Kimmich for £30M and Eze to Spurs

We asked what you think teams should pay for Joshua Kimmich and you have spoken.

“I'm going to assume I'm DOF at United as it wasn't quite specified :) At 40m and 300k for 3 years that works out at just under £30m per year. + you get (some) resale value. You get a world class midfielder, and a world class full back to step in. You stop your rivals from picking up one of the best midfielders in the world. He's not played an exceptional amount of minutes for age so its not like he's due to fall off the cliff necessarily. Health record I think has been okay? Passes into final third is ridiculous so you solve some build up issues. I think for a 90m total outlay over 3 years you snap call. “

“I was firmly opposed to the signing of Partey at the time and in a lot of ways this deal is a mirror of that one. But the difference here is the context. That Arsenal was at the front end of a rebuild, this one needs final pieces to put it over the top. Pay up, YOLO”

“when is the last time a 27+ year old fullback came from another league to England and wasn't a complete disaster?”

“I've barely gotten over Thiago ffs”

You had a fairly large distribution of fees and feedback on this one, which is intriguing and mimics a lot of internal debate most of the teams are likely having about this as well.

Ravi Ramineni and I discussed this on the podcast this week and we landed in largely the same spot. Kimmich makes a LOT of sense for a couple of teams (Manchester United, Arsenal. Same for City if they have some midfield outgoings.), but you have to be careful about the price and you are definitely buying him to play DM, not as a fullback. A bit like you lot, anything above 30M and I’m starting to get uncomfortable.

Yes, there is risk. That’s the job. Sometimes you buy a slam-dunk, left-footed centreback who is captain of their team, has international experience, is peak age, and is guaranteed to work… and they tear their ACL in the first match and never get back to full health. Other times you plonk down 4M for a Japanese kid who did his dissertation on dribbling and two seasons later he turns into a Premier League star.

The thing that often gets lost is that staying pat is also a risk. The clock is always ticking. Age is always a factor, both good (young players get older) and bad (old players get older). Title-winning teams often benefit from their stars being fit a disproportionate amount of time, but that also means they clocked up a lot of playing time and body fatigue across that season.

Running it back another year, even with a great squad, rarely yields the same results.

Rumours and News

• Spurs are looking at Crystal Palace’s Eberechi Eze and could look to activate a release clause in his contract. I feel like I have been on the fence about Eze since his career started and never had quite enough impetus either way to leave my perch. Maybe certain styles of player just don’t excite me? The Spurs squad still feels very transitional to me right now.

• Some of the StatsBomb analysts have a bit of a man crush on Leicester’s Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall. No, it’s not because he sounds like a Bridgerton character, it’s because he’s really rather good at the football thing. Brighton are potentially also crushing (and maybe deservedly so), while Leicester allegedly have some financial constraints that might make a reasonable deal possible. One to watch.

• Brighton are also in for Inter Miami’s Diego Gomez. As noted in our post on Twitter, that one makes a LOT of sense.

• Manuel Ugarte and Manchester United are now linked. This one is interesting enough that we’ll do a deeper dive on Monday.

• Barcelona’s home for wayward boys could be interested in loaning Jadon Sancho. The Sancho Scenario is complicated because his wages are massive (that’s what happens when English internationals move with that size of fee), and United would like to recoup some of that fee in any move. This feels strongly like a “he gets loaned out until his contract ends and leaves on a free” situation but we shall seeee.

• Also in Spain, Real Betis’ and Team USA’s Johnny Cardoso is on the list of several of the smart teams in the transfer market who need DM help. Which “smart teams” exactly? No one knows. This feels a bit like a potential Villa or West Ham transfer in the making.

• Someone re-treaded the Ings to Southampton rumour. I am currently tempted to call up Rasmus and see if this is bullshit, but I also kind of enjoy the suspense.

• The amount of 16-18 year olds involved in the rumour mill this summer is making my head spin. This feels like deeply abnormal behaviour. Like when Arsene Wenger used to send Gilles Grimandi across the pond so that he could kidnap 3 French children named Jeff for under 10M, and bring them back to the academy.