From the Mag Explain To Me Again How This Yohan Cabaye Transfer Is Good Business? 3 mins ago by Mark Jensen I keep reading elsewhere about how this Yohan Cabaye transfer is ‘good business’ but can’t quite get the hang of it. I suppose the question should be, good business for who? For PSG maybe, getting a Champions League class player on the cheap (in my opinion), plus he can even play in the remaining rounds of this season’s CL competition. MikeAshley8For the player himself, can’t really disagree there. Cabaye is going to an ambitious club, getting paid more money and no longer has to put up with the amateur running of our club and likes of Joe Kinnear. As for Ashley himself, well maybe he thinks he got more for Yohan now than he would have got in the summer but that can only be down to a bad business strategy, as in today’s market Cabaye is easily worth more than the £19m or so Newcastle will get, for a player in his prime. Put it this way, would you have swapped Cabaye for Mata? Thought not, Manchester United have signed a canny player but I defy anybody to say he is better than Cabaye, on a par maybe but certainly not worth twice as much. As for Newcastle fans, how can losing your best player ever be a good thing, unless maybe in circumstances where some madmen pay double money for a player like Carroll? Putting it more simply, people claim that because Newcastle paid under £5m for Cabaye and are going to get close to £20m, then that is proof of ‘good business’. I think there is a whole lot wrong with this simple way of looking at the situation. For starters, you surely have to look at your transfer activity in a wider context. Success stories such as Cabaye and to a lesser extent players like Cheick Tiote, are great, but surely you also have to factor in the ones who don’t work out. Players such as Marveaux, Gosling, Obertan and others haven’t worked out, while players such as Mapou are still in the balance, while Cisse maybe would divide opinion. The point being that it is all very well turning a profit on your most saleable assets but if you are left with the rubbish you can’t shift then where does that leave you? I would argue that if we’d managed to give Marveaux, Gosling and Obertan away in January that would have been great business. Yes Newcastle would ‘lose out’ in terms of the money previously spent on transfers , agent fees and wages, but you would be getting liabilities off your hands and not have to pay their wages to do nothing for the next X months/years. The money already wasted is gone and not worth worrying about, players such as Obertan aren’t going to suddenly become good players, they will simply be a drain. Likewise, if you sell your house and then have to live in a tent, or sell your car and have to walk to work, is that good business? We go into the great unknown when we sign replacements and history tells us that for every success there are at least as many failures. Sell Beardsley and use part of the money for Mirandinha. Sell Les Ferdinand and buy Andreas Andersson with some of it. Sell Gazza and buy John Robertson & Dave Beasant. When you let accountants get their hands on things then they will always want something they can write down to ‘prove’ that something is a good deal. Football and Newcastle United aren’t that simple and neither are all of us who follow them!
Posted on: Wed, 29 Jan 2014 15:50:59 +0000
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