£70m for Guehi? We're really doing this?

Chelsea and Napoli’s summers triggered some flashbacks for me regarding my early work at Brentford.

For those of you who just joined us for the transfer rumours, I was Head of Player Analytics for Brentford and Midtjylland from 2014-2016. The summer of 2015 was a fairly crazy one for my group, as Brentford parted ways with their coach and Director of Football in the spring, and then fired all the scouts without telling my department for a surprisingly long time.

Not only that, but because Brentford were always in contention to make the playoffs, we needed to conduct scouting and recruitment analysis for potential players assuming we were in the Championship again the next year… but also in case we were promoted to the Premier League. Which had an entirely different budget and quality of players needed to stay up.

It just goes to show that even some of the best run clubs can be absolute shit shows behind the scenes at various points in their life.

Anyway, Boro knocked us out of the playoffs en route to the Premier League, which meant we were shopping for young talent mostly from abroad with a tiny budget. One kid we liked that we could pick up for peanuts (£150K) was Besar Halimi. A small, 20-year-old attacking midfielder at Stuttgarter Kickers in 3.Bundesliga and on the fringes of the German youth national teams, we liked him as an all-round midfielder who understood pressing and tackling, and felt like he had plenty of room to continue to improve.

The Germans and his agent were presumably confused by our interest, but London is a decent place to live, we were offering a real transfer free and wages, and a deal was hammered out over the summer. My team celebrated a mini-win and we moved on to everything else we needed to do during an incredibly hectic summer.

Shortly thereafter, it was time for Halimi to come to London, have his medical, and finalise the move.

Except he never showed up.

It turns out his dad disapproved of the move and managed to kill it without telling anyone, and Brentford found all of this out only after he failed to get off the plane.

Halimi went on to sign for Mainz (technically a bigger club than Brentford), was thrown into a series of loans and basically a nothing career, minus about 30 strong games at Brondby during a brief prime.

Another player that we nearly signed who also ended up at Mainz was Karim Onisiwo, and this tale actually ended up weirder than the Halimi deal.

Onisiwo played for Mattersburg in the Austrian Bundesliga. He was built like an NFL wide receiver, and despite not having a great first touch, he had everything else we needed from a combination wide forward/ball mover/striker including (more like especially), dribbling, size and pace.

Onisiwo was very interested in a move to London and we entered a protracted negotiation for him with his team. This was challenging because his team didn’t really want to sell him, but he only had one year left on his deal and to be honest, everything about this made sense for both sides. So we finally agreed a deal at €1M, smashing the Mattersburg club record (and probably overpaying vs the risk we understood at the time, but we were sure that we could treble that just by playing Onisiwo for a couple of games and letting other teams scout him).

There was one small flaw… somewhere along the way the Chair of Mattersburg got irritated and killed the deal, telling our reps, “I will never sell this player to your team.”

And in fact, they never did. Nor did Mattersburg sell Onisiwo to anyone.

You see, Mattersburg believed they had a 1-year club extension that we didn’t know about, and that Onisiwo’s reps thought was invalid because it was not correctly signed by Mattersburg.

My recollection of the follow-up to the situation was this:

• We walked away because we had to - the club didn’t want to sell and thought they had a valid contract extension.

• Onisiwo sued the club around the contract extension and won, but it took 6-12 months to be processed because courts take time.

• Karim then moved to Mainz and has had a long, fairly successful career in the German Bundesliga

“Onisiwo's advisor Starzinger also sees little chance of success for the opposing side, as the court did not consider the contract invalid solely because of the immorality in the way the extension option was handled. Rather, the additional agreement to extend the contract was signed by a person from the club who was not authorized to sign, which was enough for the court to annul it.”

Oh… and uhh…

• SV Mattersburg was declared bankrupt in August 2020 after their main financial backer, Commerzialbank Mattersburg was closed down following an accounting scandal.
  
  " After these incidents, serious investors contacted the club and there were considerations about financing a restructuring plan for the club and subsequently ensuring continued operations for the entire next year, i.e. for the 2021 season," says the bankruptcy application written by renowned insolvency expert and lawyer Günther Hödl. "Ultimately, all potential investors dropped out because the club did not have all the documents available, as most of them were also located on the premises of the Commerzialbank."

What does any of this have to do with Napoli and Chelsea?

World football is one of the most beautiful sports in the world, but it often seems like it’s run by a combination of drunken, egotist rich people and actual criminals.

Those very facts are what have given smart teams a significant advantage over the last decade, provided they have patience and follow through.

Meanwhile, players have contracts largely to protect themselves from [the above]. They also have agency. Players have to agree to whatever moves the clubs are attempting to make, and fully engage to complete the process.

And sometimes, no matter how much sense it makes to everyone at the time, weird things happen.

Someone doesn’t show up at the medical.

Someone’s parent or wife kills a potential deal even the player was interested in. “The player’s wife… who is also his agent...”*

Peter Odemwingie shows up in the club parking lot and refuses to leave.

It’s all part of what makes this sport one of the most glorious, frustrating things on the planet.

—TK

* (The Wanda Nara Wikipedia is good reading.)

News and rumours

• When Newcastle was first linked to Marc Guehi for a fee in the neighborhood of £50m, our opinion was something along the lines of: Good player, would improve Newcastle, but that’s definitely on the high end of a reasonable fee. Since then, Newcastle has upped their offer in £5m increments over and over until we got where we are today. The clubs could be close to sealing the deal for £70m, according to Sami Mokbel.
  
  Guehi is very good on the ball and a solid tackler, but well below average in the air. He’s also a right-footed center back who mostly plays on the left. He should be a good player for Newcastle, but tunnel vision on this one target probably has the opportunity cost of another good signing this window or another PSR scramble next summer. There are similar players out there for half the price.

• A surprise Federico Chiesa to Liverpool link appeared yesterday, with Fab’s reporting of the Reds’ interest later confirmed by some local journos. It would be surprising to see Liverpool go for a player with such a long injury record, but they’re probably attracted to the deal by a reasonable fee of £10-15m making it a fairly low-risk endeavor. We wrote earlier in the window about how Chiesa might be a good fit as a left winger for a Prem team.

• Teun Koopmeniers is close to joining Juventus for a staggering €52m + €7m in potential add-ons. I love Koopmeiners as a player and as a fit for Juventus’ system, but Ted previously mentioned that he didn’t like the finances of it even at the previously rumoured €45m price tag. We expressed optimism about the players Juventus are signing, but concern about their finances yesterday.

• This is YOUR daily dose of Chelsea bullshit. Instead of just letting Kepa Arrizabalaga’s contract expire, they’ve extended it by a year before loaning him to Bournemouth. I guess they think he’ll increase his value with a loan and someone will pay a transfer fee next summer? Good luck, babe.
  
  Also, they’ve sealed the signing of 19-year-old keeper Mike Penders for £17m. Chelsea could now field an entire starting XI of goalkeepers on senior professional contracts.

• I thought that signing Scott McTominay for €30m (WTF) would spell the end of Napoli’s pursuit of Billy Gilmour, but nope! They’re hoping to seal his signing from Brighton for around €15m to create an all-Scottish central midfield. I hope they do a joint unveiling where Antonio Conte does a rendition of “Flower of Scotland.”

• Scotty Mac’s exit — and a potential £9m sale of Hannibal to Burnley — means Man United can just pay something close to PSG’s asking price for Manuel Ugarte instead of screwing around with a deal that has a ton of clauses. Ugarte is a limited passer, but there’s also plenty to like.

• After being told to piss off by Eddie Nketiah and Santiago Gimenez, Nottingham Forest have turned their attention towards Ajax’s Brian Brobbey. I’ve been surprised all window at the lack of Prem links, I like Brobbey a lot. His touch is questionable, but he’s really physically talented and gets into great positions.

• Brighton women are having a really intriguing window. Over the weekend, they announced the signing of Chelsea playmaker Jelena Cankovic, and a loan for Barcelona attacker Bruna Vilamala. Those two join the likes of England legend Fran Kirby and Japan international Kiko Seike, among a bunch of interesting signings. They might be the most improved team in WSL this season.

If you enjoyed this newsletter, we’d appreciate it if you would forward it to a friend. If you’re that friend, welcome! You can subscribe to The Transfer Flow here. We also have a podcast where we go in depth on transfer news and rumours every week. We’re on YouTube here, and you can subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Spotify by searching for “The Transfer Flow Podcast.”