Stewart Downing - West Hahahaham player

[Craig_H]

Rooney is another example. And Chamberlain. We pissed the Torres money away and should have waited until the Summer window and chosen our target more carefully.

Examples of what though? You think Rooney was the finished article when United signed him, or Chamberlain is now?

Of course not.

[CJ]

Rooney is another example. And Chamberlain. We pissed the Torres money away and should have waited until the Summer window and chosen our target more carefully.

i agree that we hugely overpaid for Carroll. However that is not the same as us paying for the potential we thought he had.

[Tee]

Examples of what though? You think Rooney was the finished article when United signed him, or Chamberlain is now?

Of course not.

Examples of hitting the ground running. Carroll was never suited to our style of play and he was injured when he signed!! Unbelievable signing really, but hindsight is a wonderful thing. Like I said, we should have sat tight, analysed who is available and made the signing in the summer.

[cream]

i would have thought a fair chunk of the carrol fee was for potential

You don't pay £35m for potential.

[CJ]

You don't pay £35m for potential.

well we shouldnt have paid 35m for a player that age then.

[RedReet]

What a stupid argument. At 22 you can still expect a player to be good enough at that age (endless examples) even if they aren’t the finished product. If you pay a princely sum of £35m, it’s fair to say you’d expect a little more than Carroll has offered so far. That’s not to say in time that he won’t go on to prove his worth but there is no definitive answer.

[Mostar]

If we dont want to be waiting for someone to develop, we should sign players aged around 28 then, not 22 year olds.

22 year olds are never going to be the finished article, regardless of the fee.

You cannot ignore the fee here regardless of the age.

We didn't pay pocket change here so the expectation must be there that he'll deliver fairly quickly or have potential to do so.

Quite frankly I don't see much in his game to warrant either.

It is not his fault that we paid what we paid for his services but the fact remains that we did pay huge amount and I don't think for a second we would have done it if we thought that we had to wait 3,4 years to finally see what he is capable of.

If that was the case we wasted our money.

[Tee]

What a stupid argument. At 22 you can still expect a player to be good enough at that age (endless examples) even if they aren’t the finished product. If you pay a princely sum of £35m, it’s fair to say you’d expect a little more than Carroll has offered so far. That’s not to say in time that he won’t go on to prove his worth but there is no definitive answer.

Sums it up.

[Craig_H]

What a stupid argument. At 22 you can still expect a player to be good enough at that age (endless examples) even if they aren’t the finished product. If you pay a princely sum of £35m, it’s fair to say you’d expect a little more than Carroll has offered so far. That’s not to say in time that he won’t go on to prove his worth but there is no definitive answer.

Read the thread properly mate....

He should have been finished or close to be finished product by now and he is not.

Is the only thing i'm strongly disputing.

[CJ]

What a stupid argument. At 22 you can still expect a player to be good enough at that age (endless examples) even if they aren’t the finished product. If you pay a princely sum of £35m, it’s fair to say you’d expect a little more than Carroll has offered so far. That’s not to say in time that he won’t go on to prove his worth but there is no definitive answer.

i dont think Carroll is good enough for a £35m fee. I also strongly suspect that that he will never live up to the fee. I also believe that he isnt good enough for us and we need better.

however the point was that you only pay £35 million for the finished article. At his age he wont be the finished article. The club knew he wasnt the finished article when they signed him. it is fairly easy to think that at least some of that fee was based on peoples view of the player he will become.

[Vermilion]

Don't know why people expect the finsihed article just because of the price, Aguero is'nt the finished article, same as many players that have sold for huge money, many of Cities high priced strikers are'nt yet the finished article imo either, but they paid big money and other sides will pay big money when they sell any of them, but they all have scope to improve.

The price of players can be based as much on circumstance, as the quality of the player.

[RedReet]

Read the thread properly mate....



Is the only thing i'm strongly disputing.

I did overlook that TBF, buy my (rushed) point would still be relevant if I had time to elaborate.

i dont think Carroll is good enough for a £35m fee. I also strongly suspect that that he will never live up to the fee. I also believe that he isnt good enough for us and we need better.

however the point was that you only pay £35 million for the finished article. At his age he wont be the finished article. The club knew he wasnt the finished article when they signed him. it is fairly easy to think that at least some of that fee was based on peoples view of the player he will become.

Far too many points to respond to and I'm already late. I agree, we overpaid.

[Vermilion]

I had an opinion of how good players like Downing and AC were, i didn't think they'd be better than i originally thought just because of what of we paid for them.

[ric.williams]

how much did we pay for djibril cisse?

[Mostar]

i dont think Carroll is good enough for a £35m fee. I also strongly suspect that that he will never live up to the fee. I also believe that he isnt good enough for us and we need better.

however the point was that you only pay £35 million for the finished article. At his age he wont be the finished article. The club knew he wasnt the finished article when they signed him. it is fairly easy to think that at least some of that fee was based on peoples view of the player he will become.

Sorry CJ but what I said was that for the fee in question you expect to see either the finished product or close to be finished article (world class potential) and not wait 3 or 4 years for that player to develop.

There are plenty of examples of players who were either finished or close to it (have genuine potential to become world beaters) at "fragile" age of 22 and they all cost much less than what we paid for Carroll (e.g Henry, Higuain, Ibrahimovic, Benzema etc..

Personally the biggest issue to me that we spent a fortune on a player that had only 6 months of football at the highest level and I genuinely question the potential that we saw him.