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Armando Broja


Matthew Le God
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11 minutes ago, Turkish said:

Not really, they've done brilliant. Moyes has done a great job and in reality are probably one of the most attractive teams at the moment for a player outside of the top 4-6. Decent european campaign last season and European football this season. Plus if we like or not being London based is attractive for a lot of players. Crystal Palace are also building a good young side. 

Agree with all your points, however still frustrating to not be able to bring him in, 

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5 minutes ago, Saint Garrett said:

Agree with all your points, however still frustrating to not be able to bring him in, 

It is but in reality it was always unlikely we'd get him again, either stay at Chelsea or a bigger club would want him

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Really not bothered if Broja goes to West Ham or elsewhere. 
I think there is better business to be done. 
Broja was non existent in the back end of last season. 
although that could be said of many. 
I include Ralph in being culpable for that. 
 

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15 minutes ago, Turkish said:

and too expensive, £25m is mega money for a club like us. Not for any other premier league club, just us.

If we continue not to buy a player in the 20m+ range once in a while we will just go backwards and backwards. You can't have a complete team (which is where we are heading right now) which are developing....

I do think we will sign a striker for 20m+ this summer though. 

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16 minutes ago, Turkish said:

and too expensive, £25m is mega money for a club like us. Not for any other premier league club, just us.

Except that the bid is supposed to be 35M euros, so almost 30M Sterling.  That beats the club record transfer fee for 40% of premier league clubs.  Apart from that, spot on. 

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Still don't think we have been interested this whole time, just obvious paper talk. I mean he'd probably chose West Ham over us anyway, but I reckon the club has seen something in him behind the scenes that put them off and made him not worth the money. 

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3 minutes ago, tajjuk said:

Still don't think we have been interested this whole time, just obvious paper talk. I mean he'd probably chose West Ham over us anyway, but I reckon the club has seen something in him behind the scenes that put them off and made him not worth the money. 

We have been. 100%

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3 minutes ago, tajjuk said:

Still don't think we have been interested this whole time, just obvious paper talk. I mean he'd probably chose West Ham over us anyway, but I reckon the club has seen something in him behind the scenes that put them off and made him not worth the money. 

I’d imagine we were but not at the money West Ham are paying.

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2 minutes ago, Saint Garrett said:

We have been. 100%

Based on what? there is nothing official from the club and based on our other transfers where we have secured people early, we could have and would have IMO moved on him ages ago if we were really keen, but didn't.  All the noises from the club about signing him were in Jan, once his formed dropped off a cliff we went pretty quiet on it. 

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11 minutes ago, revolution saint said:

Except that the bid is supposed to be 35M euros, so almost 30M Sterling.  That beats the club record transfer fee for 40% of premier league clubs.  Apart from that, spot on. 

Yep and all of those clubs with the exception of Brighton, Saints and Palace have been promoted within the last 2 season. 4 of them have record fees of £25m+ 

Of the current premier league clubs only Brentford and Forest have smaller record fees than us. THey have one season in the premier league in the last 25 years between them

 

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£25-30m is a huge amount of money on someone who in the main is still what I'd class as an inexperienced/unproven player. I think that fee is paying for the potential as he clearly has a ton of it and will become top class - but for that fee I'd expect someone a tiny bit more experienced. Unless any buy-back is in the region of £60m then it's a poor deal for West Ham.

I'd 'hope' our scouting is more than good enough to find a player who can score us 9/10 goals and is in and around the £10-15m mark.

Basically we missed a trick not signing Broja last summer, I think we probably wanted to but we had no money (I reckon we'd have got him for £10-15m).

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6 minutes ago, Turkish said:

Yep and all of those clubs with the exception of Brighton, Saints and Palace have been promoted within the last 2 season. 4 of them have record fees of £25m+ 

Of the current premier league clubs only Brentford and Forest have smaller record fees than us. THey have one season in the premier league in the last 25 years between them

 

Not sure why you're fixated on 25M - it's not the reported size of the bid for Broja.  Fact is you're making out that only Saints have a problem with spending that much on a player but it's simply not the case - we're one of eight clubs that have never spent that much (30M) on a single player.  By all means complain and wish we were spending that sort of money but don't make out it's unique to us because clearly it isn't.

Situation is far more nuanced than just spending the money anyway.  Lets say we have 30M and are prepared to use it on the right player - what does that get you?  It should get a little more than just potential, it should get both potential and a bit of experience.  Not the finished article but certainly less risky than the academy prospects we've been looking at.  All good so far.  Player is going to be in that 24-26 age group more than likely, so approaching his peak and with a good resale value.  All still great.  Problem is that player is not going to be looking at us as a step up - they'll probably be trying to get clubs that offer european football and much closer to the champions league.  They're not going to be sold on mid table consolidation.  I actually agree with you that West Ham would be the better option for Broja at this stage of his career which means that this isn't just about money.  Just a hunch but I wouldn't be surprised if we were happy to go to something like 25M, the problem is we're competing against clubs that can offer more than we can (in footballing terms).

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22 minutes ago, S-Clarke said:

£25-30m is a huge amount of money on someone who in the main is still what I'd class as an inexperienced/unproven player. I think that fee is paying for the potential as he clearly has a ton of it and will become top class - but for that fee I'd expect someone a tiny bit more experienced. Unless any buy-back is in the region of £60m then it's a poor deal for West Ham.

I'd 'hope' our scouting is more than good enough to find a player who can score us 9/10 goals and is in and around the £10-15m mark.

Basically we missed a trick not signing Broja last summer, I think we probably wanted to but we had no money (I reckon we'd have got him for £10-15m).

I'm not sure this was ever an option? He'd just signed a 5 year deal and had a decent loan spell in the Eredivisie. He's also been at the club since the age of nine, so they will know all about his potential. Unlikely, in my mind, that they would have let him go for peanuts.

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4 minutes ago, revolution saint said:

Not sure why you're fixated on 25M - it's not the reported size of the bid for Broja.  Fact is you're making out that only Saints have a problem with spending that much on a player but it's simply not the case - we're one of eight clubs that have never spent that much (30M) on a single player.  By all means complain and wish we were spending that sort of money but don't make out it's unique to us because clearly it isn't.

Situation is far more nuanced than just spending the money anyway.  Lets say we have 30M and are prepared to use it on the right player - what does that get you?  It should get a little more than just potential, it should get both potential and a bit of experience.  Not the finished article but certainly less risky than the academy prospects we've been looking at.  All good so far.  Player is going to be in that 24-26 age group more than likely, so approaching his peak and with a good resale value.  All still great.  Problem is that player is not going to be looking at us as a step up - they'll probably be trying to get clubs that offer european football and much closer to the champions league.  They're not going to be sold on mid table consolidation.  I actually agree with you that West Ham would be the better option for Broja at this stage of his career which means that this isn't just about money.  Just a hunch but I wouldn't be surprised if we were happy to go to something like 25M, the problem is we're competing against clubs that can offer more than we can (in footballing terms).

Of those 8 Forest, Fulham and Bournemouth were promoted this year, Brentford last year, Leeds the year before that. So your 40% figure whilst accurate ignores the fact that 5 of them have only been in the premier league for less than 2 years. Yes i know Bournemouth and Fulham have gone up and down but they both have much larger record fees than we do.  

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9 minutes ago, Turkish said:

Of those 8 Forest, Fulham and Bournemouth were promoted this year, Brentford last year, Leeds the year before that. So your 40% figure whilst accurate ignores the fact that 5 of them have only been in the premier league for less than 2 years. Yes i know Bournemouth and Fulham have gone up and down but they both have much larger record fees than we do.  

Which kind of makes the point that spending more doesn't make as much difference as people think it does.  In fact I think the correlation between spending more and the value you get from that player widens the more you spend.  Not always, of course, but I'm guessing at least some of these clubs regret spending so much on:

Villa - Buendia 33M

B'mouth - Lerma 25M

Palace - Benteke 27M

Everton - Siggurdson 45M

Fulham - Anguissa 27M

Leeds - Rodrigo 27M

West Ham - Haller 45M

Wolves - Silva 35.6M

I'll admit that's a bit off topic but worth pointing out.  

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8 minutes ago, revolution saint said:

Which kind of makes the point that spending more doesn't make as much difference as people think it does.  In fact I think the correlation between spending more and the value you get from that player widens the more you spend.  Not always, of course, but I'm guessing at least some of these clubs regret spending so much on:

Villa - Buendia 33M

B'mouth - Lerma 25M

Palace - Benteke 27M

Everton - Siggurdson 45M

Fulham - Anguissa 27M

Leeds - Rodrigo 27M

West Ham - Haller 45M

Wolves - Silva 35.6M

I'll admit that's a bit off topic but worth pointing out.  

Course it matter, the clubs that spend most generally finish higher. The clubs that spend less usually end up getting relegated. We've bucked the trend recently but it'd be very naive to say spending doens't make a difference.

Southampton spending to buck trend but transfer value is key | Daily Echo

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17 minutes ago, revolution saint said:

Which kind of makes the point that spending more doesn't make as much difference as people think it does.  In fact I think the correlation between spending more and the value you get from that player widens the more you spend.  Not always, of course, but I'm guessing at least some of these clubs regret spending so much on:

Villa - Buendia 33M

B'mouth - Lerma 25M

Palace - Benteke 27M

Everton - Siggurdson 45M

Fulham - Anguissa 27M

Leeds - Rodrigo 27M

West Ham - Haller 45M

Wolves - Silva 35.6M

I'll admit that's a bit off topic but worth pointing out.  

Yeh pointed this out a while back, when you look at recent history of non 'big 6' PL clubs going big on transfer fees, the record is not very good, most of them are relative flops compared to their transfer fee. 

The only like £30 - 40 million signings that a mid table PL club have made in recent years to my recollection that have come good are Tielemans for Leicester and Jimenez for Wolves, both of whom were bought after successful loans so 'safer buys'.

You could also add to that list - Ings 30M, Sander Berge 25M, Wesley Moraes 22M, Ayoze Perez 30M, Felipe Anderson 36M. 

Even the likes of Spurs, Arsenal and Utd, you could put a lot of their failures down to massively over paying for not very good players, like Pepe, Ndombele, Maguire etc. 

The PL collectively spends an absurd amount of money on players, but rarely seems to actually get good value from them 

 

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57 minutes ago, Turkish said:

Course it matter, the clubs that spend most generally finish higher. The clubs that spend less usually end up getting relegated. We've bucked the trend recently but it'd be very naive to say spending doens't make a difference.

Southampton spending to buck trend but transfer value is key | Daily Echo

I'll agree that there's a correlation between where you finish and the amount you spend generally, however, your original point was concerning record transfers and that's not the same thing. 

Brighton and Palace have both done really well recently and haven't chosen to spend massively on individual players but instead have improved the squad.  For example, it's better to spend 20 million each on two players than 40 million on one player.  That's the point I was making - that there's better value in looking at younger, cheaper players with potential than to look at more experienced and more expensive players (which in most cases the player doesn't want to join anyway because they have better options).

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Broja is kind of an example of what we're trying to do as a club, sign talented somewhat 'unproven' players, give them a platform and allow them to go onto bigger and better in a year or two. So I never saw it as realistic we could sign him, I think we'd done our job with Broja and we gave him that window to showcase himself.

I think Sports Republic have now given us the opportunity to permanently sign these sort of young players, rather than having to loan them, so we actually get some financial benefit at the end of it should they do well.

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2 hours ago, Turkish said:

Course it matter, the clubs that spend most generally finish higher. The clubs that spend less usually end up getting relegated. We've bucked the trend recently but it'd be very naive to say spending doens't make a difference.

Southampton spending to buck trend but transfer value is key | Daily Echo

I thought it was player wage bill that had a better correlation to league performance?

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3 hours ago, Turkish said:

Course it matter, the clubs that spend most generally finish higher. The clubs that spend less usually end up getting relegated. We've bucked the trend recently but it'd be very naive to say spending doens't make a difference.

Southampton spending to buck trend but transfer value is key | Daily Echo

Tend to agree with this, but it also matters which player. There are some fairly recent examples of more expensive signings we’ve made where we’ve regressed as a performing team/club rather than improved as a result.
 

I also believe balance in a team is important especially in defence…e.g. a balanced pair of full-backs seems to benefit a side, same for two compatible CB’s, same for a creative no.10 and a striker?  With the injuries and departures we’re currently suffering in key positions, it’s difficult to predict whether the squad has actually strengthened with the signings we’ve made.  I can understand why some might consider the first team weaker than last season.

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3 hours ago, Turkish said:

Course it matter, the clubs that spend most generally finish higher. The clubs that spend less usually end up getting relegated. We've bucked the trend recently but it'd be very naive to say spending doens't make a difference.

Southampton spending to buck trend but transfer value is key | Daily Echo

The general trend is that the more you spend, the more successful you are. But there are also some big anomalies in that mix which means its sensible to apply a sense of caution, looking at ourselves and Everton as two examples.

Everton spent half a billion on new players and ended up almost getting relegated, so they spent that to make their team worse. We spent over £90m on players we had to give away for free, whilst also making our team worse.

So whilst spending money can get you moving up the table, it only really happens if your scouting is right and aligned. If you have a strong DoF, strong recruitment team, joined up philosophy etc then it works - but if you don't, you can easily overspend on players that don't fit the club and get little return back. Equally, the strong DoF/Recruitment team may be able to see value transfers that others overlook for the more flashy big fees.

Edited by S-Clarke
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7 minutes ago, S-Clarke said:

The general trend is that the more you spend, the more successful you are. But there are also some big anomalies in that mix which means its sensible to apply a sense of caution, looking at ourselves and Everton as two examples.

Everton spent half a billion on new players and ended up almost getting relegated, so they spent that to make their team worse. We spent over £90m on players we had to give away for free, whilst also making our team worse.

So whilst spending money can get you moving up the table, it only really happens if your scouting is right and aligned. If you have a strong DoF, strong recruitment team, joined up philosophy etc then it works - but if you don't, you can easily overspend on players that don't fit the club and get little return back. Equally, the strong DoF/Recruitment team may be able to see value transfers that others overlook for the more flashy big fees.

Yes just spending doesn't work. Look at Man United, just signing player after player with no real strategy and ended up getting worse. Everton another example of just spending, they bought 4 players for the same position in the same window not long ago FFS. Then there is the Saints of 2017-21, missing out on quality players because we wont spend more than £15m and ended up giving some of them away or paying them to leave. Just spending money doesn't work, but then neither does trying to get away with doing things on the cheap. We're still in the premier league more by luck than anything else as we should have gone down the Pellegrini/Hughes season and we'd probably be doing what Derby are right now if that had happened. 

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1 minute ago, Turkish said:

Yes just spending doesn't work. Look at Man United, just signing player after player with no real strategy and ended up getting worse. Everton another example of just spending, they bought 4 players for the same position in the same window not long ago FFS. Then there is the Saints of 2017-21, missing out on quality players because we wont spend more than £15m and ended up giving some of them away or paying them to leave. Just spending money doesn't work, but then neither does trying to get away with doing things on the cheap. We're still in the premier league more by luck than anything else as we should have gone down the Pellegrini/Hughes season and we'd probably be doing what Derby are right now if that had happened. 

I totally agree, I think we are in the league by luck if I'm honest. I don't quite know how we managed to stay in it given the complete mess of recruitment we made post VVD. 

I think this is the first summer the shackles seem a little bit looser though, fair enough we're not going above 10/15m but we're spreading that across a lot of positions rather than spending an entire chunk of the budget on one. 

There are so many clubs who have been bitten by their record signings - Lukaku, Pogba, NDombele, Sigurdson, Haller, Carillo....! The list goes on. Decent scouting could have probably got you someone 3 times cheaper than any of those and they'd have made more impact.

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31 minutes ago, Turkish said:

Yes just spending doesn't work. Look at Man United, just signing player after player with no real strategy and ended up getting worse. Everton another example of just spending, they bought 4 players for the same position in the same window not long ago FFS. Then there is the Saints of 2017-21, missing out on quality players because we wont spend more than £15m and ended up giving some of them away or paying them to leave. Just spending money doesn't work, but then neither does trying to get away with doing things on the cheap. We're still in the premier league more by luck than anything else as we should have gone down the Pellegrini/Hughes season and we'd probably be doing what Derby are right now if that had happened. 

Only 3 of our 10 ten most expensive signings are still on the squad. 

  • £22.59m Ings
  • £22.50m Vestergaard
  • £20.70m Mane
  • £19.80m Carrillo
  • £16.83m Boufal
  • £16.20m Elyounoussi
  • £15.93m Armstong
  • £15.53m Lemina
  • £15.30m Gabbiadini
  • £15.03m Che Adams

Ironically, the 2 of 3 where we broke £20m barrier gave us a return. Maybe that is where we should be aiming 🙂

 

 

 

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2 minutes ago, SaintTex said:

Only 3 of our 10 ten most expensive signings are still on the squad. 

  • £22.59m Ings
  • £22.50m Vestergaard
  • £20.70m Mane
  • £19.80m Carrillo
  • £16.83m Boufal
  • £16.20m Elyounoussi
  • £15.93m Armstong
  • £15.53m Lemina
  • £15.30m Gabbiadini
  • £15.03m Che Adams

Ironically, the 2 of 3 where we broke £20m barrier gave us a return. Maybe that is where we should be aiming 🙂

 

 

 

Hadn't realised Mane cost that much. Is that right? Thought Carrillo was our record signing.....and he was after Mane?

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2 hours ago, S-Clarke said:

Broja is kind of an example of what we're trying to do as a club, sign talented somewhat 'unproven' players, give them a platform and allow them to go onto bigger and better in a year or two. So I never saw it as realistic we could sign him, I think we'd done our job with Broja and we gave him that window to showcase himself.

Martin Semmens said earlier in the year that by letting players in Broja's position move onto a 'bigger' side, the idea is that we can show other similar hot prospects that we are a tempting side to play in the PL for (rather than languishing in the reserves at a CL side), as we provide a proven pathway to bigger things and won't stand in the way when the time comes.  It sort of makes sense for us to keep doing this.

Edited by andrew7610
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9 minutes ago, SaintTex said:

Only 3 of our 10 ten most expensive signings are still on the squad. 

  • £22.59m Ings
  • £22.50m Vestergaard
  • £20.70m Mane
  • £19.80m Carrillo
  • £16.83m Boufal
  • £16.20m Elyounoussi
  • £15.93m Armstong
  • £15.53m Lemina
  • £15.30m Gabbiadini
  • £15.03m Che Adams

Ironically, the 2 of 3 where we broke £20m barrier gave us a return. Maybe that is where we should be aiming 🙂

 

 

 

Most of those figures do not look right at all. Mane was like £12 million, Vestergaard was definitely less than £20 million. 

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12 minutes ago, tajjuk said:

Most of those figures do not look right at all. Mane was like £12 million, Vestergaard was definitely less than £20 million. 

possibly.. i didn't do extensive research, but used Transfermarket as a source.

https://www.transfermarkt.co.uk/fc-southampton/transferrekorde/verein/180

good point, tajjuk.. Mane's wikipedia page says £11.8 to Saints.. so i don't know what is what now.

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20 minutes ago, andrew7610 said:

Martin Semmens said earlier in the year that by letting players in Broja's position move onto a 'bigger' side, the idea is that we can show other similar hot prospects that we are a tempting side to play in the PL for (rather than languishing in the reserves at a CL side), as we provide a proven pathway to bigger things and won't stand in the way when the time comes.  It sort of makes sense for us to keep doing this.

That does seem like desperate spin tbh.I’d agree if we actually owned the player, then we would be getting 30 million for him. I think all Broja has shown is he played for us for a season & wants to go somewhere else. I would snatch Chelsea’s hand off for 30 million btw. I think he’s a great prospect..although I’ve just seen he’s currently injured!

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53 minutes ago, andrew7610 said:

Martin Semmens said earlier in the year that by letting players in Broja's position move onto a 'bigger' side, the idea is that we can show other similar hot prospects that we are a tempting side to play in the PL for (rather than languishing in the reserves at a CL side), as we provide a proven pathway to bigger things and won't stand in the way when the time comes.  It sort of makes sense for us to keep doing this.

He did say that, I recall him doing so, wasn’t  that was before the new owners came in? I’m not sure it makes sense other than when that’s all you have at your disposal, which is the situation we found ourselves in last season. I was hoping we could be more than a development academy for the big boys under the new ownership.

I don’t mind the odd loan, a few cheaper prospects, but I do hope we buy some established talent as well, players, if not from the premier league, come from equivalent leagues where they shouldn’t take too long to get going. 

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3 hours ago, SaintTex said:

possibly.. i didn't do extensive research, but used Transfermarket as a source.

https://www.transfermarkt.co.uk/fc-southampton/transferrekorde/verein/180

good point, tajjuk.. Mane's wikipedia page says £11.8 to Saints.. so i don't know what is what now.

Never really understand transfermarket, their fees are always incorrect. 

Mane was £11.8m, Vestergaard I think was £18m, Ings was £18m. Pretty sure Armstrong wasn’t £16m either. 

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4 minutes ago, Saint Garrett said:

Never really understand transfermarket, their fees are always incorrect. 

Mane was £11.8m, Vestergaard I think was £18m, Ings was £18m. Pretty sure Armstrong wasn’t £16m either. 

Don't the fee's they report account for every single potential add-on in the deal? (even though some may never be met)

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37 minutes ago, S-Clarke said:

Don't the fee's they report account for every single potential add-on in the deal? (even though some may never be met)

Possible but for Mane they'd have to be adding like the sell on clause to Salzburg when we sold him to Liverpool for the fee to almost double what it was. 

Ings is still our record transfer and the fee for him was around £20 million and Carillo was about £19 million, we haven't gone over £20 million yet. 

Pretty much every transfer we have done, at least on initial fees pretty much is in the £10-15 million bracket. 

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Just my opinion but I think we'll really regret not signing him. £30m (if that's the correct fee) is no longer crazy money in the Premier League, although I accept we probably don't have that sort of money to spend either.

For a 20 year old, he already has all the attributes to become a top striker. Needs to be consistent and develop that focus that the best players have. Otherwise nothing stopping him.

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16 minutes ago, Super_Uwe said:

Just my opinion but I think we'll really regret not signing him. £30m (if that's the correct fee) is no longer crazy money in the Premier League, although I accept we probably don't have that sort of money to spend either.

For a 20 year old, he already has all the attributes to become a top striker. Needs to be consistent and develop that focus that the best players have. Otherwise nothing stopping him.

It seemed clear when he left at the end of the season that he thought he wasn’t coming back so anything after is wishful thinking 

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