Cameron Archer

[bobzy]

2 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said:

Disagree; you have to factor in his wages and his eventual return. This probably makes loans more likely than purchases (maybe it was a factor in the way the Zaniolo deal was structured?). 

More relevant is that Buendia is not a striker, so isn't particularly relevant for discussion about squad depth in that position. 

Overall, I think it would be very sub-optimal if we had to play the likes of Zaniolo or Diaby most advanced as they aren't really very similar to Watkins, but I suspect we won't get a more direct replacement for Watkins for financial reasons. 

I'm much more concerned about depth in defence than attack, personally.

 

Edit:  So, er, go smash it Cam!

Edited August 23, 2023 by bobzy

[MrBlack]

8 minutes ago, bobzy said:

At points against Everton, Watkins was playing on the left with Diaby central and Bailey on the right.  At times, Diaby and Bailey doubled up on the right and Watkins was central.

When Buendia played last season, it was generally as a tucked-in attacking midfielder on the left (same position that Ramsey took up), with Watkins as a central forward and Bailey (generally) on the right.  We play 3 forwards, sometimes 2, and have a current pool of Watkins, Duran, Diaby, Bailey, Traore plus youngsters to take up those 3 or 2 positions.  We then have Buendia (crocked for the season), Zaniolo and Ramsey for the slightly deeper attacking role if we played 2 further forward.  It's essentially 8 players for 3 positions with an unforunate injury to Buendia.

Zaniolo would also be able to play one of those forward roles when we play with 3 also.

I think we're covered at the top, even without Archer. It's the Buendia deeper role that we're short on. 

Archer ultimately just doesn't suit any of those roles, and so only plays if we're completely mixing it up,  which we've not really seen happen in Emery's time.

[Tomaszk]

Interesting deal.

So if they go down, we buy him back, or cancel some of the remaining fee they owe us. So it becomes let's say £9m instead of £18m.

IMO Sheffield Utd are absolutely going down. Bookies think they're 70% likely to go as well.

[villa4europe]

6 minutes ago, Tomaszk said:

Interesting deal.

So if they go down, we buy him back, or cancel some of the remaining fee they owe us. So it becomes let's say £9m instead of £18m.

IMO Sheffield Utd are absolutely going down. Bookies think they're 70% likely to go as well.

the surprise for me is that i would have thought part of the appeal in signing him would be his potential to be at least a good championship level striker who make them yo-yo at worst, he should offer them longevity regardless of which league they're in

[Tomaszk]

1 minute ago, villa4europe said:

the surprise for me is that i would have thought part of the appeal in signing him would be his potential to be at least a good championship level striker who make them yo-yo at worst, he should offer them longevity regardless of which league they're in

The evidence definitely points to him being an excellent championship striker for sure.

See how it plays out but hopefully this suits everyone.

If he plays 30+ PL games for them and doesn't do much, I think we might still be happy with a £5-10m fee so drop further payments and he stays there when they go down.

If he scores a decent amount and they go down, we buy him back as we have easy access to a PL goalscorer from a poor team.

If they stay up, regardless of his performances, he stays there anyway and they pay £18m. Good fee for us. Well done Sheff Utd on staying up.

[LondonLax]

1 hour ago, CVByrne said:

the FFP shenanigans for these buy backs is very interesting. A sale for £18m and buy back next summer at say £25m means we are in a positive FFP position for 3 full years and we get a player with a season of PL football under their belt.

It’s just a way of kicking the can down the road though. After the three years we then have a higher negative hit on our FFP as we amortise the £25m. 

[DJBOB]

Sheffield I think are a team uniquely suited for Archer's strengths as well. 

They need someone that can score a goal on half a chance and that's exactly what Archer is there for.

[Mark Albrighton]

It’s more than just goals, but of course he’s going to be largely defined by the number he gets. It’ll be interesting to see what sort of number he would need to reach in order for us to think about triggering the buy back clause. 

[DJBOB]

Archer might get 10 goals with Sheffield, but ironically wouldn't come close to getting 10 goals with Villa in the league unless Watkins and Duran was out for a serious length of time.

Kind of points to why this move is good for both parties.

[CVByrne]

1 minute ago, LondonLax said:

It’s just a way of kicking the can down the road though. After the three years we then have a higher negative hit on our FFP as we amortise the £25m. 

The assumption being we have increased revenue in 3 years time Vs today though. Plus more youth players to sell every summer 

[OutByEaster?]

4 minutes ago, CVByrne said:

The assumption being we have increased revenue in 3 years time Vs today though. Plus more youth players to sell every summer 

Perhaps some experienced ones too - in the past we've not had too much residual value on the fringes of our team and if anything we've struggled to get rid - that's changing.

 

[useless]

We're not going to have youth players as proven as Aaron Ramsey, Archer, and Philogene, to sell every summer, and in some cases we will prefer to keep them, just because we've sold a few this year doesn't mean we're now going to do that with every single highly rated yougnster we have, I'm not even sure we wanted to sell Aaron and Jaden, was more a case of them insisting they wanted regular football and then a sale with buyback made more financial sense.

In future summers I can see us selling more squad players, something fans are going to have to get used to, they will be players that have done well for us, but it's what all the big clubs do, they don't sell their very best players typically, but they do sell very good players just for the fact that that's the only type of player that they have to sell when making room for new players, and we're going to get to that stage.

[Dodgyknees]

1 hour ago, Villatillidie95 said:

If they relegate then they have a great striker to fire them back up…he does have a lot of similarities to billy sharp, we have done really well to get over 50 million for Ramsey, archer and chukwumeka. 
 

okay bidace and davies are leaving on the cheap, but we get a massive FFP boost and still have buy back clauses on 3/5 of those players so if it suits us we can get them back after they have blossomed….we are WINNING!

Players like Archer and Ramsey love the club as well, so likely they could come back. It’s been years since we sold a proper Villa fan. Last one Vassell imo. 

[Nigel]

2 hours ago, CVByrne said:

the FFP shenanigans for these buy backs is very interesting. A sale for £18m and buy back next summer at say £25m means we are in a positive FFP position for 3 full years and we get a player with a season of PL football under their belt.

Monchi loophole!

No wonder we are doing a few of these now as it may not be possible next window 

[CVByrne]

2 minutes ago, Nigel said:

Monchi loophole!

No wonder we are doing a few of these now as it may not be possible next window 

Yeah I think it's a loophole that might get closed the more I think about it. 

[ender4]

17 minutes ago, CVByrne said:

Yeah I think it's a loophole that might get closed the more I think about it. 

Yes i agree. It's definitely a loophole to boost FFP headroom in the short term. 

If Chelsea did it, no problem.   But it's little old Villa trying to game the system, not allowed.

[useless]

I didn't say we wouldn't keep selling academy players, I said we wouldn't always have ones as highly rated as the ones we've sold or are selling this summer, Archer, Philogene, and Ramsey going to fetch around £40m and would have been more without buy-backs, that's not going to happen every summer, and probably not most summers.

And not every youngster that's good enough to fetch a big fee we will want to sell, we didn't want to sell Philogene, I doubt we wanted to sell Ramsey, and in future we might find ourselves in circumstances where we've got less money to spend for whatever reason, so become a little more reliant on our top youngsters coming through, that's also where these buybacks hopefully come in handy as well, if someone like Aaron can prove himself worth more than the value of the buy-back meaning we can get him back for a cut-price relative to what he would normally be worth then that will be a good situaiton for us.

Also twenty is still really young for a Premier League player, that's no reason in of itself to give up on a youngster just because they haven't made the team by that age, if they've done as well as the likes of Iroegbunam, Archer, Ramsey, and Philogene have done at Championship level, then they're on a very good trajectory, if players that age are standing out at Championship level then they're top prospects.

We're so used to being not very good over much of the last ten years that I think many still associate selling first team squad players as a criticism of that player because in the past decade or so when we've wanted to sell a player it's because they've not been very good and we've been desperate to get rid and we've also had this sense of being desperate to keep any half decent player but we're a different club now, our squad is full of very good players, selling a given player doesn't mean they've done anything wrong, Targett, Ings, and Digne if he goes, are hints at it, going to see more sales like that in coming summers, which is actually a sign of how well we're doing, all top clubs sell very good players because their squads are made up of such, the key thing is to replace them with better and try not to sell the very best where possible, like évidemment we don't want to be selling the likes of Jacob, Luiz, Kamara, Martinez, Diaby, and so on.

Good luck Cameron, I will follow your progress with interest

[Feidhlim]

Not on the bench v Hibs so I'm taking that as confirmation, he's going soon

[kidlewis]

7 minutes ago, Feidhlim said:

Not on the bench v Hibs so I'm taking that as confirmation, he's going soon

Yeah, it’s pissed me off he smashed the championship and we could have sold him for a song without giving him a decent run. 
 

his numbers were as good as anyone in the championship. I think only two strikers had a better G/A per minute than him in the last few years and one was Mitrovic when we went mental that one season. 
 

he’s worth more than £18m. That’s nothing really in 2023. 

[brommy]

20 minutes ago, kidlewis said:

Yeah, it’s pissed me off he smashed the championship and we could have sold him for a song without giving him a decent run. 
 

his numbers were as good as anyone in the championship. I think only two strikers had a better G/A per minute than him in the last few years and one was Mitrovic when we went mental that one season. 
 

he’s worth more than £18m. That’s nothing really in 2023. 

He apparently attracted a few clubs attention and was sold to the highest bidder. That probably demonstrates a process of finding his true worth, especially given the buy back clause used.