Ben Brereton Diaz

[chaddyrovers]

2 hours ago, alex l said:

The suggestions are we received bids of £8m last summer but wanted around £15m. If we had sold him for £8m the fanbase would have been in uproar, particularly given how much Arma went for. 

From what we know. We recieved 3 offers. Sevilla and Nice £8m offers and Fulham offered 6m plus 4m in add ons. Some people would have sold him for that, some people wouldn't. Also take into account the fact that appointed GB and JDT mid summer and with no recruitment team in place. So would have to bring in replacement. Did GB and JDT want to sell him either? Did BBD want to leave last summer? Also GB did say that when he join the club he was told BBD would leave at the end of the season. 

[Rover_in_the_South]

On 11/09/2023 at 11:45, Ghost7 said:

It's wild that people still think if we were to cash in on a player we'd make a promotion push. It's like our fans are a bunch of goldfish. Getting pretty annoying actually. How many decades more of this ownership do you need to realise they'll NEVER execute your ambition as a fan?

Agreed - I don't even need the execution at this stage, just the plan!

[Andy]

12 hours ago, Mattyblue said:

So what if the fanbase would have been up in arms? That shouldn’t remotely come into it.

If the club needed the cash, and if he had refused to sign a new deal, then off he goes.

Last summer, 100%.

Halfway through the previous season (when he'd hit 20 by January), absolutely not.
At that time, he was central to what we thought was going to be a promotion push - and it would have been madness to sell him (unless he was actively pushing for a move).

[Mattyblue]

I was talking about the summer.

[Polky]

 

Going well it seems 😂

[simongarnerisgod]

he`s definately left diaz in huncoat,playing like he did when he first joined us,can`t control it,can`t pass it and moves like an 80 yr old,another one of our illogical decisions,not selling him when his value peaked

[roversfan99]

And thats Venkys for you. That sort of decision impacts us not only for one summer but for a few years as £8m of income is such a large amount for us. 

[lraC]

He will be very lucky to get back to the UK at second tier level now.

He was never going to cut the mustard in La Liga, as it’s not too far behind the prem, at the very top. 

[Mattyblue]

He’ll get a contract at Stoke or wherever.

What a bloody feck up the club made of this one.

[tomphil]

36 minutes ago, roversfan99 said:

And thats Venkys for you. That sort of decision impacts us not only for one summer but for a few years as £8m of income is such a large amount for us. 

15 million if you add in the fee Mowbray and co spewed on him for some unfathomable reason when the rest of the team was so desperate for investment.

Now if they'd found another decent young player for 2 or 3 million and sold him similar to the Arma scenario we'd have been a lot better off.  

I know he turned out good briefly 2 years after arriving but the BBD deal from start to finish is one of the worst deals Rovers have ever done. Only consolation is he didn't cost 30 grand a week in wages for 4 years as far as we know but although the loss on his fee probably worked out around that.

[simongarnerisgod]

2 minutes ago, tomphil said:

know he turned out good briefly 2 years after arriving but the BBD deal from start to finish is one of the worst deals Rovers have ever done.

the gallagher deal is`nt far behind,5 million quid 😵

[tomphil]

3 minutes ago, simongarnerisgod said:

the gallagher deal is`nt far behind,5 million quid 😵

Really should've cashed in on him this summer as long as the money went to another striker, 2 mill looks good right now.

To be fair to him though at least hes delivered some goals and graft contribution over the length of his time here but another daft signing all things considered. 

[roversfan99]

9 minutes ago, tomphil said:

15 million if you add in the fee Mowbray and co spewed on him for some unfathomable reason when the rest of the team was so desperate for investment.

Now if they'd found another decent young player for 2 or 3 million and sold him similar to the Arma scenario we'd have been a lot better off.  

I know he turned out good briefly 2 years after arriving but the BBD deal from start to finish is one of the worst deals Rovers have ever done. Only consolation is he didn't cost 30 grand a week in wages for 4 years as far as we know but although the loss on his fee probably worked out around that.

Well no as we wouldnt have got the 8m had we not spent money on him in the first place. It would have been a strange situation considering how long it took him to push on but it would have been a case of a player leaving for a (small) profit (would have shown as a considerable one over FFP considering the amortisation) having scored nearly 40 goals across 2 seasons. Reinvest a big chunk, keep a bit aside, sign a couple of new players. Thats the model Broughton and Mowbray before mentioned that the owners have always prevented us from using.

[tomphil]

7 minutes ago, roversfan99 said:

Well no as we wouldnt have got the 8m had we not spent money on him in the first place. It would have been a strange situation considering how long it took him to push on but it would have been a case of a player leaving for a (small) profit (would have shown as a considerable one over FFP considering the amortisation) having scored nearly 40 goals across 2 seasons. Reinvest a big chunk, keep a bit aside, sign a couple of new players. Thats the model Broughton and Mowbray before mentioned that the owners have always prevented us from using.

But he could have been sold for 15 million a year earlier probably.

Which would have made far more sense than hanging on hoping for a promotion miracle the season after or grabbing 8 mill and potentially wrecking another top 6 tilt when his contract was dying out.

End of the day the real F up was not getting him on an extension a couple of years before, similar to with a few other young players.  

Waggot should have been stood down for that alone.

[DE.]

Not sure £8m would have been a profit when factoring in signing on fee, agent fee, bonuses and such... likely closer to break even or a loss. At best a very small profit. Realistically we needed his value to be at least a few million higher than we paid for him, but oh well. We got two decent 4 month spells out of him, not that it got us anywhere in the end, and he disappeared completely when it mattered at the end of last season. 

[roversfan99]

But we wasnt offered that sort of fee so its a case of either accepting still a very high sum or allowing him to run down his deal. 

Many attackers score in bursts, you cant argue with his numbers in the last 2 seasons.

[DE.]

It was a stupid deal from the beginning. Overpriced and unnecessary for a club in our position. I'd go as far as to say complete madness from all involved at Rovers end. We obviously should have taken whatever we could get for him at the end, even if it ended up being a small loss, but our owners decided otherwise. The money probably would have ended up in a black hole anyway, so as far as the club is concerned it's probably irrelevent in the end. 

As far as bursts of goals, he only scored five after November 5th, with two of those coming in the final game of the season when we had all but thrown our playoff chances away. No assists after Jan 1 either, so wasn't even contributing in that way. There was a suggestion he had downed tools, knowing he was leaving, but I just don't think he was good enough to be consistent for an entire season. That's why he was plying his trade with us rather than at a higher level, as Villareal are seemingly finding out now. 

 

Edited October 8, 2023 by DE.

[roversfan99]

He won us something like 15 or 16 points if you base it on taking his goals out of his games.

[DE.]

That works on the assumption that if he wasn't on the pitch nobody else would have scored instead, which is impossible to know. Granted it's unlikely given the paucity of genuinely potent attacking options we've had over the past couple of seasons, but still, the fact remains that a three goal return from November 5th to May 1st is very poor. Even if we assume that his absence means nobody else scores and so we lose every one of the points his goals gained us, we still don't get relegated, albeit we finish much lower in the division. Just a couple of goals from January onwards, however, would have seen us sneak a playoff place (again working on the assumption that the games otherwise remain exactly the same). I think any attacking player with such a meagre return over a sustained period of time would hold their hands up and say it isn't good enough, regardless of what had happened beforehand.

Losing a player who scores upwards of 10 goals per season is obviously a blow, but we shouldn't have needed to spend £7m for that. Some time back I looked through the list of scorers higher than BBD and I think every one of them either cost significantly less or was bought when the team in question were in the PL, so not directly comparable. If we'd been given anything close to a decent transfer budget by Venky's I think his goals could have been replaced, albeit with a bit more spread out across the team - which isn't a bad thing - but losing him for nothing and then having the budget slashed to basically nothing was always going to make things difficult.

I don't discount the contribution BBD made for us in terms of his goals, but neither am I surprised he's struggling at a higher level. I didn't buy the idea of him downing tools in the second half of last season, I just think he's a confidence player who really struggles when it's not happening for him. 

[tomphil]

He was never what you'd call a good player though imo because there was very little from him during most games football wise.

Scored some good goals but was a bit one dimensional in terms of how he played but when it worked he was dynamite and he worked hard which is unusual for a lot of forwards.

Didn't have many strings to his bow though football ability wise so no surprise he looks so uncomfortable at the level he's at now.

[Andy]

The season where he'd scored 20 goals by Xmas, he was excellent (well, first half of the season anyway).

It would have been crazy to sell him under Venky's asking price at that point.

Nobody knew that he would revert back to Brereton for the majority of his time after that point.

If we'd sold him at that time, it would have completely derailed our potential promotion push.

[roversfan99]

He should have been sold last summer. There was no mention of any bids 6 months prior so its a non starter anyway.

[DE.]

1 minute ago, Andy said:

The season where he'd scored 20 goals by Xmas, he was excellent (well, first half of the season anyway).

It would have been crazy to sell him under Venky's asking price at that point.

Nobody knew that he would revert back to Brereton for the majority of his time after that point.

If we'd sold him at that time, it would have completely derailed our potential promotion push.

The time to sell him was the summer before his contract expired. If he wasn't going to sign a new one then move him on for a reasonable fee (even if it's a slight loss in the end) and use that money to strengthen the team as a whole, ensuring that the goals are more evenly spread out across the team, as opposed to the single focal point for goals that we'd had in Arma and BBD. The only way I'd accept him not being sold in this instance would be if he was steadfast against moving to any of the teams who put in an offer, as at this point we'd have our hands tied, but from what we know it was just that Venky's wouldn't budge from whatever the asking price was - reportedly £15m - £20m. As far as I'm aware he never got the chance to say whether he'd enter talks with another team or not, as no bid was deemed acceptable. 

I think part of playing the transfer game well is both ensuring sales are done at an opportune time, and also understanding whether a player is just hitting purple patches or genuinely very good. If it's the former then you need to sell at the peak, or close enough to, if it's the latter then you might wait longer. Not saying this is easy at all, but it's what separates clubs that do this well and clubs that don't. You also obviously need to have a proper structure in place in terms of budget, reinvestment and a scouting and recruitment team ready to deliver the moment an important player is sold. Goes without saying we didn't have any of that either.

[roversfan99]

The issue is the lack of autonomy to the people in footballing positions. Those who can best judge said peaks in value are ignored by brain dead stubborn idiots. The director of football and/or manager should be fully trusted on sales as they know whether the value lies in keeping them or from potentially reinvesting. The proclaimed model will never work under these owners.

[Oldgregg86]

Brereton was a slow burner and a weird signing at a time we were desperate for the opposite of what he was at the time of signing , he took a lot longer than most expected for him to develop , to the point most including myself , had prematurely wrote him off. (but to make things clear after lots of support and backing during this time and always at the stadium). The only thing i know now is that I enjoyed his time here once he got going, brought some joy in some dull times , should of been sold with hindsight , probably without but definitely if you work for the finance part of the club.  
He was a streaky player that didn’t do enough post Xmas last year but I guarantee we would have far more point on the board with him this year whatever form he was in. 

Edited October 8, 2023 by Oldgregg86