The outgoing mercato has been pretty slow for AC Milan this summer, but that is not necessarily a bad thing if the right moves are found.
David Odogu is someone whose future needs to be crafted by the right move, so whilst he is likely to leave, the right option must be found.
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Odogu’s guaranteed future
According to Gianluca Di Marzio, via MilanVibes, Odogu is one of the very few players who will certainly leave Milan this summer. Indeed, the Rossoneri know he cannot remain a ‘support’ player for another season. So, he will depart.
Serie D is too far below his standard, so he will leave on loan with clubs from top European leagues interested.
As it stands, there are two frontrunners: firstly, Mainz, which would allow him to return to Germany and the Bundesliga – where he was never really given a chance with Wolfsburg. Then, a move to Anderlecht could also appeal.
Playing in the preliminary rounds of the Europa League, they have demonstrated their strength at developing youngsters in recent years and he may be guaranteed more minutes there.
What must be stated, though, is that there is plenty of interest in Odogu this summer from the Bundesliga and this may be the best option with no Italian interest materialising.
It’s all pretty simple, Tomori, Estupinan, Bondo, Ricci, Musah, Loftus-Cheek, Leao, Gimenez should be sold,
Odogu and Kostic loaned, F. Terracciano and A. Cisse assessed.
If it were only that simple. The problem we are finding out is that nobody wants these players and we are stuck with them.
PRETTY simple in terms and in the sense of identifying the problem…
Well I don’t think anyone is disagreeing with you, including the club. If we get a serious offer for any of them and they’re willing to accept, then we’d take it. Likelihood is though, they won’t be top of many clubs’ shortlists until the end of the window.
Nor should they. The thing is it’s not my job to prepare them for a sale whatever that might entail, getting rid of the redundancies is a form of an art indeed and it requires experienced and skillful people but we are AC MILAN after all, not some non-professional (non-league) club, such things are expected of us.
It’s not very simple if no-one wants to buy them though. Why would any club offer cash instead of a loan with an option for any of them, they know we can’t even register the players we have. I can imagine we sell two, maybe three at a push, or those names you mentioned. The rest are loans at best, where it becomes a case of how much of a loss do we avoid, instead of how much profit do we make.
It’s simple in theory, the other thing is when Amorim starts to “evaluate”, without him going crazy like that, we would have probably sold Estupinan and Musah (at least) by now. By the looks of it, he wouldn’t mind keeping RLC as well which is an abomination in itself.
We didn’t sell Musah in the entire last summer window, he left on loan with an option in the end. And didn’t do much last year to make someone want to invest in him. I expect the same again.
Estupinan, we don’t know what the Villa deal was, but if it was rumoured to be a 9-10M deal then we would have had to write off 5M of that on a loss on this year’s books. That might still be worth doing in the long-run but it’s clear why they might not want to do that as that would make it harder to spend this summer, not easier.
If RLC stays, he’ll be 4th choice AM, so probably get some decent game time with how injury prone the other options are. If he goes, it’ll probably free up about 10M in this year’s budget but I wouldn’t expect it to result in much more.
Why was Musah bought in the first place? Estupinan for 9-10 million, not for 15? OK. I would (stll) sell him regardless. How could that make the spending harder if the alternative is to keep him at the club which means you would both not get anything (not a dime) for him and you would be forced to still pay him his salary and everything that comes with that it in respect to taxes? If you are referring to what kind of an impact that would have on our other/future transfers, you might be right but certain exceptions need/have to be made from time to time. You can’t look and contemplate (about) every single thing and transfer through that profit/loss comparison, it doesn’t work like that, calculated risks are called that for a reason. Sometimes you really just need to sell deadwood and never ever look back, in other words, skip the unnecessary assessment and carry on hoping you won’t make the same mistake.
*”with it” instead of “with that it”