Les and Lee's January looming large

[Undecided]

our board don't have a great record for selling players on the cheap,

Am I reading that correctly?

[FurtiveFox]

Personally can see a couple of loans but not much more. Maybe talented youngsters where parent clubs want them to get some experience or players clubs will look to move on in summer and want to get them in the shop window.

I suspect we will keep our better players unless we get a stupid January bid. Looking at where they are in their development and length of contracts can though see several moving on in the summer, hopefully for good money with some of that being reinvested in squad. Unless of course we go up. Will be an interesting rest of season given how tight the play off players could potentially be.

[QPROslo]

The myth that we have been selling players on the cheap is,.... yes, mostly a myth. I think we have done neither better nor worse than most clubs at our level.

The frustrations among some fans were linked to the sale of Smithies and Freeman for respectively £3.5 and £5m., plus Austin for £4m. These sales cannot be juged without seeing them in context.

Smithies had a contract with one year left when we convinced him to sign an extension, with the promise the club would not stand in his way if a good offer came along from a Premier League club. The alternative to sign the extension would be to see his contract running down with zero income. When he was eventually sold, there was just one offer on the table, with no other clubs willing to make a better offer than Cardiff. Smithies hasn't exactly set the world alight after he left us, so I recon the price was probably all right.

Luke Freeman had one year left of his contract when he was sold. He was 28 at the time as far as I recall. We desperatedly needed the money to comply with FFP. To get £5m for a player with one year left isn't too bad. Once again, he hasn't done that well after he left and I don't think Sheff Utd fans agree that £5m for Freeman was a steal.

Austin was sold for £4m when he had 5 months left of his contract. The mistake was that we rejected an offer the previous summer for around £8-10m, thinking we could get a bit more. To play hard ball always comes with a risk, and in hindsight we should have taken the best offer on the table.

Bright and Manning are sad stories. However, we cannot force anyone to sign a contract extension if they do not want to. It happens to all clubs every now and then. Zlatan, one of the best football players the last 20 years, has not generated one penny in transfer fees for the clubs he has played for.

I am not afraid we will sell Willock, Chair, Dieng, Dickie, Dunne and the other assets we have for less than what they are worth. First of all, we are in a better financial situation, and are not forced to sell, as we were when we were constantly fighting the FFP threshold. Secondly, the mentioned players are on long contracts.

However, it might make a lot of sense to sell. Brentford is where they are because they have been willing to part with hot assets. We became better by selling Eze, as we reinvested wisely. Eze financed the signing of Dickie, Willock, Dykes, Johansen, Austin, Gray and more. My hope though is that we don't sell in January, when we might not be able to replace outgoing players, but wait until the summer. However, if we get crazy money for some of our gems and have replacements lined up it might still make sense to sell in January.

[KevC59]

A lot is riding on the outcome of this season in so many ways, if we do get promoted in anyway we can, I think we won't lose anybody next summer, they will then be premiership players why go anywhere else, but I'm in agreement that we absolutely can't lose any of the better players we have at the moment,during this current season, it will set us back again if this particular team at this time gets broken up, hopefully the wheels don't come off at anytime soon so that players dont feel the need to move on

[BarryBarry]

Everyone’s always greedy wanting more…I would genuinely be ok with no ins or outs this window. If not enough to go up in the summer and we need to sell, I trust the current lot to re-invest wisely and make us better for next year

[dave58]

our board don't have a great record for selling players on the cheap,

Am I reading that correctly?

Yep you heard correctly sold Austin £4M way below his value and 6 months earlier could've had £15M, Freeman best player at the club at time £500K , Smithies argualby best keeper in the championship at the time and almost single handed kept us in the Championship for 2 years £1.5M to Cardiff so their record ain't great, Eze probably the only one they got anywhere near their value £16M and was probably worth £20M in the market at the time

[SheepRanger]

Yep you heard correctly sold Austin £4M way below his value and 6 months earlier could've had £15M, Freeman best player at the club at time £500K , Smithies argualby best keeper in the championship at the time and almost single handed kept us in the Championship for 2 years £1.5M to Cardiff so their record ain't great, Eze probably the only one they got anywhere near their value £16M and was probably worth £20M in the market at the time

With the benefit of hindsight it would have been better to sell Austin earlier. But I think we decided to keep him and see if we could challenge for promotion. Perhaps there was an element of Charlie running down his contract too. There were rumours that Leicester were looking but I'm not aware any official bids were made.

Freeman was sold to Sheffield Utd for £5m, not sure where you got £500k from?

Smithies was sold quite cheap but I think that money was needed to pay legal bills and we had a cashflow problem at the time. I'm sure the fee would have been higher if there was more than one club interested in buying him.

[Undecided]

Yep you heard correctly sold Austin £4M way below his value and 6 months earlier could've had £15M, Freeman best player at the club at time £500K , Smithies argualby best keeper in the championship at the time and almost single handed kept us in the Championship for 2 years £1.5M to Cardiff so their record ain't great, Eze probably the only one they got anywhere near their value £16M and was probably worth £20M in the market at the time

OK, so your point is that they do have great record for selling players on the cheap. My bad, thanks for explaining.