I have been told that we have sold Kayembe to Udinese for £12m, another deal for the authorities to investigate
Crown jewels etc. Guess we needed to pay the electricty bill. Watch him now become a right-footed world-beater.
Good stuff. The scouting network of identifying talent, and selling for a big profit has struck again.
This deal will have been ‘independently ratified in Italy’, so please can we have no suggestion of the deal being dodgy, or of the player definitely not being worth £12m. It’s no different to the Harry Maguire deal.
Sometimes the true greats really are bigger than the club. We should be grateful to have witnessed him wear the yellow shirt. I just hope we have a sell on fee because that could set us up for decades.
If they're doing this it would surely indicate that they don't expect the investigation in to the Kamara deal will find anything illegal which the FA can actually act upon. This deal might also give further support to the possibility that we might be splashing out on the young Uruguayan DM Fabrizio Diaz.
Outstanding bit of business. Can't believe there's a club out their stupid enough to buy this dud from us.
If this is true it the most outstanding business of all time. £28m for Kayembe and Kamara. Rumours of Kalu and Fletcher in deal worth £50m are circulating
The rapidly rushed out Player of the Season voting makes sense now. If they fix it and give it to Kayembe then we can justify the £12m fee. Gino playing 4D chess with the authorities again.
Another reminder that Pozzo-to-Pozzo transfers are still not the same as if a club outside the group actually gave us a decent amount of money for one of our players, and that the fee will probably be for cash-flow, tax etc. type purposes. Also that the size of the fee for Pozzo-to-Pozzo transfers over the years won't have meant very much.
It is dodgy but as @lowerrous said it suggests that the club has some confidence that they have done nothing wrong and will be vindicated in the Kamara investigation. Either that, or the club has awful lawyers
So a £12m fee, less Bayat agent fees for Kayembe, less Bayat agent fees for us, that net £3m could be a real lifesaver.
...or, by taking the piss it further prompts the EFL to close any possible loophole that enables clubs to sell players between clubs with common ownership, or at the very least stops any income being used for FFP purposes. It’s not like that hasn’t happened before.
I think they will close the loophole by adjusting the mechanism through which these transfers are evaluated but I think it would be very difficult for them to ban intra-group transfers. And by that point we’ll have juiced our accounts by £28m. I doubt they will be able to force accounting changes retroactively.
Ultimately this is enabling us to flout FFP, and they closed the loophole with regards to stadium sales pretty quickly to prevent exactly the same thing happening. Yes we will have got away with these two, but by being so blatant we probably just won’t have the option of doing it again in the future.
Agreed. I think they could have raised £15-20m or so from these too and have been able to justify the fees paid pretty easily. These are obviously juiced up fees. Whether the extra wiggle room in the future is worth the £10m now is a judgment call based on assessing the strength of the EFL’s likely response.
Maybe they think it will be closed anyway so are trying to get as many through the door before it does close ?
Watford are missing a trick. They could sign me, sell me to Udinese for £10m and loan me back. I wouldn't have to play a minute for either or even go to Italy.
Technically all transfers are investigated anyway. Kayembe is a Premier League experienced midfielder!
The club was also confident that they'd assembled a squad capable of challenging for promotion this season...
Different competition, different rules, different governing bodies. The EFL closed the loophole on stadium sales to prevent FFP being circumvented, Both Derby and Reading have been relegated due to points deductions for FFP breaches.