Mike Ashley – Still playing a percentage game on transfers
Posted on July 26th, 2012 | 35 Comments |
Most are told by idiots, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing to quote Shakespeare. In terms of what is verifiable, the club have made a few derisory bids and have rattled a few cages in the hope of unsettling players, possibly in the hope they will submit a transfer request, or even go on strike to force a move at a price which is way below the market. The most recent examples being a €5 million (£3.9 million) for Yohan Cabaye’s former Lille team mate, Mathieu Debuchy, a French International left back who is now valued at around £9-10 million since the recent European Championships where he impressed, another €5 million bid for Ajax’s Dutch International midfielder, Vurnon Anita, and a highly confusing chase for another Dutch player, FC Twente centre back, Douglas Franco Teixeira. Indeed, the pursuit of Douglas has been so confusing that even Twente’s chairman, Joop Munsterman, was led to remark, “It’s unclear precisely what Newcastle and Douglas want.” Perhaps he doesn’t know what one UK banker said of Mike Ashley, that “He likes to park his tanks on people’s lawns.” Whilst there have been reports of higher bids in some quarters of the media, they have not been substantiated, just “understood” or “suggested,” which can be media speak for “complete and utter guff.” Now of course, the latest attempt to park his tanks has been has been a concerted and brazen attempt by his manager Alan Pardew to unsettle Andy Carroll at Liverpool, with Pardew assuring Carroll that he has no future at Liverpool and that the Merseyside club must let him go at a much reduced fee, preferably to the club who sold him in the first place.
Of course, there have been some significant successes in Ashley’s percentage game with transfers (as well as some failures), with the 50% off purchases of the above mentioned Yohan Cabaye, as well as Papiss Cisse from Bundesliga club, Freiburg. However there were some crucial differences in those deals. In Cabaye’s case there was a ludicrously low sell on clause which hardly anyone knew of except for Newcastle United and Lille themselves, which was around half the player’s true value at the time. In Cisse’s case it was the spectre of relegation to the second tier of German football hanging over his last club, Freiburg. Newcastle United could have had Cisse in the Summer at a greater price, however they took a gamble on no one else approaching Freiburg and waited until the January window. Despite the fact that Cisse was one of the highest scorers in the Bundesliga, Freiburg were floundering at the bottom end of the division by the time January came around and there seemed to be little hope. So eventually, in desperation, they took far less, not much more than half of the player’s true value. So, that gamble paid off in the end. Incidentally, despite losing their star striker, Freiburg actually improved and survived at the end.
Getting back to the point though, though there have been rumours of sell on clauses on some of Newcastle’s targets, the rumoured figures have been even higher than the unsubstantied bids bandied around in the media. Also, the clubs involved this time are not fighting relegation. Teams such as Lille, Ajax and FC Twente are top clubs in their respective leagues, with the first two competing in the coming season’s Champions League, and Twente competing in the Europa League alongside Newcastle United. Newcastle United are not taking a gamble with injury concerns as we did Demba Ba’s knee and Sylvain Marveaux’s groin, or with former misfits like Davide Santon and Hatem Ben Arfa for that matter, although an exception might be Douglas, who seems to be a bit of a radgepacket from what I’ve seen of him!
As mentioned above, there is also the factor of European competition and the fact that we have already let several of the more peripheral first team players go when we need a larger squad to cope with the added burden. Potential vendor clubs will undoubtedly know this and would be daft not to use it as some kind of leverage against an aggressive Ashley, a shameless trader who himself would stoop to almost any depth to gain an advantage in a deal. Ashley’s percentage strategy inevitably falls apart when more serious and ambitious clubs become involved too, as was the case with Newcastle United’s recent pursuit of another Twente player, the striker Luuk De Jong. He was snapped up by German Champions League club Borussia Mönchengladbach for around €14 million (£11 million) in the end whilst Ashley was still trying to play “hardball” with Twente.
So the question is, does Ashley still have the same leverage he had with players such as Cabaye and his low buyout clause, or Cisse with his club facing relegation with current targets such as Debuchy? I don’t know if he does. Everyone knows that Ashley likes a gamble, and everyone also knows that gamblers can sometimes have runs where they seem almost invincible. But nothing lasts forever, and runs inevitably come to an end.
With a European campaign forthcoming, Ashley may indeed have to bid at something approaching the going rate for players if he is to have a hope of reinforcing the squad sufficiently for what is to come.
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NUFCBlog Author: workyticket
workyticket has written 1096 articles on this blog.
It seems so obvious from here…
One factor, however, that favors Ashley’s percentage game is the ticking clock. Not sure about Lille but the impression I get of even the well-placed Dutch sides is that when they have a chance to make a profit on a player they feel a need to take it. The values of players like Douglas & Anita may have peaked and could crater due to injury, poor performance or their current club not making Europe next season. Our people will also point out as time passes: if your valuation is so reasonable, where are the bids? I’m guessing Ashley will rely on this to some extent and will expect demands to come down with time. I wouldn’t be surprised if this is the approach we used to get Cisse and others. Make an opening lowball bid and tell the potential sellers: if you get a better offer, take it; if you don’t, you know where to reach us. This is, however, a game of chicken that we may not be able to afford given that it’s common knowledge that we have to expand the squad for Europe.