Patrick Roberts

If this is about a bigger pay raise then Khan needs to get his arse on a plane and get a deal done. I can't imagine the kid is so naive to think he would even sniff the first team the next few years there and the only thing that he will find is a series of loans. Make it worth his while, develop him, PLAY him, and when the big clubs come calling a few seasons sell him for a price we can't refuse.

 

It's starting to come out from some reputable sources: http://www.espnfc.us/story/2493882/man-city-agree-deal-for-fulhams-patrick-roberts-sources

This is real shame. Reminds me of when we dealt Smalling for around the same money. Another guy that was sold before he could really make an impact at Fulham.

 

If we keep him for another season without resigning, would we potentially lose him for no monetary gain? Sounds like if he doesn't want to resign, then we can't win. We'll have to sell him for whatever we can get.

This is a current problem in football. The big, rich clubs are buying all the prospects young (and cheap) and then farming them out until they become Premier League caliber or until their potential fizzles to nothing. There's really no way that the smaller clubs can compete.

 

You're absolutely right. If he won't sign a new deal, we have to sell him now, or we'll lose him for nothing. As a club, you have to hope that your young stars will stay loyal to the club that developed them. Looks like that won't be happening with Roberts.

The other complication and is "Financial Fair Play". Even if Khan was willing to offer our young stars big contracts to keep them, he couldn't because we'd risk Fair Play sanctions (under fair play, we essentially cannot spend more on contracts/transfers than we bring in through income). The system works to keep the big clubs at the top, and limit the growth of smaller clubs. Combine this with the "homegrown" regulations means that any good young players are going to be snapped up by the big clubs. If you can't buy young talent, and you can't develop it without the players being snatched away, how can a small club succeed?

 

At this point, I'd be more upset losing Woodrow. Roberts may become a great player, but right now, he is just a prospect. A very good prospect, but a prospect nonetheless. He's not gonna single handedly haul us back up to the top flight. Keep proven commodities like Cauley, Bettinelli and Hyndman. Let this one go and wish him well. But not too well.

 

Pop quiz. Think of your 3 favorite Fulham players. Then 5...then 10. Now tell me which one of those we developed. Even with this newer focus on the Academy, we aren't raising these kids from the womb. We're plucking many of them from even smaller clubs. The good news is that we aren't at the bottom of the pyramid. The bad news (if you choose to look at it that way) is that we aren't at the top either.

You can't look at this like American sports. The closest equivalent would be a small market baseball team but even that's a stretch. 4 things can happen when we bring in a prospect. One, and it should be the ultimate goal, is we sell them on to a bigger club at some point (which is big w FFP b/c it's an additional source of revenue). 2. They make our team & contribute. 3. They develop into pros, just not at our level & we sell them to smaller clubs. And 4, they wash out or bust. The last one will be the most common.

Selling Smalling was an excellent piece of business. He wasn't starting ahead of Hughes & Hangeland and they had his path blocked for the next 2-3 yrs minimum. We made a nice profit and to date he hasn't hit the level H&H were at when we sold him.

Roberts is also good business. This is a player who has made zero impact at Fulham to date. We can fill alot of holes for £10M (or buy in more prospects, etc) and the beauty of it is we aren't even creating a hole by selling him. If he lives up to his potential at City, then we weren't ever going to be able to keep hold of him anyway. Plus we'll likely get some add-ons. If he doesn't, then we sold for more than he was worth. And who knows, maybe 3-5 years from now we find ourselves looking at a player we're familiar with who is available for less than we sold him for.

Southampton are an excellent model. Sold Bale, Walcott, etc for big money. They got contributions from Lambert, Lallana and others before selling them on. And they still have some products of their Academy making contributions. They are reaping the benefits of a comprehensive approach and I only hope we do as well. And I hope we sell as many of our Academy players as possible. It's good business and our best hope for long term success.

 

I'm just not sure I agree that selling your academy players is always "good business". Again, let's look at the Smalling deal. Yes we made a healthy profit on him, but look what happened to our defense the next two or three season. It got older and we never brought new talent in to solidify it. Eventually that mindset led to us having one of the oldest and worst defenses in the league.

I don't understand how you can say "I hope we sell as many of our Academy players as possible." Do you want us to sell Woodrow, Dembele, Bettinelli, Hyndman, etc? And replace them with what? Southampton's model has worked because they've sold players at the right time for the right price and replaced them with well scouted signings or other academy players. We aren't getting £10M for Roberts, everything I've seen says, we're getting £5M + add ons. That doesn't even buy half of Mitroglu...

I agree that a club our size has to sell some players to be sustainable, but by many reports Roberts has the potential to be a world class player, and we're giving him up very cheaply and without much of a fight. And that's very disappointing in my opinion.

 

Enjoying reading everyone's viewpoint, and I think we are all in agreement that it's unfortunate that the structure of English football lends itself to bigger clubs raiding smaller ones (especially for young English players to meet the Brit quotas). If this kid pans out there is no doubt he would of left at some point. I'm just not convinced this is good business right now. I wish there was transparency in the deals so we would know exactly what 5 million plus potential add ons are, but if they mean first team appearances for Citeh it won't be anywhere near 10. I would of preferred giving him the salary necessary (I know we are restricted, but there are some wages coming off the books) to keep him, and if he turns out like everyone thinks be able to sell him for a helluva lot more down the road. What's going to piss me off is when he gets loaned out to a Championship squad next season and he plays great against us. I wonder if part of the reason he wants to leave is the lack of playing time Kit gave him.

 

does anyone know if FFP contains homegrown player requirements?

if so, Roberts is a box checker for Man City. Unless I'm totally, totally wrong (and happy to be so) he has zero future with that club who can always go out a buy someone better, more experienced

 

Timmy, yes. I don't remember the number & the various qualifications of what constitutes a homegrown player but there are minimums.

I've seen 8M + add-ons & I've seen 10M + add-ons. I haven't seen 5M, but I agree that's too low. However, if the rumors are true that he won't sign an extension, we really don't have much choice about selling him. Hopefully there's enough demand out there to return a good price.

Obviously, my endorsement of selling players presumes using the money wisely. If we can't manage that we're not going anywhere anyway, so what happens with Academy players becomes somewhat mooted. As it pertains to the other prospects, maybe saying "I hope we sell as many as possible" confused things. My point was that selling prospects is an indicator of success in scouting & developing them. But like I said, I hope to see a comprehensive approach.

As for Smalling, as I said, his path was blocked for the next 2-3 years. We finished 8th with an excellent 43 GA in 10-11, 9th with 51 GA in 11-12, and 12th with 60 GA in 12-13. 12-13 was Jol's 2nd season & also was the one following the sales of Dempsey & Dembele. In 2010, Smalling wasn't good enough to replace Hughes or Hangeland and he wasn't going to spend 2 years on our bench waiting his turn. He'd just turned 21, was featuring for England's U21 side & was on too many teams' radar for us to slow play it. So yeah, I thought it was excellent business. While I don't know specifically what we did with that money, I was very much on record saying we needed to address our cb depth and try and find some guys to groom behind H&H in those years after his departure. I said the same of Murphy's spot. Failing to adequately do those things doesn't impact my opinion of selling him though.

 

If he has handed in a transfer request it's time to pull in as many bidders as possible.

 

FFC twitter just put out that Roberts has officially gone to city

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Picture of him signing for City: http://www.espnfc.com/story/2527957/manchester-city-sign-starlet-patrick-roberts-from-fulham

The details of the deal seem similar to what has been mentioned before. A based of 5 million with 6 million in add-ons.

He only every had potential for us, so it is hard for me to miss him much since he never brought anything concrete.

 

Agree with Micah but I'd have liked to see us get a little more in return up front. With the way City have developed young players so far, it's unlikely we'll see much in the way of add-ons. Hopefully they include a cut of future sell-on fees.

 

As long as the deal includes a sell on it's a very good one. If not it was just necessary.

 

I know next to nothing about how deal making in football works, so what I'm about to say is probably a stupid question, but I can't figure it out. If Roberts would have been out of his contract next year, why would City pony up a couple million to get him now? I assume he won't be starting for them this season, so why not get him without a fee in 2016? Plus, if I was Roberts wouldn't I have more options if I didn't have Fulham expecting a cut of any deal? Selling him now only seems to benefit Fulham, but I'm pretty sure I'm missing some important dynamic in all of this.