As above until we know who we can actually get rid of it's a difficult question to answer. Everybody seems to think all the players will just head off to other teams but who would want them?
We might need to take a hit on some of them. The OOC buys are a no brainer, thats money off the wage bill anyway. I think we’ll get our money back for Lammers so it’s the one’s with a year or so left that will be the problem.
1. Release all OOC players. That’s 6 players off the wage bill.
2. Sell Lammers and Cifuentes for similar to we paid for him - that should be possible!
3. State that Goldson and Tav are up for sale and for free. There’s no way no one out there will come in for them if there is no price tag!
4. Negotiate an early release on Lawrence and Wright. If they are told they won’t even be on the reserves at their age I would expect them to accept.
5. Let the 3 loan players return.
6. Try and see if teams in England may be interested in Davies or Matondo for a couple of £m.
7. Listen to any decent bids for Yilmaz, Raskin, Hagi, Cantwell, Dessers.
8. Last resort sell Butland!
1-4 above are just general housekeeping and clearing the deadwood and even after pay offs will free up around £150k - £200k per week. Whatever our transfer budget is then we use that to replace the players in 1-4 as a priority (four or five quality players should do it). Then depending on what we get for 5-8 we need to use that to reinvest back in the position - ie one out, one in!
Everyone keeps saying “where is the money for a complete new team coming from”. Well we don’t need a complete new team. If we do 1,2,3 and 4 above we could have a team of
Butland
Sterling New New Yilmaz
Diamonde New Cantwell
Matondo Danilo New
McRorie, Souttar, New RB, New LB, Raskin, Dessers, McCausland, New Winger, New Striker
That’s 4 quality new players for the first team, 2 back up full backs (could be loans) and then a striker and a winger who can come off the bench and change a game (again could be loans!). 8 players in and if the quality of the four first team newcomers are good enough then that accounts for the 10 in total that we gut from the team.
OUT:
McLaughlin - doesn’t need replaced.
Balogun - needs replaced.
Lundstram - needs replaced.
Tav - ready made replacement in Sterling.
Goldson - needs replaced.
Jack - doesn’t need replaced.
Roofe - doesn’t need replaced.
Wright - doesn’t need replaced.
Lawrence - doesn’t need replaced.
Lammers - doesn’t need replaced.
Cifuentes - doesn’t need replaced.
Silva - needs replaced.
Sima - needs replaced.
Silva - needs replaced
It’s not as scary when you look at it like that!