Good for him. He is extremely well thought of in the game.
Like it or not but he is and was a Charlton fan, he grew up here. It wasn't a matter of "jumping ship" at the first opportunity. We, as a club, were an absolute binfire at the time and he had a chance to step up the leagues to a club with much better coaching and much better prospects. He could have just gone and that be the end of it (like Largie Ramazzani and Jeremy Sarmiento did) but he chose to make sure we got a record fee for a player who had never played for us - and realistically wouldn't for a few more years.
He's definitely one of our own and I will be excited if and when I see him pull on the full England goalie shirt
Blimey. We got £1.65M for Defoe (maybe more through a sell on clause?) and he never played for us. Didn't realise we did so well on Beadle. Nice.
Good for him. He is extremely well thought of in the game.
Like it or not but he is and was a Charlton fan, he grew up here. It wasn't a matter of "jumping ship" at the first opportunity. We, as a club, were an absolute binfire at the time and he had a chance to step up the leagues to a club with much better coaching and much better prospects. He could have just gone and that be the end of it (like Largie Ramazzani and Jeremy Sarmiento did) but he chose to make sure we got a record fee for a player who had never played for us - and realistically wouldn't for a few more years.
He's definitely one of our own and I will be excited if and when I see him pull on the full England goalie shirt
Blimey. We got £1.65M for Defoe (maybe more through a sell on clause?) and he never played for us. Didn't realise we did so well on Beadle. Nice.
Clem Snide said on page two it was close to £1m and that came from Beadle’s dad, so not as much as Defoe but a lot more than we’d have got as compensation.
Good for him. He is extremely well thought of in the game.
Like it or not but he is and was a Charlton fan, he grew up here. It wasn't a matter of "jumping ship" at the first opportunity. We, as a club, were an absolute binfire at the time and he had a chance to step up the leagues to a club with much better coaching and much better prospects. He could have just gone and that be the end of it (like Largie Ramazzani and Jeremy Sarmiento did) but he chose to make sure we got a record fee for a player who had never played for us - and realistically wouldn't for a few more years.
He's definitely one of our own and I will be excited if and when I see him pull on the full England goalie shirt
Blimey. We got £1.65M for Defoe (maybe more through a sell on clause?) and he never played for us. Didn't realise we did so well on Beadle. Nice.
Clem Snide said on page two it was close to £1m and that came from Beadle’s dad, so not as much as Defoe but a lot more than we’d have got as compensation.
So not a record fee for a player who has never played for us. Can't say I am surprised. The fee I had read on here was £400K which is enough to cover 3 weeks losses the club makes. Not quite such a big deal really.
"closer to 1m than 0 and there are a number of add ons" is what was originally posted. So not quite a record, but a record for a young keeper. Few people suggested £400k plus add ons.
James wasn't just with us from the age of 9. He and Harry didn't just come through our age group system. With their Dad they followed us home and away.
I also believe that James signed a contract so we did get a fee instead of having to go to a tribunal for a reported £400k-£500k. And there is a sell on fee mentioned as taking the total fee to £1m, making it the biggest fee ever paid for a keeper of his age at that time.
So, he was an 19 year old lad got caught up in the moment of celebrating a goal for the team he was playing for at that time. If one of our players refused to celebrate a goal against one of his ex-clubs would he be in the sin bin too? Equally, it's like saying to a former Kent bowler that he shouldn't celebrate a wicket because he used to play for the County he was facing. Let's take all the emotion out of sport shall we? Will those that bemoan about that celebration completely erase him from their minds or mercilessly complain if a paper or commentator doesn't mention that he came through our Academy? After all, as stated above, he isn't "one of our own"/
I would like to think that we are a bit more understanding than that especially as the whole family are Charlton regardless of who they currently work for now. Whatever people think. Harry and James are very much "two of our own". See below.
James on the left and Harry in the middle
The two together
Harry on the left with the arm raised.
Harry in the middle with the jumper round his waist
Not really my point mate tbh. You're clearly very close to the family, but what's that go to do with my comment? They support Charlton, yes. But the lad jumped ship as soon as he got the chance, regardless of £500k compensation, him and his brother had the privilege of being trained up at Charlton for however many years? Doubt the comp touches the sides when it comes to academy costs, but others will know more. The only reason I knew who he was after that game was that I thought it weird for an oppo keeper to be celebrating like that after he'd not had any stick from the home fans. Then I was even more surprised when I found out who he was. Good luck to him. I hope he does well and has a successful career. However, if he ends up playing for England in 5yrs time (which he could very well do) I won't be crowing about him being a Charlton Boy and one of our own. That's for players who actually hung around for a bit and played a few games. Not controversial.
Edit. Nice pictures btw
I totally respect your decision to cheer on who you like but are you proud of Joe Gomez and his roots when he plays for England? He left us when he was 18 years and 28 days old. James Beadle was older when he joined Brighton at 18 years and 46 days old. Unlike Gomez, he didn't get a chance to play for the first team because he is a keeper.
We've never done that with our keepers. Ask Pope, Elliott, Randolph (all internationals) and AMB who were all at least 22 before they had played more than a handful of games. Beadle would have been sent out on loan to a National League or League 2 team at best for two or three years to gain experience. It is only because he went to a PL club that he was in such demand - he started at Crewe for three months in League 2, then Oxford in League 1 for half a season followed by Sheffield Wednesday for the second half of that season in the Championship and again there this season. By definition, had he stayed with us he wouldn't be playing in the Championship in the same way as Gomez wouldn't have been playing in the Champions League. He's still only just 20 but is miles ahead in term of experience then he would have been had he stayed with us. The reality is, though, that his longevity with us is no different to that of Gomez.
Apart from Joe and Ezri actually played some first team games for us tbf. Hence my opinion. I don't want it to come across like I'm "hating" on Beadle, so I'm gonna tap out of this thread. Good luck to the lad and I hope he does very well out of the game. I'm sure he will as he seems very highly rated by ITK posters on here. Just wish he could have done a bit better on Saturday lol
Harry, only now 21, was let go at 18, is currently employed at L2 level although on loan in non League. Who is to say he wasn't good enough? And we were barely paying him minimum wage. Our lack of loyalty allowed James to show a similar lack of allegiance to the club who trained him for nine years.
Harry, only now 21, was let go at 18, is currently employed at L2 level although on loan in non League. Who is to say he wasn't good enough? And we were barely paying him minimum wage. Our lack of loyalty allowed James to show a similar lack of allegiance to the club who trained him for nine years.
Given he’s on loan in the 6th tier at 21 shows he’s currently not good enough for us.
Harry, only now 21, was let go at 18, is currently employed at L2 level although on loan in non League. Who is to say he wasn't good enough? And we were barely paying him minimum wage. Our lack of loyalty allowed James to show a similar lack of allegiance to the club who trained him for nine years.
Football is a hard business and these lads are very much aware of that and what happens when someone no longer has faith in their abilities. Its the same everywhere unfortunately. I went to school with Tony Agana, absolutely the best player I ever saw or played with at school. He was on school boy terms with Charlton, he never got anywhere near any Charlton team. He did tell me why he thought it was but he excepted he was never going to make with us and he moved on. He is to this day a legend at Sheffield United. Hopefully Harry will have a good career too.
Good for him. He is extremely well thought of in the game.
Like it or not but he is and was a Charlton fan, he grew up here. It wasn't a matter of "jumping ship" at the first opportunity. We, as a club, were an absolute binfire at the time and he had a chance to step up the leagues to a club with much better coaching and much better prospects. He could have just gone and that be the end of it (like Largie Ramazzani and Jeremy Sarmiento did) but he chose to make sure we got a record fee for a player who had never played for us - and realistically wouldn't for a few more years.
He's definitely one of our own and I will be excited if and when I see him pull on the full England goalie shirt
Blimey. We got £1.65M for Defoe (maybe more through a sell on clause?) and he never played for us. Didn't realise we did so well on Beadle. Nice.
Clem Snide said on page two it was close to £1m and that came from Beadle’s dad, so not as much as Defoe but a lot more than we’d have got as compensation.
So not a record fee for a player who has never played for us. Can't say I am surprised. The fee I had read on here was £400K which is enough to cover 3 weeks losses the club makes. Not quite such a big deal really.
As I said back in 2021 the fee was closer to 1m than 0. There are a number of ads ons as well.
Poor from our admin who dumped his brother Harry, who while not yet EFL standard, is a decent 21yo player and a leader.
After that, why should we have expected any empathy by James?
So James (who is a fan apparently) would have wanted the club to keep on someone who was not good enough?
That is the thing - the difference between what is right from a fan's viewpoint and what is right from a personal/family viewpoint. It's why, when I hear fans say that someone like James "should have stayed", as they do, I sigh ("I reckon his football progress would’ve been better with us" was one such example on this thread). It's not until you are in that player's shoes or that of his family and know the full circumstances that you can make a valued assessment of the situation from the interests of that player as opposed to one of a fan who will, naturally, feel spurned.
In James' case, the decision to leave was absolutely the right one and proven as such. Harry would have been forgotten about by 99.9% of our fans whereas James is lambasted for moving on. As fans, we want it both ways. Harry wasn't deemed good enough ("good luck anyway") but we want top dollar and more because James proved to be good enough. For someone who didn't even play a first team game for us. And why didn't he do that? Because we didn't pick him. For any matches because we had four or five keepers in front of him and we have never given "one of our own" keepers a chance until they are 21 or 22. Certainly not at 17 or 18. Not even in the Pizza Cup as we might have given an opportunity to an outfielder such as a Konchesky, Shelvey, Parker, Gomez etc etc. In fact, had he stayed he would not have been playing for us against Oxford last season whereas he was in their side. He wouldn't have been playing in the Championship as he is now. He wouldn't have been called up to train with England as he has this week. He certainly wouldn't have commanded the sort of money he is on right now.
Which brings me on to the definition of what "one of our own" is. I tend to use that association wider than the context of having played a first team game for us. Someone who was with us for a decade, is a fan who followed us with his family home and away and season ticket holders too, who is still a member of Valley Gold, is, to me, "one of our own". His links to us are a million times more than they are to Brighton or any other club he plays for during his career.
So what is "loyalty" these days? There is none in football now. Look at players leaving clubs at the very first opportunity. Look at how clubs use players as a commodity with Chelsea being the prime example of that. We are little different. How many players have played over a hundred games for us? Aneke must be the one and only to have done so and it took him two periods with us to achieve that. Do we have any others that have played even 50 games for us? James Beadle has more of an association with our Club than any of our signings, most of which will have departed inside two years.
James would have been the subject of plenty of interest years before he left us - at the age of 14 he was called up for the England U15 team and went on to play for the U16, U18, U19 & U20 teams. He wasn't exactly football's biggest secret was he? In a world where PL teams are happy to have six first team keepers on their books, do we seriously think that the likes of Chelsea weren't knocking on his door years ago? Which is why, whether it was as a result of James signing a contract or via compensation, he actually did us a favour by staying with us as long as he did and enabled us to get a decent fee for him with, hopefully, a cut of any sell on fee in the future. That's a hell of a lot more than some that have been taken from us at 15 or 16, usually under the influence of parents and agents.
As unlikely as it might be, certainly as things stand right now, I sincerely hope that one day we see him in our colours playing in the PL. He really will be the undisputed "one of our own" then.
Good for him. He is extremely well thought of in the game.
Like it or not but he is and was a Charlton fan, he grew up here. It wasn't a matter of "jumping ship" at the first opportunity. We, as a club, were an absolute binfire at the time and he had a chance to step up the leagues to a club with much better coaching and much better prospects. He could have just gone and that be the end of it (like Largie Ramazzani and Jeremy Sarmiento did) but he chose to make sure we got a record fee for a player who had never played for us - and realistically wouldn't for a few more years.
He's definitely one of our own and I will be excited if and when I see him pull on the full England goalie shirt
Blimey. We got £1.65M for Defoe (maybe more through a sell on clause?) and he never played for us. Didn't realise we did so well on Beadle. Nice.
Clem Snide said on page two it was close to £1m and that came from Beadle’s dad, so not as much as Defoe but a lot more than we’d have got as compensation.
So not a record fee for a player who has never played for us. Can't say I am surprised. The fee I had read on here was £400K which is enough to cover 3 weeks losses the club makes. Not quite such a big deal really.
That £1.65m was set by a tribunal. It wasn't a "fee" it was a case of "you must pay this for breaching the rules"
Good for him. He is extremely well thought of in the game.
Like it or not but he is and was a Charlton fan, he grew up here. It wasn't a matter of "jumping ship" at the first opportunity. We, as a club, were an absolute binfire at the time and he had a chance to step up the leagues to a club with much better coaching and much better prospects. He could have just gone and that be the end of it (like Largie Ramazzani and Jeremy Sarmiento did) but he chose to make sure we got a record fee for a player who had never played for us - and realistically wouldn't for a few more years.
He's definitely one of our own and I will be excited if and when I see him pull on the full England goalie shirt
I don't get how someone who never played for us can be 'one of our own'
Yeah he supports the club but zero appearances
He came through OUR academy and is a supporter. I'd argue that's the very definition of "one of our own"
Good for him. He is extremely well thought of in the game.
Like it or not but he is and was a Charlton fan, he grew up here. It wasn't a matter of "jumping ship" at the first opportunity. We, as a club, were an absolute binfire at the time and he had a chance to step up the leagues to a club with much better coaching and much better prospects. He could have just gone and that be the end of it (like Largie Ramazzani and Jeremy Sarmiento did) but he chose to make sure we got a record fee for a player who had never played for us - and realistically wouldn't for a few more years.
He's definitely one of our own and I will be excited if and when I see him pull on the full England goalie shirt
I don't get how someone who never played for us can be 'one of our own'
Yeah he supports the club but zero appearances
He came through OUR academy and is a supporter. I'd argue that's the very definition of "one of our own"
Imagine what the reaction would be if he had taken out of the club in wages the amount of money that the club received/will receive from Brighton.
Not quite Duchatelet level, but I'd imagine that it wouldn't be positive.
Harry, only now 21, was let go at 18, is currently employed at L2 level although on loan in non League. Who is to say he wasn't good enough? And we were barely paying him minimum wage. Our lack of loyalty allowed James to show a similar lack of allegiance to the club who trained him for nine years.
So his brothers career is regressing but we should have kept him?
The club made a footballing decision to let someone go that wasn’t good enough. The fact that he hasn’t kicked on at a lower level suggests that the club made the correct decision.
Poor from our admin who dumped his brother Harry, who while not yet EFL standard, is a decent 21yo player and a leader.
After that, why should we have expected any empathy by James?
So James (who is a fan apparently) would have wanted the club to keep on someone who was not good enough?
That is the thing - the difference between what is right from a fan's viewpoint and what is right from a personal/family viewpoint. It's why, when I hear fans say that someone like James "should have stayed", as they do, I sigh ("I reckon his football progress would’ve been better with us" was one such example on this thread). It's not until you are in that player's shoes or that of his family and know the full circumstances that you can make a valued assessment of the situation from the interests of that player as opposed to one of a fan who will, naturally, feel spurned.
In James' case, the decision to leave was absolutely the right one and proven as such. Harry would have been forgotten about by 99.9% of our fans whereas James is lambasted for moving on. As fans, we want it both ways. Harry wasn't deemed good enough ("good luck anyway") but we want top dollar and more because James proved to be good enough. For someone who didn't even play a first team game for us. And why didn't he do that? Because we didn't pick him. For any matches because we had four or five keepers in front of him and we have never given "one of our own" keepers a chance until they are 21 or 22. Certainly not at 17 or 18. Not even in the Pizza Cup as we might have given an opportunity to an outfielder such as a Konchesky, Shelvey, Parker, Gomez etc etc. In fact, had he stayed he would not have been playing for us against Oxford last season whereas he was in their side. He wouldn't have been playing in the Championship as he is now. He wouldn't have been called up to train with England as he has this week. He certainly wouldn't have commanded the sort of money he is on right now.
Which brings me on to the definition of what "one of our own" is. I tend to use that association wider than the context of having played a first team game for us. Someone who was with us for a decade, is a fan who followed us with his family home and away and season ticket holders too, who is still a member of Valley Gold, is, to me, "one of our own". His links to us are a million times more than they are to Brighton or any other club he plays for during his career.
So what is "loyalty" these days? There is none in football now. Look at players leaving clubs at the very first opportunity. Look at how clubs use players as a commodity with Chelsea being the prime example of that. We are little different. How many players have played over a hundred games for us? Aneke must be the one and only to have done so and it took him two periods with us to achieve that. Do we have any others that have played even 50 games for us? James Beadle has more of an association with our Club than any of our signings, most of which will have departed inside two years.
James would have been the subject of plenty of interest years before he left us - at the age of 14 he was called up for the England U15 team and went on to play for the U16, U18, U19 & U20 teams. He wasn't exactly football's biggest secret was he? In a world where PL teams are happy to have six first team keepers on their books, do we seriously think that the likes of Chelsea weren't knocking on his door years ago? Which is why, whether it was as a result of James signing a contract or via compensation, he actually did us a favour by staying with us as long as he did and enabled us to get a decent fee for him with, hopefully, a cut of any sell on fee in the future. That's a hell of a lot more than some that have been taken from us at 15 or 16, usually under the influence of parents and agents.
As unlikely as it might be, certainly as things stand right now, I sincerely hope that one day we see him in our colours playing in the PL. He really will be the undisputed "one of our own" then.
Brighton seem to have a bit of a keeper logjam and with the fees keepers seem to go for nowadays , a 20% sell on could be very very shrewd business. Hopefully James does make it to their first team of course but they're very stacked with options.
Brighton seem to have a bit of a keeper logjam and with the fees keepers seem to go for nowadays , a 20% sell on could be very very shrewd business. Hopefully James does make it to their first team of course but they're very stacked with options.
You’d think after two years on loan there he’s odds on to be bought by Sheff Wed. if they stay up. I guess he could also be seen as a worthwhile punt in the same way Burnley saw Trafford.
Brighton seem to have a bit of a keeper logjam and with the fees keepers seem to go for nowadays , a 20% sell on could be very very shrewd business. Hopefully James does make it to their first team of course but they're very stacked with options.
You’d think after two years on loan there he’s odds on to be bought by Sheff Wed. if they stay up. I guess he could also be seen as a worthwhile punt in the same way Burnley saw Trafford.
Trafford is an excellent example. The doubt I have with Brighton is that they've got Verbruggen, Steele for cups and the very promising Carl Rushworth who joined Hull on loan late in the window. If Sheffield Wednesday want him after this season I'd expect the fee to be very significant.
Brighton seem to have a bit of a keeper logjam and with the fees keepers seem to go for nowadays , a 20% sell on could be very very shrewd business. Hopefully James does make it to their first team of course but they're very stacked with options.
You’d think after two years on loan there he’s odds on to be bought by Sheff Wed. if they stay up. I guess he could also be seen as a worthwhile punt in the same way Burnley saw Trafford.
Trafford is an excellent example. The doubt I have with Brighton is that they've got Verbruggen, Steele for cups and the very promising Carl Rushworth who joined Hull on loan late in the window. If Sheffield Wednesday want him after this season I'd expect the fee to be very significant.
Are Wednesday still owned by Chansiri who, at one point last season, asked fans to cough up £2m and who said that he refused to put any more money into the club because of the abuse that his family had received? Brighton paid £16m for Verbruggen when he was 21 and had 30 appearances to her name. He's been their first choice since. Burnley paid £19m for Trafford just before his 21st birthday and had that sort of money because of sales and parachute money. I might be wrong but I can't see that Wednesday made a net spend of more than £500K in total in the summer?
Now it all depends on how highly Beadle is rated (and he would have to have "trained on") but given he has been in the England set up since he was 14 and is now training in the full squad, there must be one or two teams beyond the Championship looking at him even if he's not needed by Brighton. I don't mean to go straight into the first team at another PL either.
I'm unaware of who, for example, Arsenal have got coming through? They sold Ramsdale and then immediately took the 35 year old Neto on loan as cover. Top teams have an issue with finding a second choice keeper that is good enough to step in and who isn't banging on the door because he isn't happy warming the bench. With Raya as automatic first choice, by signing someone like Neto as an experienced replacement on a free should something happen to Raya in the short term and then having an up and coming keeper like Beadle would be the ideal solution especially as the latter could gain further experience in the domestic cup competitions. A fee in the region of £15m would mean a tidy profit for Brighton and another £3m for us.
But, as I say, Beadle will have to show meaningful progress to maintain his progress and attract any meaningful bids.
I wonder if someone like West Ham would take a punt on him? Neither of their keepers have been very convincing for a while and they could afford a fee for him which Sheff Wed probably couldn’t (I’d forgotten about Chansiri @Addick Addict!)
Brighton seem to have a bit of a keeper logjam and with the fees keepers seem to go for nowadays , a 20% sell on could be very very shrewd business. Hopefully James does make it to their first team of course but they're very stacked with options.
You’d think after two years on loan there he’s odds on to be bought by Sheff Wed. if they stay up. I guess he could also be seen as a worthwhile punt in the same way Burnley saw Trafford.
Trafford is an excellent example. The doubt I have with Brighton is that they've got Verbruggen, Steele for cups and the very promising Carl Rushworth who joined Hull on loan late in the window. If Sheffield Wednesday want him after this season I'd expect the fee to be very significant.
Are Wednesday still owned by Chansiri who, at one point last season, asked fans to cough up £2m and who said that he refused to put any more money into the club because of the abuse that his family had received? Brighton paid £16m for Verbruggen when he was 21 and had 30 appearances to her name. He's been their first choice since. Burnley paid £19m for Trafford just before his 21st birthday and had that sort of money because of sales and parachute money. I might be wrong but I can't see that Wednesday made a net spend of more than £500K in total in the summer?
Now it all depends on how highly Beadle is rated (and he would have to have "trained on") but given he has been in the England set up since he was 14 and is now training in the full squad, there must be one or two teams beyond the Championship looking at him even if he's not needed by Brighton. I don't mean to go straight into the first team at another PL either.
I'm unaware of who, for example, Arsenal have got coming through? They sold Ramsdale and then immediately took the 35 year old Neto on loan as cover. Top teams have an issue with finding a second choice keeper that is good enough to step in and who isn't banging on the door because he isn't happy warming the bench. With Raya as automatic first choice, by signing someone like Neto as an experienced replacement on a free should something happen to Raya in the short term and then having an up and coming keeper like Beadle would be the ideal solution especially as the latter could gain further experience in the domestic cup competitions. A fee in the region of £15m would mean a tidy profit for Brighton and another £3m for us.
But, as I say, Beadle will have to show meaningful progress to maintain his progress and attract any meaningful bids.
Absolutely no chance of Wednesday ever paying the fee if he was available but I'd expect if he had a very good season this season it would be in that similar ballpark figure to what Burnley paid for Trafford.
Good for him. He is extremely well thought of in the game.
Like it or not but he is and was a Charlton fan, he grew up here. It wasn't a matter of "jumping ship" at the first opportunity. We, as a club, were an absolute binfire at the time and he had a chance to step up the leagues to a club with much better coaching and much better prospects. He could have just gone and that be the end of it (like Largie Ramazzani and Jeremy Sarmiento did) but he chose to make sure we got a record fee for a player who had never played for us - and realistically wouldn't for a few more years.
He's definitely one of our own and I will be excited if and when I see him pull on the full England goalie shirt
I don't get how someone who never played for us can be 'one of our own'
Yeah he supports the club but zero appearances
He came through OUR academy and is a supporter. I'd argue that's the very definition of "one of our own"
Like I said. He never played a game.
Same as Defoe apart from the supporter bit.
No one did a little sex wee every time he played for England
Comments
Blimey. We got £1.65M for Defoe (maybe more through a sell on clause?) and he never played for us. Didn't realise we did so well on Beadle. Nice.
So not a record fee for a player who has never played for us. Can't say I am surprised. The fee I had read on here was £400K which is enough to cover 3 weeks losses the club makes. Not quite such a big deal really.
After that, why should we have expected any empathy by James?
Our lack of loyalty allowed James to show a similar lack of allegiance to the club who trained him for nine years.
I went to school with Tony Agana, absolutely the best player I ever saw or played with at school. He was on school boy terms with Charlton, he never got anywhere near any Charlton team. He did tell me why he thought it was but he excepted he was never going to make with us and he moved on. He is to this day a legend at Sheffield United. Hopefully Harry will have a good career too.
That is the thing - the difference between what is right from a fan's viewpoint and what is right from a personal/family viewpoint. It's why, when I hear fans say that someone like James "should have stayed", as they do, I sigh ("I reckon his football progress would’ve been better with us" was one such example on this thread). It's not until you are in that player's shoes or that of his family and know the full circumstances that you can make a valued assessment of the situation from the interests of that player as opposed to one of a fan who will, naturally, feel spurned.
In James' case, the decision to leave was absolutely the right one and proven as such. Harry would have been forgotten about by 99.9% of our fans whereas James is lambasted for moving on. As fans, we want it both ways. Harry wasn't deemed good enough ("good luck anyway") but we want top dollar and more because James proved to be good enough. For someone who didn't even play a first team game for us. And why didn't he do that? Because we didn't pick him. For any matches because we had four or five keepers in front of him and we have never given "one of our own" keepers a chance until they are 21 or 22. Certainly not at 17 or 18. Not even in the Pizza Cup as we might have given an opportunity to an outfielder such as a Konchesky, Shelvey, Parker, Gomez etc etc. In fact, had he stayed he would not have been playing for us against Oxford last season whereas he was in their side. He wouldn't have been playing in the Championship as he is now. He wouldn't have been called up to train with England as he has this week. He certainly wouldn't have commanded the sort of money he is on right now.
Which brings me on to the definition of what "one of our own" is. I tend to use that association wider than the context of having played a first team game for us. Someone who was with us for a decade, is a fan who followed us with his family home and away and season ticket holders too, who is still a member of Valley Gold, is, to me, "one of our own". His links to us are a million times more than they are to Brighton or any other club he plays for during his career.
So what is "loyalty" these days? There is none in football now. Look at players leaving clubs at the very first opportunity. Look at how clubs use players as a commodity with Chelsea being the prime example of that. We are little different. How many players have played over a hundred games for us? Aneke must be the one and only to have done so and it took him two periods with us to achieve that. Do we have any others that have played even 50 games for us? James Beadle has more of an association with our Club than any of our signings, most of which will have departed inside two years.
James would have been the subject of plenty of interest years before he left us - at the age of 14 he was called up for the England U15 team and went on to play for the U16, U18, U19 & U20 teams. He wasn't exactly football's biggest secret was he? In a world where PL teams are happy to have six first team keepers on their books, do we seriously think that the likes of Chelsea weren't knocking on his door years ago? Which is why, whether it was as a result of James signing a contract or via compensation, he actually did us a favour by staying with us as long as he did and enabled us to get a decent fee for him with, hopefully, a cut of any sell on fee in the future. That's a hell of a lot more than some that have been taken from us at 15 or 16, usually under the influence of parents and agents.
As unlikely as it might be, certainly as things stand right now, I sincerely hope that one day we see him in our colours playing in the PL. He really will be the undisputed "one of our own" then.
Brighton and us agreed a fee. Slight difference.
Not quite Duchatelet level, but I'd imagine that it wouldn't be positive.
Trafford is an excellent example. The doubt I have with Brighton is that they've got Verbruggen, Steele for cups and the very promising Carl Rushworth who joined Hull on loan late in the window. If Sheffield Wednesday want him after this season I'd expect the fee to be very significant.
Now it all depends on how highly Beadle is rated (and he would have to have "trained on") but given he has been in the England set up since he was 14 and is now training in the full squad, there must be one or two teams beyond the Championship looking at him even if he's not needed by Brighton. I don't mean to go straight into the first team at another PL either.
I'm unaware of who, for example, Arsenal have got coming through? They sold Ramsdale and then immediately took the 35 year old Neto on loan as cover. Top teams have an issue with finding a second choice keeper that is good enough to step in and who isn't banging on the door because he isn't happy warming the bench. With Raya as automatic first choice, by signing someone like Neto as an experienced replacement on a free should something happen to Raya in the short term and then having an up and coming keeper like Beadle would be the ideal solution especially as the latter could gain further experience in the domestic cup competitions. A fee in the region of £15m would mean a tidy profit for Brighton and another £3m for us.
But, as I say, Beadle will have to show meaningful progress to maintain his progress and attract any meaningful bids.
Absolutely no chance of Wednesday ever paying the fee if he was available but I'd expect if he had a very good season this season it would be in that similar ballpark figure to what Burnley paid for Trafford.
ValleyGold said:
Valley Gold Draw
Rotherham (Game 3)
7th September 2024
Prize
Winning
Valley Gold No.
Name
Address
1st
£750.00
5072
I Smillie
London
2nd
£50.00
3055
R Cromb
London
£50.00
0366
R Knoyle
London
£50.00
1625
L Pettyfer
Sudbury
£50.00
5105
J Beadle
London
£50.00
4421
S Rossi
Farington
£50.00
3152
R Hollister
Kent
£50.00
5170
L Kennedy
London
£50.00
4493
S Williams
Suffolk
£50.00
4229
R Brans
Surrey
£50.00
2483
R Rogers
Kent
Jackpot Winners
1st winning £450 M Bick
2nd winning £100 G Curtis
In the Valley Gold Exec Box for this game were:
M Purcell
2504
K Crout
5062