I'm not sure how what I said about Wood to Newcastle is conspiratorial? Dyche is reportedly very angry about it and Burnley are far weaker for it, facts Newcastle would have known before making the purchase. Ask yourself, would any other club have made that deal? Would any club have sat there and decided to pay £20+m for a 30 year striker who's only scored 3 goals this season? The answer to my mind is a resounding no, meaning that deal isn't representative of the market but was pursued for the reasons I've stated. You certainly can isolate single transfers and call them not reflective of the wider market, do you think any club uses our purchase of Iwobi for example to try and justify transfer decisions? Transfers are nearly always circumstantial, the buying club and selling clubs will have certain needs that the other will look to leverage.
And it's not speculative to say no one was interested in Digne. We are very aware of which clubs were interested because the transfer was so publicised. The clubs that exceeded our station wanted him on loan, because they either weren't prepared to pay what we wanted (Inter) or they only wanted Digne on loan whilst their infinitely better left back recovered from injury (Chelsea). We couldn't hold onto him until the end of the window in case he somehow ended up staying if no team called our bluff as we'd already spent the proceeds from his expected sale. Digne being here on February 1st would have been an absolute financial apocalypse scenario.
Time will tell whether we will be weaker. Mykolenko may not reach Digne's standards immediately but I reckon Patterson will be a huge upgrade on Coleman so I wouldn't be surprised if we're exactly the same or even slightly better. Let's also not forget that Digne's performances this season were absolutely crap so I hope people will use those efforts to judge Mykolenko against rather than 2018-19 Digne.
I think it’s a bit of a wild conspiracy theory mate, it’s a striker with three goals this season, not Harry Kane. Burnley bit their hand off clause or no and reports are conflicted on that. You’d hardly spend a quarter of 100 mill worrying that Chris Wood and his three husks are going to rescue your season and yank your opponents, it’s a big reach.
It’s very speculative mate. in fact you are using speculative “publicised” media to say no one was interested, when it takes one click click to see S Sports talking about multiple clubs both in the PL and abroad interested - thus there was market, we’re not into weeks either, we’re talking real done in days of the window, that’s the interest out hand was bitted off because the deal was so good, in the real world too, Gerrards comments yesterday back up all of the above - essentially saying the real was to good to be true, because it was. Woods is absolutely inductive of the market, they were also interested in Digne. So they whole thing is entirely relevant, even if it’s inconvenient for the point your trying to make. Villa got a brilliant deal at an undervalued price. All these things are real speculation in tribal football is not. No wonder Gerrards laughing at us.
We essentially blew our leverage in the handling of the deal, lost a high quality player in his prime, fir a lower price then his value, to sign essentially to prospects, taking in increased amortisation and speculating an additional 10-15 mill in two positions on the 17 mill cleared and may be poorer on and off the pitch for it. If he stayed it would have been far from financial apocalypse, I posted a couple of days ago on his annual cost, very manageable and in our given what we have taken on.
It was a poor and undervalued deal, in fact top to bottom we’ve been terrible. We’re worse or through it all in my opinion.
