Skysports released a story last night that Christian Benteke does not want to sign a new Villa contract and instead is interested in leaving the club to play in the Champions League. The Benteke-saga is again upon us, saga’s in general are what Villa fans have pretty much gotten used to past the last few years. The last saga being Milner to City.
At the same time Aston Villa have stated that they have not received any bids for Benteke yet and he will not leave for less than his £32.5 million buy-out clause. Liverpool, Tottenham and Manchester United are all reported interested in the forward but none want to pay the transfer fee.
With little indication on who will and can bid on Benteke, I’m going to focus on what Villa are and can do. As things stand we have already sold Weimann, so it’s clear that we need to bring in a new striker regardless. Because if the season started, Agbonlahor and Kozak aren’t going to cut it. I think that Kozak could be a good short term replacement for Aston Villa, he will and can score goals. Might not be as good as Benteke, but it’s good to know that we still have a good striker among our ranks. It looks likely that Callum Robinson could take the role of Weimann but bringing in Charlie Austin would probably be enough. Ideally I’d like to see Villa bring in Austin or any replacement striker before selling Benteke. That way clubs can’t hold us hostage to a high transfer fee since they’ll know that we’d have more money to spend. Also, it’s unclear when Benteke will leave the club. Some fans believe it would be near deadline day as teams look for a last minute quality striker.
I personally think that the £32.5 million price is fair, you will hear Liverpool fans claiming that he isn’t worth more than £20 million. That just doesn’t make sense since Liverpool fans rate Sterling at £50 million, that is idiotic. With Benteke still very young, he will make an impact wherever he goes because his playing still is very adaptive and he is strong in the and with the ball in his feet. Whoever signs him won’t regret it.
Now that’s a worry, he now wants out? What can the club do, will he play with a good heart for Villa? Or have that don’t care attitude? How can a club deal with temperamental players, I think we are at square one again. Sherwood better sort this out or sale or no sale will be bad for the club.
We don’t have to sell unless the buy clause is met (why are people panicking ?)
1. He still has 2 years on his contract
2. No club is coming in with the asking fee
3. He maybe just playing hard ball to yet again get another salary hike
4. The only issue is if a desparate club comes in on transfer day with the fee and we don’t have anything agreed to replace him
5. This is more of his agents tricks reminding everyone he is available
6. Let Tim focus on the priority positions and just let Benteke report back for training with his tail between his legs
Problem is he will go in strike unless we sell him for less. Contract is worthless. Also we might take £20 for him plus a sky 4 cast of that they value at £10m but worth about £2m. Just like us
Usually the club selling does have the say in how much a player leaves for, but Villa hold all the cards in “part-exchange deals” and it doesn’t matter if say we got offered Borini but Liverpool if they value him at 10m, we could value him at 6m and that’s what Villa would go by.
Yes but Lerner might get a reference of Fergie saying borini is worth a billion pounds and Lerner will frame it!
I Still believe he’ll be with us next season although I’m now at the stage where I couldn’t give a toss if he goes or stays. No one individual is bigger than the club and to be fair to him, he deserves his chance of playing for a bigger club. He certainly doesn’t owe us anything and when he does go I for one wish him all the best and thank him for saving us from the drop more than once.
The kid wants to leave and who can blame him – he’s done decent service for us and at present, and unless there are good incentives coming in through new owners, he will never fulfill ambitions with Villa in the next few years. That’s the state of play and it will take a while to turn that around as a club.
As people have mentioned on another thread, if we get near £30m for him and even £12m + players for Delph, its all worth considering a la Sevilla do. Its about how that money is reinvested. If for Delph, and i very much like Delph, got Schlupp for £5m and Kyle Walker for £9m and Borini as part of the Delph deal as an example, then for little monetary difference i think our squad/team is far stronger through those 3 players. Again for Benteke, if we paid £15m for Austin and £17m for Bolaisie as as example, i think it makes the team stronger having the two players to the one as much as i rate Benteke. As others have pointed out though – invest in decent valued players of £5m-£15m not £2-3m. Richards wages signals some intent that this may be possible.
As much as i rate Benteke and Delph, and yes i would like to retain them as they make us better, as others have pointed out in another thread, Sevilla show how it must be done. Invest in good quality replacements of £5m-£15m quality not £2-£3m, and we will see improvements but the turnaround wont be overnight and i cant blame either of those two wanting European football in the more immediate future which we realistically cant offer.
For example, We sell Delph and receive Borini + £12m, spend that on Schlupp £5m and Kyle Walker £9m, we have a better squad and team. TWo youngish and pacey attacking fullbacks plus a half decent striker who knows the league with plenty of hunger. Sell Benteke for £32m and buy Austin £15m and Bolaisie £17m – again the two are better than the one player. A net spend and we have 5 £5m-£17m players for the price of 2 with a net spend of nil. Throw in Sinclair and Richards whose net spend equals Wiemann (bent if account for wages), and we are ultimately a far better team/squad IMO.
kyle walker at£9m you joking . he spends more time injured these days than fit. why you think spurs have signed Kieran Trippier.
He makes a good point though, even if we sell our best players there is no reason we can’t still progress we don’t even hav to look at the Spanish league just look at Swansea and southampton 2 models which obviously work far better than ours! Even look at the likes of Stoke they don’t hav a top class player to sell every year but still manage to be able to out spend us every year with transfer fees and wages and of coarse finish higher up the league! If we lost benteke and got Austin and bolaise I would be very happy but if we lost delph too we might be in trouble cause I can’t think of anybody we could replace hin with for let’s say 10 mil never mind still needing a left back.
Exactly Kerryvillan – the examples i used were just that too examples, and of course Walker or others don’t have to be signed but others can be. Progression can be made by making decent quality signings even when losing your best players, if done correctly 4/5 players are better than 2. Buying players who have a year remaining on the contract and look unwilling to sign mean getting players cheaper than they otherwise would be (thinking N’Zonzi/Borini), we’ve lost players under these circumstances such as Young. Then also looking to sign players in an age bracket who aren’t too young and a gamble 20/21 but are neither to old for re-sale 28/29. the 23-25 age bracket will provide both instant use and potential resale if we perform well – if we need to sell. Put it this way, i’d like to think we would have a much better team if we got £50m for Delph + Benteke + £15m (+sales) ‘war chest’ from Randy – 7 x £10m players would transform us.
nice one domingo – part injured one season. all good clubs have 2 good player per position. 09/10 breakthrough season 30 apps, 10/11 – 39, 11/12 – 49, 12/13 – 53, 13/14 – 39, 14/15 22 apps.
but he’s still not worth £9m .
but he’s still not worth £9m and would he come to us and leave spuds . i dont think so .
charlie austin wants to stay in london . we need to buy GOOD AND HUNGARY foreign players who want to come and play in the premier league . most would only use us as a stepping stone to get to champions league but i could live with that if it brought us longer term success.
as i say Domingo – it was an example and it could be other players – as long as they are decent quality. At the moment given the squad, i think it would prefer a 65%-35% Prem to foreign player purchases as we would need some players to hit the ground running – but again agree looking abroad for some talent would do us well. Again other clubs manage it such as Porto/Benfica or a few French teams (admittedly they can get work permits at times easier than ourselves). Per my posy above, if we sold Benteke and Delph but got 7x £10m players with 5 hitting the ground running so to speak, we are a better all round outfit.
lol so we agree its quality we want 🙂
not over the hill has-beens looking for another easy wage.
lol so we agreed we want quality 🙂
not over the hill has-beens just looking for another premier league wage.
Agreed!! As a club, we need to be aiming at 22-25 year old with good quality, who if needed have resale value (if needed) to continue to provide ongoing team improvement funds if sold for the right price (for example as Delph would be doing), and accept this is a strategy and not whinge that we sold our main striker. At the end of the day hold onto Delph and Benteke, but if they got injured next season we would be stuffed, as we wont get enough funds to reinforce. Eventually, with a good strategy we may end up in a position of not needing to sell, but that may take 5 years, unless Randy or new owners can supplement this to occur quicker. In my opinion, we’ll be more stagnant holding onto Benteke than cashing in and getting 2 or 3 £10-£15m players.
so with talk of utd willing to offer cash and a player or two which utd players would you try and get as part of the deal for benteke. i think we can do better than what liverpool have rumored to have offered for delph and think we should wait and see if city make a move for him. all the talks is there now getting desperate to sign english players that at least have a chance of getting near there first team.
At Utd i don’t realistically see who we could have and would come. I’d like James WIlson/Januzai as a couple of possibilities, but doubt Utd would go for them. They’d offer Evans and value him at £10m or so – wouldn’t want him and prefer Van Dijk at Celtic who i think would prove a great but at a similar mooted price for a team.
Chelsea, don’t think again many would come here – i’d take a look at Bamford/Moses/Salah. £15m and two of those would be ok i suppose. Prefer cash and take Bolaisie and Austin to be honest.
City – dont see them as having anyone who would come to us and or be wanted by us.
i was thinking the same wilson and januzai .you must be reading my mind as i think they will offer evans and £15m to £20m . was just listening to talksport and there so called transfer expert said it was benteke injury that was scaring most clubs away from risking big money on him.
JB…your spot on. Thats exactly the way we should progress until we reach top 6/8 standard again. From that position, we could add 1/2 quality players every season. There is a major sticking point with your plan though…..Randy! If Benteke goes, how much do we get for transfers? Therein lies the problem. I dont believe that Sherwood will get a penny over 20mil to spend, and I think I am being generous there! Moreover, if we lose Benteke and Delph what message does that give to any potential transfer targets? Your plan will work a treat IMO. But for it to work we have to show considerably more ambitiin than we have since MON left. To do that, Sherwood needs the Benteke money and a further 10 mil on top IMO!
Over to you Randy!!
I don’t think the transfer kitty is the main issue, the problem for me with all the above ideas is letting Delph and Benteke go for £50 million and adding another 10-20 mill to the pot sounds great but 7 x £10 million players costs alot more in wages than what we currently pay Delph and Benteke. I would imagine Delph and Benteke are probably on around £50k each – surely the likes of Austin, Bolasie, Walker, Van Dijk, Borini etc would all command similar if not higher wages. The idea is great but unless Randy goes or adds to the wage fund none of the above will ever come to Villa.
Hi JayMo83 – Agree to a certain extent, but i look at that issue in four ways.
Firstly, sell on fees part recoup the wages.
Secondly, a better team means higher league placing. Lets say we finish 9th instead of 17th as a result of the better players – Stoke in 9th received £14.8m for league placing as opposed to our £4.9m – so nearly £10m alone there which would cover the wage element. I accept the risk is we perform poorly and that could have other issues.
Thirdly, better players would put more bums on seats, more shirt sales, wider fan base etc – cant estimate that additional revenue but would equate to a few million.
Fourthly, 7x£10m players on £50k plus sinclar and richards (£100k joint) a week average = £450k p/w.
How much ‘deadwood’ can we shift, value and what are their wages. I wouldn’t get rid of Gil but that looks likely whilst i would get rid of Baker etc.
Out off the wage bill – Bent, Vlaar, Cleverley, lowton, sylla, tonev, helenius, luna, bennett, hutton, senderos, delph, benteke, Baker, Gil , N’Zogbia, Cissokho – possible combined wages i dont know maybe £380k p/w?
Appreicate we might not shift on all of those but from taking all of those 4 into acocunt would it really hurt Randy that hard?
Completely agree but the two problems in that scenario are 1) we have to sell the players you mentioned which is easier said then done, plus if there wages at their next club are lower we will have to pay them off (as we’ve probably done with Lowton), and 2) all these scenarios require a forward thinking owner who is willing to speculate to accumulate- at the moment I don’t think we have one. Please understand I completely agree with the sentiments here- I just don’t think RL does. Let’s hope the sale goes through and our new owners want to invest in the club and playing staff. UTV!
Agreed Langford – Randy tells us he loves the club and will only sell to the person with the right interests of the club long term, so he now needs to show some short term interest for that to come to fruition. He must have recouped some money in recent years to protect his own bank balance after the MON era, and now along with the increased TV deal, hopefully we are past that age and Richards wages signal some of that intent (?). He therefore may be willing to allow this investment. I don’t see an issue personally on paying some higher wages like we used to do, to the right players who have sell on values – again the 22-25 year old regions. The players we offered good money to were 27-29 year olds on lengthy deals such as Dunne, Hutton etc who eventually were average and have little resale value.
Only at a future point as you say, can we look at the 1/2 quality additions without selling players, but we need to realistically get there first. We’ll have some flops too, but as long as we get more right than wrong. In terms of your point selling Benteke/Delph and what signal does that show – i always find it a difficult one. Firstly, players will generally turn for money but secondly if you have a plan in place and can sell that vision of your other transfer targets then chances are they may well come on board. You outline the 6/7 other quality players you are signing and they will come IMO. the other way to look at it, especially based on the plan outlined, is players wont mind coming to the club knowing you dont stand in their way of top 4/5 football if they prove themselves and decent offers come in – and that’s the type of player we want to attract – hunger and ambitious early to mid 20’s players.
But yes…over to Randy…i think now he would give the majority of sales and a bit more on top…then its over to Sherwood to not waste it.
JB….agreed again mate, fancy a place on the board? 🙂 Seriously, this is exactly the plan I hoped for when MON left. It makes so much sense. However, we never seem to have a plan that shows real ambition and thats a travesty for a club of this size. Your right Randy has recouped a fair bit of the money MON wasted. To that end, there should be NO reason why Randy cant loosen the purse strings again!
haha too much hard work arguing on this board 🙂
When you look back, in some regards we have had that plan for certain players and it has worked. Milner was fairly young but regarded as fairly expensive at the time, Young at £10m the same, Delph at around £8m or even an unheard of 21 year old Belgium at £7m. Its interesting that many of the younger players we paid good money for £7,-£12m went on to become very good players with great resale value whilst performing for the club. The ones who weren’t we older without that resale value after being good for us. The problem being we tried to have too many ‘experienced’ heads around that who were paid money for with no resale value and that eventually hurts – look at us now with really only 2 assets worth anything at all above a few million.
Another point, sign these 7 x £10m players, and we’ll be better, but guess what, some of our current players playing with quality will look more attractive a la Westwoods, Grealish and Clarks of this world – and then they are worth more. Manure have got away with this for years and Johnny Evans will be another case in point. They’ve had decent money for players who were average when left because the top players made them look good.
Yes, the likes of Tonev, Helenius, Sylla etc MAY have become decent PL players with quality around them. Of course, we will never know now, but they would have certainly have had a better chance in a team with 4 or 5 quality players helping them. Young and Milner are good examples of players who flourished in a better team. Yes, they eventually moved on for good fees…..but the money has never been invested properly ever since……the sale of Milner, Young and MAYBE Downing should have been the beginning of the type of plan you suggested. Unfortunately, Randy took the extreme opposite route and we have all suffered as a result!
Sadly he did, maybe he felt financially even this approach would have been a gamble initially and hence the reason – big wages played apart too. However, with the increased TV deal and money for position in the premiership (see an above post), i don’t think that would be as big an issue these days and a reason he could take the potentially better route we outline!!
an above post is awaiting moderation in response to JayMO83 so may not see it!
A lot of debate about a rumour that hasn’t even got the legs to get as far as the BBC or B’ham Mail in the last 24 hours.
Has anyone got actual, factual ‘NEWS’ about any incomings or more outgoings?
Facts?
Don’t talk daft Ardent.
99% of what we read/hear is total BS.
I only countenance it because I know some love the rumours, however outlandish, which is fair enough 🙂
Oops, sorry, a few posts went to the spam box there.
Apologies, it happens occasionally and I’ve sorted them.
Some great, reasoned debate here; Bravo!
And although the suggestions for the way we ought to go are great, I just can’t accept the thought that we should let Delph or/and Benteke go.
The Benteke part is the main worry.
We need his goals and ok, we might get a decent replacement, but what if it goes tits up?
Who’s going to get the goals?
We should build the team around Benteke and Delph even if it’s only temporarily and add quality, so we are in a better position to allow our best players to go.
As much as I like Sherwood, I’m not going to put my house on him coming good and am very open to the fact that he might get things wrong.
Imagine the scene; we haven’t got Benteke or Delph and most in-comers don’t work out.
We’d be goners for sure next year.
No, keep them both, add decent quality and if we’re in better shape this time next year, then they can go with my blessing.
All of which means Lerner simply has to stump up some money this year, if he truly cares about the Villa.
Or bloody hurries up and sells before the window opens.
Badger, i understand the point of building the team around Benteke & Delph,and who will get the goals, but what happens if Benteke gets injured and misses 2/3+ months? who then gets the goals. Personally i see that a bigger risk than buying 3 players for his price and gambling that at least 2 of the 3 work out good – hence an earlier statement of starting with more proven Prem league players then picking up the quality of abroad after that.
of course, in an ideal world we keep them and add quality, but with the money we may have made available, lets say £15m you may only add 2 decent players. i just don’t see us being in better shape this time next year keeping them, and iv’e been in the camp of we should keep them for a while.
I’d be interested for you to name a fairly realistic team with signings for next season and backup for each position (i.e. 2 teams!) based on keeping both players and being given £15m to spend? If i then propose a similar proposition but having sold them both and see which team/squad we feel would do better? that’s the way i’ve approached this and selling seems better – albeit guesswork in the transfermarket which i appreciate some people will slate!!
But this is the problem, JB.
Your 2 out of 3 coming good has been unknown for years down the Villa because Lerner won’t spend, or at best spends cheap on the very average players that we’re doing our best to get rid of now.
We have to be realistic and accept that Lerner is probably looking to spend around £15 mill, the same as he has averaged over recent years.
I’d put money on it that even if we were to sell Benteke, that same £15 mill wouldn’t move much above £20 mill total.
And in the scheme of things, it’s a pathetic amount for a club as big as the Villa.
I read a speculative post by one of the papers guessing at what clubs were going to spend recently (Telegraph?) and the newcomers apart, we were second lowest!
I made the point a few weeks back that Ellis spent £9 mill on JPA, years ago, with income that is dwarfed by what we get now.
When did we last spend anything like that?
If we could do it then, we could do it now. Easily, if the desire was there, imo.
But still some think Lerner isn’t bending us all over?????
Whatever, even if you don’t agree, £15 mill isn’t going to buy you much.
We might get a decent striker, but chances are he isn’t going to be good enough to get you 13 in 12, as Benteke can and has.
And maybe a decent mid who might be as good as/better than Delph.
And that’s it, the extra 5 mill being spent on scraps.
Now if you’re talking about Benteke and Delph bringing in (£32.5 + £20ish mill plus the £15 mill) and it all being re-invested, bring it on!
Now we’d be talking about 10 x £5 mill players with an adjustment for the wages and I’d have that.
But it isn’t going to happen, as we all know.
As for naming names we could bring in, nah, I don’t do that.
If I could, I’d be applying for a Prem manager’s job.
That’s why they get paid more in a week than I earn in a year.
And why I just bitch and moan when we’re looking like relegation candidates every season 🙂
The one very worrying part is that I have a horrible feeling that our second string is going to consist of mostly kids.
I really don’t think that any of us have considered that if Sherwood does manage to wangle any money out of Lerner, it might be at the cost of our backup.
And while that might surprise some, it really wouldn’t surprise me.
I wouldn’t put anything past our current owner.