On one level I can see why people think there is a big disparity in the approach to player sales as between us and them. After all, they have sold Wanyama, Forster, Armstrong and Dembele for big money and now look to be selling Tierney for big money (it may be £15m or whatever up front rather than £25m but to get that sort of money for someone who managed just 21 league appearances last season, mostly in the first half of the season, is remarkable; he has however still to pass a medical - that might be interesting).
But let's be honest, who of note have we sold in recent years? What "big players" have we sold? Windass for £2.5m? That in fact looks like decent business; but, if we are honest, he is hardly a properly big player. Maybe I have missed others but I can't honestly recall us selling a quality player in the last 7 or 8 years. So it isn't the case that we have been selling quality players for £X and they have been selling similar quality players for £2X.
Which gets us to the present and, notably, Morelos and Tav. Weirdly, it seems to me that there is a majority(ish) view on here that we won't get £20m for Morelos and that £12-15m might be fair value for him. And for Tav it seems to me that the same majority(ish) view is that Tav might be an £8-10m player.
But are those values really right? We reportedly turned down £8-10m for Morelos in December 18 / January 19. Back in October Gerrard said of Tav in response to speculation about Brighton bidding: "All my players are for sale. Let’s get it out in the open. Every single one of my players is for sale. They have all got a price. But they are not the old prices. It’s the new prices. So if you want them then come with loads of money and you can have them.” Then last week on Morelos he said of Morelos: “It won’t happen late. A million per cent, it won’t happen late, that’s for sure. So if someone wants to spend a lot of money on a centre forward and they want to take my centre forward, they’d have to come early."
Stewart Robertson said something a few months ago to the effect that we would expect similar money for Morelos to what they got for Dembele.
So where do the £12-15m (Morelos) and the £8-10m (Tav) "valuations" come from? The newspapers? FF hunches? I don't know but there is no evidence to suggest that those are proper valuations. We have no recent history of selling a Morelos / Tav type player at all, whether on the cheap or otherwise. To me at least the "market" doesn't appear to support those sorts of low valuations (I'd take Tav long before I would take Tierney, although it is fair to note (a) that Tierney is 22 whereas Tav is 27 but (b) Tav is fit as a fiddle whereas Tierney is, err, not); I would also take Morelos before Dumbele, but each to their own) . Our manager and Managing Director seem to suggest that nobody is going other than for top dollar. We don't need to sell - Dave King has been clear that we are still in investment mode; record season ticket sales again; bonus of UEFA Cup money last season; we are effectively debt free following the recent General Meeting which authorised the conversion of the soft loans into shares; there is clear value in the squad which can be realised if we ever need to.
And I am not buying the arguments that the mhedia constantly fluffing up valuations for Celtic and / or that winning 8IAR materially impacts what Celtic get for their players. I'm sure it doesn't do any harm but are Arsenal really paying the money for Tierney because the Record / Sun / Sutton etc etc quote him as £25m player? And do Arsenal really look at 8IAR and give so much as a toss about it?
On Morelos, there is also a good argument to be made that selling him now is at least a season too early. Would it not be better to sell him once he has another (hopefully 30 goal) season under his belt and hopefully cleans up his disciplinary act (surely the penny has now dropped for him?)?
I might be completely wrong about this but I just don't see that any of our top players are going to leave for anything other than top money and on prices which compare sensibly with the prices Celtic have received for their players. The narrative seems to be that they sell for top money whilst we sell for buttons. Yet until now we haven't in the last 7 or 8 years had a quality player to sell. So we will see whether we sell a Morelos for what I would consider to be a very modest £12m. I just don't see that happening.
