Whilst understanding the disappointment at Atkinson going it does make me laugh that people are sad that we are selling a player for circa £2 mill with a hefty sell on clause. If he does a ‘Webster’ and Bristol sell him for £20 mill in two seasons time we are looking at another £4 mill if we have a 20% clause which we should be insisting on.
Christ if people said we would be regulars at selling 7 figure players back in the dark days when we bringing in the likes of Lee Jarman and Ian Mcguckin….. we like wouldn’t have been offered a bag of chips for the pair of them let alone £2 mill. It’s sh1t selling your best players but it’s what we do, we are a selling club and need to do so to survive, just be thankful that we now turn out players that others want to buy.
Very good points, all very valid.
But it's not about losing players to bigger clubs, that's a given for a club in our position, as like you say, we're a selling club, as are all clubs at our level, but it's about getting what they're worth, and not just selling to the first club that comes along with a half decent offer.
In another years time, more clubs would've been looking at Atkinson, once he'd had another senior season under his belt, and he'd be worth a lot more, and THEN would've been the right time to sell, when we'd also benefitted from his services on the pitch as well, maybe even getting promoted, which would've inflated the price even more.
We didn't stand in Roofe's way, but asked him to stick around until the end of the season, which he himself was happy to do, as he wanted to repay our faith in him and our hard work in helping him progress as a player, by staying and helping us progress as a club, so we turned down Leeds' offer, and he stayed for the rest of the season, and helped us get promoted, then Leeds came back with an even bigger offer, and we kept our promise, and let him go, and wished him well.
Roofe now has nothing but good things to say about our club, as do all the players from that era, who were brought in as kids with potential, and turned into very good senior pros, over the course of 2-3 seasons in some cases, helping us on the pitch as well, and then moved on to bigger and better things, with nothing but positive things to say about Oxford United, and players have still wanted to come here, again and again.
Like I say, it's not the fact we're selling Atkinson that bothers me, there will be other CBs out there, but it's the timing and the amount we're selling him for that bugs me, as yet again, we're being very naive, soft touches, when as history has proved, we don't need to be.