The British Transfer Thread

Still massively overpriced.

Yup, but that's the thing with paying that much for a youngster. You could get Ronaldo or you could get Francis Jeffers. 

Big season coming up for Sterling - the season after Ronaldo turned 21 he was ManU's top scorer as they won the first of three consecutive league titles... 

To be fair Bale was a wee bit different in that he was predominantly a left back at that age. 

Stones to Man City looks inevitable. Typical modern CB - faffs about on the ball so people rave about him but he's actually shark at the basic stuff a CB should do. Combining him with Hart on a weekly basis should bring the lolz

Was he? I thought United was interested at the time?

The below story was reprinted by a number of newspaper and online outlets. 

Spurs flop Gareth could Bale out in January as Birmingham boss Alex McLeish eyes £3m defender

and check out #9 on the link below...

10 Spurs Flops

Yeah he was originally a left back and wasn't there some crazy stat that they didn't win a game he played in for his first couple of seasons or something?

Yeah Utd got beat for both Bale and Ramsey, though who knows how Bale would have fared at Utd - might have stayed at LB or moved to an attacking position quicker?

Edit: tbf to Bale, he was 17/18 when he moved to Spurs.

Kante gone to Chelsea for 30 million.

Don't like him one bit anymore. 

Money grabbing cod.

Linekar even less impressed

Part of the game now.

Ozil doubled his income when he left Madrid.

It was inevitable one of Leicester "Big Three" (Mahrez, Vardy and Kante) was gonna move. Would've been incredible for them to keep all three of their best players last season. Hopefully they can find someone to replace him.

He's gone to Chelsea though. No CL, no European football at all, finished a distant 9th last season. 

Giving up the chance to play in the Champions League with the runaway league champions to join a mid-table team that won't be on anyones radar south of Cornwall.

Also he's gone and deleted all traces of LCFC related off his social media. Way to show even more disrespect to the club that made you. Utter, utter wanker. Hope he gets snapped in two on opening day.

Interesting nerdy article on transfers here. Basically some boffins have an algorithm for which players are likely to transfer and for how much, and here's their list from June: 

http://www.football-observatory.com/IMG/sites/mr/m...

Kante thanks Leicester finally much to the delight of Buffy.

https://twitter.com/nglkante/status/754663301242613760. Not sure how to embed a tweet sorry.

Good.

Still a cod for going to Chelsea though.

Less of a cod going to Arsenal, Utd, City, Spurs, Madrid, Barca, Munich, Juve? 

Leicester didn't have to accept, the guy still had 3yrs on his contract and they make 25mill+ profit

All bar one of those clubs are in the Champions League, the one that isn't will probably be back in by next season.

The four foreign clubs are absolute global superpowers. They would also not be in direct competition with Leicester in terms of being in the same domestic league as them.

Kante blatantly wanted to leave. Leicester offered him a new contract when Chelsea came sniffing and he turned it down. So there was no point keeping him at the club if he didn't want to be there.

They made a profit on him but what is 25m in football these days? Fudge all really, especially at the top level.

Whats there to understand.

Leicester let him go, 

He gets a pay rise,

Also, Kante already helped the team in 15/16. The question is: does he want to win a league title in 16/17 or 17/18 or further on when he still has a whole career ahead of him, or does he want to stay in a Leicester team who will unlikely win anything again in the next five years because this was an outrageous win that is unlikely to occur again especially considering all the top teams now have top tier coaches?

Or does he want to play Champions League and be in the shop window?

In the shop window for what? To move to Chelsea in a year? 

Or does he want a large pay raise for doing the same job?

As I've said before, I guess once again CL has been shown to be a bit of a myth in being the deciding factor of a transfer. Granted there's the odd exception but for almost every player generally if you pay them they come. The kind of sums being thrown about would have been difficult to turn down for a guy getting his first massive contract. And given their new manager and whatever other spending, Chelsea will be back in the CL next season and won't be far off winning the league. Last season was as much a blip for them as it was for Leicester.

Why does he have to only move to Chelsea? Pretty sure a few other clubs were sniffing around for him.

Also AJC there is absolutely no guarantee that Conte will be successful at Chelsea, nor that they will challenge for the title again immediately. People seem to have already forgotten how abject they were last year.

Of course there's no guarantee, but I think it's more likely they return to the top 4 that have a season like the last. Presumably Kante thinks the same. In any case, $$$ is almost always the deciding factor.

Probably a lot depends on the player - if you're an affirmed player who's been around awhile and have already made a bit of money, the lure of the Champions League (especially if the club has the chance to do well in it) can be an important selling point.

But like you say, if you've just been offered silly money for the first time, you'd be hard pressed to turn that down - and on balance on probabilities, Leicester's episode in the Champions League probably won't take them too far, and you'd expect to end up playing in that competition anyway with Chelsea at a point sooner rather than later.

Why do player so badly want CL? Is that fact or is it our perception?

Could it be important to some players and less so to other players (i.e. nice to have but not a decision maker?)

Players should want to play in it given it's the pinnacle of football.

Leicester could get a horrible draw in the group stage and that's it. I remember a few years back where the champions of England, Spain, Germany and Holland all in the same group because Dortmund and City had a low UEFA coefficient and not a high seed, Leicester likely to be in a similar situation.

Leciester are a top seed so they will avoid any other league winner from last year. Could still end up with a tough draw mind.

Seeding's been changed now, so that the champions of top 7 ranked countries, along with the defending European champions, are all top seeds. So Leicester will be in Pot 1 along with Barcelona, Real Madrid, Bayern, Juventus, and PSG, so that will help them a lot. But they can still get tough opponents, as they could still end up getting the likes of Atletico Madrid, Dortmund, Sevilla, Napoli, and Leverkusen from Pot 2, and depending how the qualifying goes, even Pot 4 could have really tough teams in it - potentially PSV Eindhoven and Sporting Lisbon for example.

EDIT - Buffy beat me to it.

Because it's the biggest club competition in the world?

But yes, for players I think it's one of the considerations, but not the be all end all.

Did not know that the seeding system had changed: http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/football/europe...

Thanks for that, I didn't realise it had changed either. Sounds a better system - the champions should be the teams who are rewarded.

"Players should want to play in it given it's the pinnacle of football."

Im confused if this is a serious comment. European Club football maybe but not the pinnacle of Football.

In terms of competitiveness, it most certainly is the pinnacle of football.

The World Cup is not the pinnacle anymore. Hasn't been for a while.

I still think for most players World Cup is the trophy they'd want to win the most, because it's so hard to win, you only probably have 3 chances to get it at most, and so many things have to align to even give you a sniff.

In terms of competitiveness and on-field quality the Champions League is probably better on balance, but in reality it's an annual competition that the best players in the world have 10+ chances to win through the course of their careers.

It's a bit irrelevant for this conversation though, because you can't transfer between countries in order to make it to the World Cup (random cases like Tommy Smith aside) but you can transfer between clubs. Champions League is the pinnacle of club football so it's relevant to choosing which club you join. Whether or not the WC is bigger or better doesn't change anything.

Imagine the fallout if Leicester wdnt on and won the CL too? Cant see it but who thought they would ever win the EPL. I wonder who they will buy to rep,ace Kante with a promise of CL football?