but for a player like Lukaku was at 17 not you are looking at £30m min unless they have an agent like riola who gets buyout clauses in like he has for haaland.

 

[Johnny75]

You said you wanted Lukaku at 20 for £35m!

That player, having already had a good PL season on loan for Albion and being owned by Chelsea would not cost £35m in 2020.

I got his age wrong, I should’ve said 18, as that’s the age we bought Fabio.

 

[Johnny75]

He wasn't 20 then, he was 17. Everyone knows the fee was a backhander so I'm not disputing that but for a player like Lukaku was at 17 not you are looking at £30m min unless they have an agent like riola who gets buyout clauses in like he has for haaland.

See above.

 

[Sniffer]

€7.5m from Molde to RB Salzburg at 18 and Leeds didn’t bid enough apparently.

€20m from Salzburg to Dortmund. How nobody else bid that much I’ll never know.

Wasn't it a release clause that several clubs met, but the player himself wanted to continue his development at a club like Dortmund.

 

[Deutsch Wolf]

Wasn't it a release clause that several clubs met, but the player himself wanted to continue his development at a club like Dortmund.

Yep, was his buyout clause.

United wouldn't have played him.

 

[WolfMan]

Haaland would be the main outlier, but then he is a complete freak of nature. 70 in 69 Bundesliga appearances at 21 is astonishing and already approaching 150 career goals.

That's what a generational talent looks like isn't it

 

[PuntsWolf]

There is no comparison to Fabio. Because no team has ever spent that much on a player who has done nothing, zero, nil in senior football.

Lukaku had scored goals in Belgium. He had shown something.

Fabio’s deal was corrupt (or incompetence). We’ve had this discussion a million times but some reason we are still trying to make comparisons

 

[Deutsch Wolf]

Ronaldo is actually probably the closest. 11 league starts for Sporting. 3 goals. £12m+ made him the most expensive teenager in British football at the time. Directly replacing David Beckham too. Then did next to nothing for a couple of years.

 

[PuntsWolf]

Ronaldo is actually probably the closest. 11 league starts for Sporting. 3 goals. £12m+ made him the most expensive teenager in British football at the time. Directly replacing David Beckham too. Then did next to nothing for a couple of years.

We’ve done all this before! You can keep saying it but doesn’t make it true!

He played plenty of games for a team playing champions league football and despite not being a world beater, didn’t look out of his depth and looked like he had something.

Fabio can’t get a game for a midtable PL club 18 months on and we are reluctant to bring him on as he is out of his depth. We’re still non the wiser what his actual strengths are. Made zero contact again with a header against Villa which he should have done better with. Fortunately we scored from that in the end anyway

 

[AndyWolves]

Can we at least agree it's too early to judge him and he'll be here for the next 2-3 seasons

 

[Deutsch Wolf]

Why do you think I typed all that out, again

 

[PuntsWolf]

Can we at least agree it's too early to judge him and he'll be here for the next 2-3 seasons

Not too early to judge the fee. But again we’ve done it all before

Why do you think I typed all that out, again

Looks like a copy and paste Job to me!

 

[WolfMan]

Can we at least agree it's too early to judge him and he'll be here for the next 2-3 seasons

Might come good just as his contract is coming to an end

 

[Alan]

We can bang on about Fabio's lack of record when we bought him, but we shouldn't forget that even a good record in other leagues is barely a good indicator of success in the Prem for a forward. Just for posterity:

• Afonso Alves
• Andriy Shevchenko
• Angel di Maria
• Marouane Chamakh
• Ibrahima Bakayoko
• Islam Slimani
• Luuk de Jong

Not mentioning costs here, merely trying to point out that in a lot of ways it's a crapshoot, especially with forwards. You even get weird ones like Roque Santa Cruz who do well at one club and shite at another, even in the same league.

The money for Fab is spent, all we can do is support him and hope he improves. Simple as, IMO.

 

[Deutsch Wolf]

Luuk de Jong is awful everywhere apart from the Eredivisie. Something like 17 league goals ever in Germany, England and Spain, well over 100 games.

 

[Alan]

Luuk de Jong is awful everywhere apart from the Eredivisie. Something like 17 league goals ever in Germany, England and Spain, well over 100 games.

He's like Jozy in that way (and MLS is basically Eredivisie, at least from a forward's perspective).

 

[YoungWolf]

I don’t think he actually does look out of his depth. Just not a £35m player - but we know that already

 

[The Bear]

People need to get over the fee. They made the decision purely as an investment gamble. The fee reflects nothing about his ability.

The fact they did it with the club's money is slightly irritating as it could have limited our potential spending. But obviously they looked at that too and decided to go for it, wrongly or rightly.