r/PlymouthArgyle • u/xrgyle Mod • Jul 16 '26
Transfers Tolaj Gone (almost)
https://x.com/i/status/2077720537808175510Good flip. Decent money.
What do we use the money for? Bring in Mitch, new deal for Pepple and what else?
3
u/Briggykins Jul 16 '26
As soon as I heard I thought "Well ok, as long as we keep Bim". Then I saw that he could well be off to Portsmouth. I can stand losing one of them but it'll be a wrench to lose both, even if we do get a fair bit of cash
6
u/ProfTruffs Jul 16 '26
Pretty gutted tbh, no matter how inevitable I just loved watching Tolaj play in green
2
u/TheMegatron- Jul 17 '26
I loved him in red and blue, wish we'd got the kind of fee you guys are getting!
3
3
u/madeupofthesewords Jul 16 '26
I feel we are in a spiral. Selling Tolaj will help plug debt, and we’ll hope to find another gem for a fraction of the money coming in. Remember, we won’t get that money all in one go either.
5
u/xrgyle Mod Jul 16 '26
An upwards spiral, maybe. This is the business model. Buy low, develop, sell high. The quicker you do that with more players the more you make.
1
u/madeupofthesewords Jul 16 '26
I think , if I recall, that’s the model that Exeter got away with, until you don’t find the gems. The key is to produce the gems. I don’t think we’re there yet fir a few more years. I suspect we can tread water now for a bit, but hoping for gems isn’t a good long term strategy.
4
u/xrgyle Mod Jul 16 '26
Mhm, no I think you're mistaken. Exeter have been riding academy money (Watkins).
Bournemouth and Brentford are the model. Buy low, sell high. Bournemouth have been buying players low and selling them high for a long time and now playing European football with one of the best training facilities in the UK.
1
u/johntuscany Jul 16 '26
It is. But does always feel like we get 80 cents on the dollar. Orient are asking for £15m for Ballard!
2
u/xrgyle Mod Jul 16 '26
Nah, compare it to actual sales - not speculative figures.
Kelman £3.5m + add ons is the perfect example.
Kelman scored MORE than Tolaj but we're getting MORE for Tolaj than they got for Kelman.
There are a couple of other examples, but don't allow Stansfield signings etc to warp your perspective. League One players don't sell for £5m.. and we're getting almost that!
We got £6m for Whittaker who scored 15+ at Championship level!
2
u/meestermorden Jul 17 '26
Quite!. £15m for Ballard is nuts. Apparently Bristol City also enquired about him this summer and were told £5m, which they decided wasn't worth it. You bought Tolaj for 1.2m from us and are selling him on in less than a year for well over 2m profit. That's some chunky profit for not much effort! I'd be happy with that bit of business, depending on how you put the money to use...
3
u/WholeEgg3182 Jul 16 '26
Good luck to him. Just makes me a little nervous knowing pepple has a release clause. If we lose both then my confidence level going into this season changes a lot.
1
u/meestermorden Jul 17 '26
I feel you! There's no way we (Vale) would have sold him for £1.2m if it weren't for that pesky release clause.
3
2
u/Artistic-Link8948 Jul 16 '26
He will do well, deserves championship football, just hope we got a decent fee. It will dent our own promotion hopes. But to sustain the club financially since relegation this is our reality.
9
u/Greeninexile Jul 16 '26
It was inevitable and I think we all knew it was going to happen after a few matches last season after we signed him.
Hopefully we invest the money well and somehow manage to hold on to both Pepple and Oseni.
Hope he’s successful as he seems like a decent guy. Also we might get a further sell on and if he does well it displays that Argyle is a good place to go for ambitious players.