|
|
Bit from Jürgen on Salah's extension -
"I knew it would happen, it was always clear Mo wants to stay – that was always the message. I spoke to him obviously and it was always clear: ‘I want to stay.’ But it’s an important contract, different things have to be considered and that’s what takes time sometimes. We cannot always fulfil the expectations from the outside world – there’s an ending contract, next year it will end, so sort it now. Things need time. But we are obviously experienced enough to deal with these kind of things. He is very happy now that he can extend his time here. We are very happy, a world-class player. Imagine you have to sign Mo Salah now; he’s in another club and you want a player with the numbers he created over the years. It’s pretty much not possible. But we have him and he wants to stay – very good news"
Perhaps - cashing in could be good for Dortmund.
The flipside to that is that if he has another stellar year he should maintain value at the very least - perhaps even increasing (let's say £120m next season instead of £100m this, for talk's sake) whilst also buying them more time to plan for next season.
I also think (for them) it would just look to bad to let Sancho go one Summer then Haaland AND Bellingham the next. Everyone knows that Dortmund buy young, develop, then sell for the right price - but they won't wish to be deemed pushovers either. Plus keeping him around (essentially buying time for any others developing) helps their chances for Champion's League football.
But fingers crossed for us.
Interesting to compare the players we'll enter this season with compared to the start of last season.
Mane out, Diaz in.
Origi out, Núñez in.
Minamino out, Carvalho in.
N. Williams out, Ramsay in.
Mane is of course a big loss and we lose 2 solid squad players in Origi and Taki. Diaz has big shoes to fill and an interesting barometer would be goal-scoring. Mane got 13 goals in 29 appearances in his first season with us so I'll be delighted if Diaz can get close to 13 goals.
The key thing to note is age - a potential sacrifice of immediate short-term impact for long-term developmental goals and capacity to improve. As sorry as I am to see Mane depart, I'm really happy with the business we have conducted overall. The incoming lads are also getting to join a higher quality squad than the one Mane would have initially joined for example, which will help them out big time.
Evolution, not revolution. We all want that midfielder of course but we're recruiting very well here.
With Neco’s sale added to that of Taki and Sadio, that leaves us breaking even on the purchases of Nunez, Carvalho and Ramsey.
Very, very astute business on the face of it, only time will tell if it actually was.
Wages mostly, even the manager. I remember just 20 years ago Roy Evans being on £250k a year. I reckon Jurgen must be on close to that a week.
Bookmarks