This whole situation is just one giant farce, I haven't heard of any other clubs being done for it, but maybe we were stupid for jumping the gun in the first place and not coming to a compromise like Villa...
Buendia and Martinez aren't playing in Argentina's final game, which means they'll only miss on PL game
Seems to say banned during the international window and then the 10 days quarantine? Can’t really understand where the justification for the latter comes from. Do the UK government’s ever changing rules now dictate FIFA punishments?
Yeah it doesn't mean banned for three Watford games, although if they enforce the quarantine period then he'll be back for Newcastle. Can't see there's anyway they do that though.
Need to offer him a new contract as soon as possible, only two years left on his deal so we don't want to be in the same position next summer as we were with Chalobah and Hughes
Yes though he will be in the same position as H & C and refuse to sign if it includes a relegation clause so offering a contract may just unsettle the player/squad ? He won't want to commit to potentially spending life in the champ for 2-4 years. We will have this issue with all established first team players who could move club and stay in the prem.
Agreed. If this is the case, we are going to need to cash in on Sarr next summer as it is unlikely he will sign another one.
Yes but presume he's on absolute peanuts after doing nothing at Udinese and then playing a bit of football at Empoli before joining us as cover in the Championship. He's only made three starts in top flight European football so far in his whole career. So he must have it in the back of his mind that he could break a leg tomorrow and never have that big contract that sets him up for life. We don't even know if he can hack it in the Premier League (although the signs are obviously good). Would take some serious ******** to run his contract down.
But if he’s confident in his ability and accepts there’s a good chance of relegation he may want to make sure he can move on rather than accept a 50% salary reduction for the following 4 years at his peak. I guess a contract with an agreed buy-out value might work. Play well and make an impression at this level and he can leave for say £8m at the end of the season?
I reckon if we want to sell this 50% reduction policy then the buyouts need to be lower than that. Wasn’t Hughes supposedly offered a £2m one?
I wonder did we put a particularly low relegation release clause in our contract offer to Hughes as a last-ditch offer to someone who was dead set on leaving from the outset? Does seem a very low amount!
It does seem low, considering we sold him for potentially as much as £10m with a year left on his contract, letting him leave for £2m means the difference would've barely covered 50% of his wages over four years if we’d have been relegated and stayed down the entire time.
Yes it's a tough call though as you're effectively giving away assets that you could have sold for more without the buyout clause, so not sure how much security it gives us? Will be tough to get anyone who shows they are at home in the prem to agree to a 50% salary reduction on relegation.
If his English is good enough now, then I think he could possibly be a good candidate to be our new club captain.
Ben Brereton said he speaks good English, and we have The Cycling GK to thank for that! He may not have given an interview in English yet, but neither did Maurizio Pochettino's father when he first came to England even though his English was OK
I think Bielsa can actually speak some English, he has always had a difficult relationship with journalists, so I can understand why he'd speak Spanish and not risk being taken out of context
He must do in training surely ? That translator he has for post match interviews hardly says anything it seems really !
As great a signing he’s been, I think it’s a bit too soon to be thinking of him as captain. Let’s not forget that before joining us he’d only made 6 appearances in Serie A and only around 50 starts in the first team of other clubs. Definitely in the future if he keeps progressing
Putting 2 and 2 together and coming up with 63 I hope it’s nothing to do with his contract extension, or lack of.
That’s precisely the point, a decent player with 18 months on his contract should’ve signed a new one at least 6 months ago. In 6 months time he’ll be in the Hughes situation and it will be too late. Unless the owners are completely moronic they would’ve started trying to get him to sign one a long while ago, but to the the best of our knowledge he hasn’t signed one.
see I’m not too worried about it, I expect he will probably sign an extension before Christmas. if he is acting up then I imagine they would have shipped him out like the other contract rebels.
It was just a theory, and unlikely to be the reason. But you don’t wait until 18 months to start talks over an extension, he’s not at the year like Hughes was, so talks could’ve been ongoing over the summer and hence there was no reason to ship him out over the summer like the others. It’s possible we’re now seeing what we saw with Hughes, just later on down the line. But as I say, just a theory.
Would be slightly weird though to sign someone on a 3 year deal and then pretty much immediately start renewal talks, bearing in mind he didn't start a single league game until Boxing Day. Could maybe get it if he came in and immediately looked imperious, but he didn't. Plus he has just over 21 months on his current deal, not 18. I'm not saying that to be pedantic but because I'd say it's a reasonable difference. And I don't think the freezing out thing is a mid-season strategy.
I agree and hence the caveat that it’s probably not that, it’s just strange he wasn’t even on the bench if he isn’t injured. I think contract negotiations would’ve probably started as soon as we were promoted, I agree it would’ve been unlikely before that. Let’s face it, Gino will try and nail anything that moves down onto a longer contract, unless they’re in the Deeney/Gray camp of being obviously horrendously bad and overpaid. He won’t have had to have performed anywhere near as well as he did for them to want to get him to sign an extension as soon as we knew we were a PL team, having said that even if we didn’t get promoted they would’ve still tried to get him to sign one. Either way, I can’t think of a single logical reason (especially when you consider how freely they hand them out to older, worse players) why they wouldn’t have started them at the end of last season, and to date we’re not aware he’s signed one.
Seems weird we busted a gut to get him to play last weekend but then don't play him when there are no issues with international call ups