No way Gomez would've signed for us without a release fee, i'm surprised he wasn't poached sooner.
He played for our U18s at a stupidly young age (13 i think), had played for England's junior sides, and also part of the team that won the U17 Euro's. Any club in the country would've wanted him.
Indeed. So have you never stopped to ask yourself why there was not a queue of other clubs indicating their interest via the usual media sources? Another Lifer, a good mate of mine, knows the answer but has never wanted to go public with it. Suffice to say that on this one, like the proverbial stopped clock, “Ronnie Moore” is, if not right on the money, not unadjacent to it. And that this is another entry in my list of evidence that agents are a malignant scourge that need radical reform and regulation.
If what’s being said is true, it sounds to me like the agent was doing exactly what he’s paid to do. What exactly would be wrong with that situation?
You'd have to ask Katrien Meire to fill in the bits Ronnie doesn't know about...
It wouldn’t change my opinion that the agent did his best for his client, that’s his job.
The reality is, the player and agent had the club over a barrel, if the pitiful sell on was the best we could get, it’s significantly better than nothing, which would have been the result of the pair walking.
In any business, there are usually benchmarks available to assess whether a given deal is at the market rate, and has been conducted according to prevailing market conditions. If it is obviously not at the market rate, and/or the other circumstances surrounding it are unusual,(e.g lack of rival bidders) it always indicates that something stinks. In general terms there will be two reasons, gross incompetence, or corruption.
The really odd issue with the Gomez transfer is not so much the fee, but more that there was none of the usual buzz around the transaction from other clubs trying to muscle in. If you consider how much Gomez was already in the spotlight, with talk of FAPL scouts watching him long before the transaction, that is very odd indeed, surely you would concede that?
For the record I do not believe Meire or the Duchatelet regime in general was corrupt.
People are really looking at this fee in the wrong way because they're only seeing the upfront figure. There's a reason we'll have opted for the sell-on and that's because Chelsea's business model is to hoover up all the talent knowing that at the very least they can sell them on for big money if they don't make it. This season alone Chelsea sold Abraham for £36m, Tomori for £25m, Guehi for £21m and plenty more for multi-million pound fees. We've obviously opted to play the long game with the fee with the hopes that we can get more long-term. I don't know what all the add-ons are, but if Burstow does go on and become a world class striker he'll activate all the add-ons and the fee will be a lot more. If he doesn't quite make it then we'll get a percentage of a potentially large sell-on fee. And if he completely flops, well then we got Chelsea to give us £1.6m for a player we picked up in 2020 and played 14 times. It's very easy to fixate on the first number - which is a number that offsets our big spend this year and gives us scope to spend more in the summer - but you can't complain that we could have held out for more when the structure of the deal is essentially that we are holding out for more, but later on down the line after the sale is done.
Would it be fair to say VOTV hasn't exactly been huge fans of Sandgaard so far?
You mean we have not seen Rick having a selfie with TS or singing to him in the Oak?
I think VOTV has been very fair in the reporting of the TS and does see the bigger picture. I find too many supporters are very over protective of TS and any hint of questioning decisions made are seen as anti TS
Interesting you see my comments as being pro Sandgaard/anti VOTV. It's also interesting you see more people defending Sandgaard. I'd say it's quite equal those defending him and those criticising him and most of us (including myself sit somewhere in the middle). I was asking a question about an observation I've made recently.
No way Gomez would've signed for us without a release fee, i'm surprised he wasn't poached sooner.
He played for our U18s at a stupidly young age (13 i think), had played for England's junior sides, and also part of the team that won the U17 Euro's. Any club in the country would've wanted him.
Indeed. So have you never stopped to ask yourself why there was not a queue of other clubs indicating their interest via the usual media sources? Another Lifer, a good mate of mine, knows the answer but has never wanted to go public with it. Suffice to say that on this one, like the proverbial stopped clock, “Ronnie Moore” is, if not right on the money, not unadjacent to it. And that this is another entry in my list of evidence that agents are a malignant scourge that need radical reform and regulation.
If what’s being said is true, it sounds to me like the agent was doing exactly what he’s paid to do. What exactly would be wrong with that situation?
You'd have to ask Katrien Meire to fill in the bits Ronnie doesn't know about...
It wouldn’t change my opinion that the agent did his best for his client, that’s his job.
The reality is, the player and agent had the club over a barrel, if the pitiful sell on was the best we could get, it’s significantly better than nothing, which would have been the result of the pair walking.
In any business, there are usually benchmarks available to assess whether a given deal is at the market rate, and has been conducted according to prevailing market conditions. If it is obviously not at the market rate, and/or the other circumstances surrounding it are unusual,(e.g lack of rival bidders) it always indicates that something stinks. In general terms there will be two reasons, gross incompetence, or corruption.
The really odd issue with the Gomez transfer is not so much the fee, but more that there was none of the usual buzz around the transaction from other clubs trying to muscle in. If you consider how much Gomez was already in the spotlight, with talk of FAPL scouts watching him long before the transaction, that is very odd indeed, surely you would concede that?
For the record I do not believe Meire or the Duchatelet regime in general was corrupt.
But that only considers two of the possible out comes. What actually happened against him being offered to the market. Of those two we would have potentially got more in the latter.
There were multiple outcomes where we wouldn't have got as much as we did, there are also outcomes where we could have got nothing at all.
If he hadn't signed the contract because he wanted to go to Liverpool his dad, and others, "encouraged" Liverpool to pay us a "fair" compensation fee, as happened with Jenkinson and Beadle, it would have been exactly the same end result. With no talk of agents.
No way Gomez would've signed for us without a release fee, i'm surprised he wasn't poached sooner.
He played for our U18s at a stupidly young age (13 i think), had played for England's junior sides, and also part of the team that won the U17 Euro's. Any club in the country would've wanted him.
Indeed. So have you never stopped to ask yourself why there was not a queue of other clubs indicating their interest via the usual media sources? Another Lifer, a good mate of mine, knows the answer but has never wanted to go public with it. Suffice to say that on this one, like the proverbial stopped clock, “Ronnie Moore” is, if not right on the money, not unadjacent to it. And that this is another entry in my list of evidence that agents are a malignant scourge that need radical reform and regulation.
If what’s being said is true, it sounds to me like the agent was doing exactly what he’s paid to do. What exactly would be wrong with that situation?
You'd have to ask Katrien Meire to fill in the bits Ronnie doesn't know about...
It wouldn’t change my opinion that the agent did his best for his client, that’s his job.
The reality is, the player and agent had the club over a barrel, if the pitiful sell on was the best we could get, it’s significantly better than nothing, which would have been the result of the pair walking.
In any business, there are usually benchmarks available to assess whether a given deal is at the market rate, and has been conducted according to prevailing market conditions. If it is obviously not at the market rate, and/or the other circumstances surrounding it are unusual,(e.g lack of rival bidders) it always indicates that something stinks. In general terms there will be two reasons, gross incompetence, or corruption.
The really odd issue with the Gomez transfer is not so much the fee, but more that there was none of the usual buzz around the transaction from other clubs trying to muscle in. If you consider how much Gomez was already in the spotlight, with talk of FAPL scouts watching him long before the transaction, that is very odd indeed, surely you would concede that?
For the record I do not believe Meire or the Duchatelet regime in general was corrupt.
Why would any other club get involved they knew (which they would) that Gomez had his heart set on Liverpool?
As for benchmarks, of course they exist and it’s the job of both sides to try and beat those benchmarks in their favour, sadly CAFC failed in a huge way to do that. That might be down to incompetence, or it might be down to accepting a 3.7m or so release clause was the best we would ever get.
Would it be fair to say VOTV hasn't exactly been huge fans of Sandgaard so far?
You mean we have not seen Rick having a selfie with TS or singing to him in the Oak?
I think VOTV has been very fair in the reporting of the TS and does see the bigger picture. I find too many supporters are very over protective of TS and any hint of questioning decisions made are seen as anti TS
Interesting you see my comments as being pro Sandgaard/anti VOTV. It's also interesting you see more people defending Sandgaard. I'd say it's quite equal those defending him and those criticising him and most of us (including myself sit somewhere in the middle). I was asking a question about an observation I've made recently.
Sorry you are correct for balance I should have put a handful of people on Twitter have been anti TS for quite a while.
I don't see why VOTV should be huge fans of TS (or any supporter should be a huge fan of TS). He is the owner, he will make decisions that are correct, some that are wrong. VOTV I believe is calling it for what it currently is.
Do people have any examples of any other League One strikers with so few appearances going for (a lot) more money?
I'm not saying I'm happy with the fee but is it a case of "it is what it is"? And that's not even taking into account Mason's wishes and desires.
I've been thinking about one such; Josh Maja from Sunderland. Quite a similar player in some ways, not quite as tall as Mason, perhaps not so good in the air. He left, in a January window for £1.7m, it was messy and much documented in the Netflix series. He was though one year older than Mason at the time, but then again, his talent had already been much in evidence. I remember that against us in the home game (1-1) he was quiet for the first hour and then suddenly came to life and started to scare the shite out of me. Mason hasn't done that to other teams yet, at least not in L1.
However, Mason is back with us, so we will have the chance to test the fee; double-edged sword, that. If he continues to develop at his current rate, we are going to be very pissed off come the end of season...unless we feel there might be a chance to get him back again next season. If that happened I'd be a fair bit happier.
I think Maja was a long, long way ahead of Burstow at that stage. He'd scored 15 goals in 24 League One appearances and was only 21. He was also out of contract at the end of that season, which is why the fee was actually quite low for a player with those numbers. Maja still ended up that season as Sunderland's top goalscorer despite leaving in January. There's also a big difference in that he was Sunderland's best player and number one striker. The fee they got for him didn't allow them to go out and replace like with like; they ended up signing Will Grigg for at least £3m and he has to date 8 Sunderland goals in 61 appearances. Burstow was our 4th choice striker, behind Washington, Aneke and Stockley and we only really needed to replace him because of ongoing injury issues and the need for a big squad, and ultimately replaced him with him in the end thanks to the loan. In fact, the only reason we've seen Burstow this season outside of the Pizza Cup is because of injuries and the fact Davison failed his audition so badly.
Nobody actually knows what Burstow's true value is simply because there is so little evidence to base that on. He's scored just half a dozen goals and look at the opposition:
Crawley (6-1 win in the F L Trophy) Havant & W (4-0 win in the F A Cup) Aston Villa U21 (2-1 win in the F L Trophy) Crewe (2-1 League defeat) Fleetwood (2-0 League win) Hartlepool (2-2 draw in F L Trophy)
So the highest ranked team he's scored against is one that sits 19th in League 1. Now, imagine if we'd paid £1.6m for Burstow with add ons and locked him in to a four or five year contract based on that profile. And it turned out that he didn't "train on". We would be screaming blue murder
Chelsea can afford to speculate more than we can in the same way as we can afford to speculate more than Maidstone can. Unfortunately, that really is how it works. And I bet Maidstone would love £1.6m right now with potential add ons.
One final point. Would you spend £1.6m in total right nowin total on buying Stockley, Fraser, Clare, MacGillvray, Dobson and Aneke or would you rather spend £1.6m right nowon Burstow? It's not what Burstow might be in three or four years time. That might be £50m. But it could also be zero. It's what his worth is right now.
Wish Mason all the best, cannot help but think we got a good deal here.
Decent pace and gets in good positions but never struck me as a stand out player, creating chances for himself or others. I think he will end up as a good league one striker, possibly lower championship. I may be wrong and he is the next Aguero but I doubt it.
I know a lot of out fan base have been riled by his sale but I don't feel anywhere near as disappointed as when Gomez, Lookman, shelvey etc left.
The main disappointment for me is that I love the idea of a Charlton fan regularly playing and scoring for the club.
Would it be fair to say VOTV hasn't exactly been huge fans of Sandgaard so far?
You mean we have not seen Rick having a selfie with TS or singing to him in the Oak?
I think VOTV has been very fair in the reporting of the TS and does see the bigger picture. I find too many supporters are very over protective of TS and any hint of questioning decisions made are seen as anti TS
Interesting you see my comments as being pro Sandgaard/anti VOTV. It's also interesting you see more people defending Sandgaard. I'd say it's quite equal those defending him and those criticising him and most of us (including myself sit somewhere in the middle). I was asking a question about an observation I've made recently.
Sorry you are correct for balance I should have put a handful of people on Twitter have been anti TS for quite a while.
I don't see why VOTV should be huge fans of TS (or any supporter should be a huge fan of TS). He is the owner, he will make decisions that are correct, some that are wrong. VOTV I believe is calling it for what it currently is.
Fair point on not being a huge supporter.
On calling it for what it currently is, I'm not so sure. The tweet seemed to indicate that it wasn't a great deal, I'd say by putting 1.6m out there it was intended to gain the reaction on twitter that it did. It's also interesting that the tweet stated "plus standard contingent add-ons and sell-on" yet Airman on here has said Chelsea dismissed the chunky sell on claims and hasn't heard what they are from Charlton. So wouldn't it have been more accurate/balanced to say £1.6m up front plus add ons that we don't yet know what they are?
Would it be fair to say VOTV hasn't exactly been huge fans of Sandgaard so far?
You mean we have not seen Rick having a selfie with TS or singing to him in the Oak?
I think VOTV has been very fair in the reporting of the TS and does see the bigger picture. I find too many supporters are very over protective of TS and any hint of questioning decisions made are seen as anti TS
Interesting you see my comments as being pro Sandgaard/anti VOTV. It's also interesting you see more people defending Sandgaard. I'd say it's quite equal those defending him and those criticising him and most of us (including myself sit somewhere in the middle). I was asking a question about an observation I've made recently.
Sorry you are correct for balance I should have put a handful of people on Twitter have been anti TS for quite a while.
I don't see why VOTV should be huge fans of TS (or any supporter should be a huge fan of TS). He is the owner, he will make decisions that are correct, some that are wrong. VOTV I believe is calling it for what it currently is.
Before I comment, I should say I am a big fan of VOTV and think it's excellent and don't believe it to be true of VOTV itself.
But for me, this is the big issue amongst fans at the moment. I think too many people look at our current league standing and making their judgement instead of looking at underlying numbers and decisions.
We are in such better shape than we were before. People think that a change at the top should suddenly mean everything that has gone before should be reversed and wiped out overnight and an instant promotion should be on the cards. It just doesn't happen that way.
Like any new manager, TS is new to club ownership. He will make mistakes but he does seem to learn from them, listen to opinions and is as open and honest as he can be.
So like the Bonne deal we arguably did a Chelsea (but on a lesser scale) by spending a little and making a (quick) profit.
In this case it makes absolute financial sense for the club, but we allowed ourselves to get carried away thinking an unproven striker could be worth a lot of money already. Instead we decided to bank the money now rather than carry the risk his form (and value drops) or gets injured etc.
We will always have to sell until we get promoted.
Would it be fair to say VOTV hasn't exactly been huge fans of Sandgaard so far?
No I don't think it fair to say.
On the whole VOTV has taken a balanced view along with questioning certain events which is a healthy thing to do considering our owners over the last 10 years.
Would it be fair to say VOTV hasn't exactly been huge fans of Sandgaard so far?
It would be fair to say the VOTV is die hard Charlton and track record is that it rarely calls it wrong.
Why are people getting so defensive over a question being asked?
Personally, having previously criticised its author on a number of occasions for being vocal about insight that doesn't toe the party line and then it transpiring he was pretty much right has given me cause to trust views and insight and give them more weight than the PR message coming out of whichever owner of the day is in the boardroom.
Why are people so defensive of criticism/ concern about talk matreialising into actions or foundations of a successful strategy to move us forward (or the ability and knowledge at senior management level to lay such) directed to TS who didn't know who Charlton Athletic were less than 3 years ago?
I’m not against Thomas Sandgaard, but not everything is black and white. I’ve reported what I’ve been told about the fee and have reason to think is true, having spoken to multiple people this week. I’m very confident that the coverage of the transfer in the new issue is fair to all sides based on the information I have.
I don’t support the owner, I support Charlton, and I’d say he’s done some good things and some daft ones.I’m currently pretty sceptical he will get us out of this division in the next two years, but things can change. So can opinions.
I know this is the wrong place for positive spin right now but I'll give it a go anyway. Mason's contract was starting to tick down and there was a log jam of players (possibly better players) in the youth set up with no pathway to the first team and no inclination to sign their first contracts. The deal wasn't amazing in itself but it seems to have enabled lots of other positives and that needs to be factored into the equation.
Face it Santa, Kanu & co will be going the same way next year or the year after.
That's a hell of a lot better than seeing them leave without kicking a ball for the first team and if we're lucky earning Charlton a derisory amount of compensation.
If the new model for the club is to get our young stars to sign 2-3 year contracts and then fast track them into the first team with an eye to a quick sale I can live with that.
It's not ideal and you'd hope that some of the youngsters stay longer and others are sold for far more than Burstow but something had to change.
Yeh, I agree with what you are saying. I'm just in cynical mode. When Tommy mentioned "silly money" I didn't realise he was being silly.
I’m not against Thomas Sandgaard, but not everything is black and white. I’ve reported what I’ve been told about the fee and have reason to think is true, having spoken to multiple people this week. I’m very confident that the coverage of the transfer in the new issue is fair to all sides based on the information I have.
I don’t support the owner, I support Charlton, and I’d say he’s done some good things and some daft ones.I’m currently pretty sceptical he will get us out of this division in the next two years, but things can change. So can opinions.
Your last para pretty much sums it up for me, but would add that getting out of this league in the next two years for most clubs and whoever the owner is, isn't as easy or straight forward as some would like it to be. What we seem to now have is stability, and that alone won't get you promoted but it does provide the foundations on which to build. Success is going to take longer than many anticipated when TS came on the scene, to which his comments didn't help, but in reality that was always likely to be the case. As you said, like me you support Charlton not the owner and that will be the same for the vast majority of us. Owners like players come and go but left behind is a team to support. Sometimes we just have to be more patient, a virtue some of us find hard to find.
Maybe our management team don't rate him as highly as they have said publicly and feel 1.6 m is a good deal. A few goals will catch the headlines, but his all round game is very rough and a lot of the really high valuations are based on the assumption he'll just continue on the meteoric trajectory he's started out on, no guarantees there. Worth bearing in mind someone like Davison also bagged a few goals in quick succession earlier in the season, but that soon stopped and his overall game proved not to be up to it. He's now on loan at Swindon.
Time will tell on this one, I guess.
Loving some of the spin on this. If Duchatelet had sold him for the same amount there would have been outrage.
Not from me there wouldn’t have been. I try to take these things on the merits of the evidence I see, I don’t make my assessments based on how I feel about the personalities involved. This is real life, not Football Manager, and the club has to have income as well as outgoings in order to survive.
I have no idea if £1.6m is a good deal, but I do know that it’s way too early to tell for sure if Burstow is the real deal or a flash in the pan. Footballers careers can turn on a sixpence and there are lots and lots of players on the scrap who looked incredible at 18 and total crap by the time they were 24. Very hard for us fans to know which ones will make it and which ones be scrap.
I don’t follow other clubs that closely but I haven’t heard about many 18 year old strikers moving from League One for £5 to £10m like some seem to expect.
And ask yourself, if Burstow hadn’t scored for the first team yet, how excited would you be about him as a prospect? I wouldn’t be very excited at all because if you take away the goals he’s been pretty anonymous in a lot of his appearances. Not tying to devalue the goals, just highlight the fact that he is miles by off being a rounded striker. I personally have my doubts that he’ll be able to keep the goal streak going because he seems to have been taking almost every chance he gets which no striker can sustain. Longer term with more development, maybe he will, but Chelsea are buying mostly potential and his relative lack of pedigree from non-league plus half a dozen league one games means that potential costs a lot less than buying the finished article or someone from, say, the Ajax academy.
If we wanted to get big bucks for him then we needed to turn down this bid and wait another 6 to 18 months until he’d scored 20 or 30 goals to provide stronger evidence that he is the real deal. The fact we didn’t says to me either:
a) Burstow pushed for the move now. b) We need the money more than is being let on. c) The club aren’t convinced he will push on from here, at least not immediately, and that it’d be a gamble to turn down this money because if he didn’t maintain the goalscoring we wouldn’t get an offer like this again soon.
So I’m not spinning anything (why would I, I have no reason take any side in this), I’m just speculating on what I see as the most likely logic behind the decisions made using the evidence I can see. I could, of course, be wrong too.
I’m not against Thomas Sandgaard, but not everything is black and white. I’ve reported what I’ve been told about the fee and have reason to think is true, having spoken to multiple people this week. I’m very confident that the coverage of the transfer in the new issue is fair to all sides based on the information I have.
I don’t support the owner, I support Charlton, and I’d say he’s done some good things and some daft ones. I’m currently pretty sceptical he will get us out of this division in the next two years, but things can change. So can opinions.
Understandable, but to get us out of this division, we need a consistent and collective effort from Jacko to the playing squad.
Injuries, formations, subs, motivation, effort, set pieces, concentration during games are areas we need to work and improve heavily on, not just what TS is doing right/wrong.
I’m not against Thomas Sandgaard, but not everything is black and white. I’ve reported what I’ve been told about the fee and have reason to think is true, having spoken to multiple people this week. I’m very confident that the coverage of the transfer in the new issue is fair to all sides based on the information I have.
I don’t support the owner, I support Charlton, and I’d say he’s done some good things and some daft ones.I’m currently pretty sceptical he will get us out of this division in the next two years, but things can change. So can opinions.
To be fair, have you ever not been sceptical that we’ll be promoted from League One?
I can only speak for myself, but all of our promotions have seemingly come against the odds.
I’m not against Thomas Sandgaard, but not everything is black and white. I’ve reported what I’ve been told about the fee and have reason to think is true, having spoken to multiple people this week. I’m very confident that the coverage of the transfer in the new issue is fair to all sides based on the information I have.
I don’t support the owner, I support Charlton, and I’d say he’s done some good things and some daft ones.I’m currently pretty sceptical he will get us out of this division in the next two years, but things can change. So can opinions.
It’s not a good fee but it does feel more like Jenkinson or Konsa in that he can be replaced. How good he can be is a bit of an unknown compared to stand out players like Lookman, Shelvey and Gomez who clearly had the potential to play in the Prem. I don’t feel I can judge his all round game as I’ve barely seen him play, never mind have a run of starts, but so far it looks like he’s got a lot to improve on in that area.
Chelsea are signing potential, he’s shown he has that poachers instinct to score goals at this level. When you combine that with his potential to develop physically into a player that’s strong, quick and decent in the air he’ll be an attractive loan for a lot of FL clubs. They’ll could make some of the money back through loan fees, especially if he steps up to Championship level and above.
On TS I feel he’ll be here at least a couple more years but I get the impression the plan likely relies on selling what he sees as overvalued players, reinvesting sensibly in the squad and growing by repeating that process rather than him continually throwing his own money at it. Great if you get it right but it’s far from easy. He’s at least shown signs of learning from mistakes with Roddy going and a couple of promotion quality players in Chuks and Fraser signing in a difficult January window. Looking forward to seeing what business we do in the summer, I really hope we target the right level of players meaning we get most of our signings in early. We should be clearer on what we need now TS has really seen just how competitive L1 is.
Comments
The really odd issue with the Gomez transfer is not so much the fee, but more that there was none of the usual buzz around the transaction from other clubs trying to muscle in. If you consider how much Gomez was already in the spotlight, with talk of FAPL scouts watching him long before the transaction, that is very odd indeed, surely you would concede that?
For the record I do not believe Meire or the Duchatelet regime in general was corrupt.
There were multiple outcomes where we wouldn't have got as much as we did, there are also outcomes where we could have got nothing at all.
If he hadn't signed the contract because he wanted to go to Liverpool his dad, and others, "encouraged" Liverpool to pay us a "fair" compensation fee, as happened with Jenkinson and Beadle, it would have been exactly the same end result. With no talk of agents.
I don't see why VOTV should be huge fans of TS (or any supporter should be a huge fan of TS). He is the owner, he will make decisions that are correct, some that are wrong. VOTV I believe is calling it for what it currently is.
Crawley (6-1 win in the F L Trophy)
Havant & W (4-0 win in the F A Cup)
Aston Villa U21 (2-1 win in the F L Trophy)
Crewe (2-1 League defeat)
Fleetwood (2-0 League win)
Hartlepool (2-2 draw in F L Trophy)
So the highest ranked team he's scored against is one that sits 19th in League 1. Now, imagine if we'd paid £1.6m for Burstow with add ons and locked him in to a four or five year contract based on that profile. And it turned out that he didn't "train on". We would be screaming blue murder
Chelsea can afford to speculate more than we can in the same way as we can afford to speculate more than Maidstone can. Unfortunately, that really is how it works. And I bet Maidstone would love £1.6m right now with potential add ons.
One final point. Would you spend £1.6m in total right now in total on buying Stockley, Fraser, Clare, MacGillvray, Dobson and Aneke or would you rather spend £1.6m right now on Burstow? It's not what Burstow might be in three or four years time. That might be £50m. But it could also be zero. It's what his worth is right now.
Decent pace and gets in good positions but never struck me as a stand out player, creating chances for himself or others. I think he will end up as a good league one striker, possibly lower championship. I may be wrong and he is the next Aguero but I doubt it.
I know a lot of out fan base have been riled by his sale but I don't feel anywhere near as disappointed as when Gomez, Lookman, shelvey etc left.
The main disappointment for me is that I love the idea of a Charlton fan regularly playing and scoring for the club.
On calling it for what it currently is, I'm not so sure. The tweet seemed to indicate that it wasn't a great deal, I'd say by putting 1.6m out there it was intended to gain the reaction on twitter that it did. It's also interesting that the tweet stated "plus standard contingent add-ons and sell-on" yet Airman on here has said Chelsea dismissed the chunky sell on claims and hasn't heard what they are from Charlton. So wouldn't it have been more accurate/balanced to say £1.6m up front plus add ons that we don't yet know what they are?
But for me, this is the big issue amongst fans at the moment. I think too many people look at our current league standing and making their judgement instead of looking at underlying numbers and decisions.
We are in such better shape than we were before. People think that a change at the top should suddenly mean everything that has gone before should be reversed and wiped out overnight and an instant promotion should be on the cards. It just doesn't happen that way.
Like any new manager, TS is new to club ownership. He will make mistakes but he does seem to learn from them, listen to opinions and is as open and honest as he can be.
In this case it makes absolute financial sense for the club, but we allowed ourselves to get carried away thinking an unproven striker could be worth a lot of money already. Instead we decided to bank the money now rather than carry the risk his form (and value drops) or gets injured etc.
We will always have to sell until we get promoted.
On the whole VOTV has taken a balanced view along with questioning certain events which is a healthy thing to do considering our owners over the last 10 years.
Personally, having previously criticised its author on a number of occasions for being vocal about insight that doesn't toe the party line and then it transpiring he was pretty much right has given me cause to trust views and insight and give them more weight than the PR message coming out of whichever owner of the day is in the boardroom.
Why are people so defensive of criticism/ concern about talk matreialising into actions or foundations of a successful strategy to move us forward (or the ability and knowledge at senior management level to lay such) directed to TS who didn't know who Charlton Athletic were less than 3 years ago?
I don’t support the owner, I support Charlton, and I’d say he’s done some good things and some daft ones.I’m currently pretty sceptical he will get us out of this division in the next two years, but things can change. So can opinions.
When Tommy mentioned "silly money" I didn't realise he was being silly.
What we seem to now have is stability, and that alone won't get you promoted but it does provide the foundations on which to build. Success is going to take longer than many anticipated when TS came on the scene, to which his comments didn't help, but in reality that was always likely to be the case.
As you said, like me you support Charlton not the owner and that will be the same for the vast majority of us. Owners like players come and go but left behind is a team to support. Sometimes we just have to be more patient, a virtue some of us find hard to find.
goals to provide stronger evidence that he is the real deal. The fact we didn’t says to me either:
a) Burstow pushed for the move now.
b) We need the money more than is being let on.
c) The club aren’t convinced he will push on from here, at least not immediately, and that it’d be a gamble to turn down this money because if he didn’t maintain the goalscoring we wouldn’t get an offer like this again soon.
Injuries, formations, subs, motivation, effort, set pieces, concentration during games are areas we need to work and improve heavily on, not just what TS is doing right/wrong.
He's had a long career albeit in the lower reaches, but scored plenty of goals. Netted 40 times for Brentford in 111 games around 2008- 2011.
Chelsea are signing potential, he’s shown he has that poachers instinct to score goals at this level. When you combine that with his potential to develop physically into a player that’s strong, quick and decent in the air he’ll be an attractive loan for a lot of FL clubs. They’ll could make some of the money back through loan fees, especially if he steps up to Championship level and above.
On TS I feel he’ll be here at least a couple more years but I get the impression the plan likely relies on selling what he sees as overvalued players, reinvesting sensibly in the squad and growing by repeating that process rather than him continually throwing his own money at it. Great if you get it right but it’s far from easy. He’s at least shown signs of learning from mistakes with Roddy going and a couple of promotion quality players in Chuks and Fraser signing in a difficult January window. Looking forward to seeing what business we do in the summer, I really hope we target the right level of players meaning we get most of our signings in early. We should be clearer on what we need now TS has really seen just how competitive L1 is.