The new contract given out to Styles is an example of the club trying to be too clever for their own good. If Millwall offered us a decent loan fee + covering his wages last season, we should've just settled with that. If not, we should've kept him at the club to see out his contract.
Tbf that’s not what people were saying at the time. Quite the opposite in fact. Hindsight is a wonderful thing.
I think, and I did comment so at the time, this was a gamble based on Callum continuing to improve and with that his market value increase. The risk to the club was an improved contract both in terms of level and term, but both of these factors would help boost the transfer fee. Ultimately his level of performance has not been what the club expected and with that the burden of the improved contract will fall back on the club.
100%. In fact IIR they were in meltdown. Many thought he’d gone on a free loan, with his contract up after it. It was only later that the contract extension was confirmed.
I wouldn’t even say it was a gamble. It was an astute move for me. The alternative was keeping him and letting him go for free end of season. I guess the other option was accepting a fee - but I’m guessing that would have been well below our valuation at the time. And again, we all know what the fan reaction would have been had we accepted a much lower fee.
Only just read those comments some are brutal "Just watched the game, is he handicapped with two stone of lead in each boot. Two of their goals came down our left and he was blowing big time. Honking signing and performance" Is it definitely just a loan or do they have a obligation to buy in the summer?
Just on what you said about the contract being improved, did we give him a pay rise in the new deal? I thought that we would be capped on his wages with the league 1 salary restrictions. Definitely a gamble if we’re now paying him more when he’s with us than we were in the champ!
He's better then Russell and whichever fairy we play at wing-back these days, so its definitely weakened our side imho. Seems we count him as a player when it comes to signing, then he goes out on loan and we don't replace him, making us worse off. Strange way to behave.
Russell is a squad player. We also brought in Connor grant after styles left. Styles is probably at a guess the highest paid player in the squad were not going to want to keep paying him to sit on the bench as he doesn't get in our best 11
Agreed. Also weird that Styles isn't trying harder to impress at the three different clubs he's played for in the past year.
I think a few people found it odd at the time. Giving an extension to somebody who doesn't want to play for us, and we're seemingly actively trying to sell is generally an odd thing to do.
I think he played with his boots on the wrong feet,,, they should have been on the feet of somebody who gave a toss!
Not really. Plan A was to sell him at our valuation. No bid came him. He didn't (and still doesn't) want to be here either though. We found a way to honour his wishes, without losing him for free, whilst also freeing up wages to bring other players in and protecting his sale value. It was a very clever move. The hope was that he'd go there, do well and they would sign him for our valuation. Unfortunately that didn't happen. And here we are again, deja vu.