N'Koudou - we all like a good farce

TRANSFER TALK


As we know Georges-Kevin N'Koudou has only been doing gym work and with the season started he hasn't had a pre-season. he isn't going to be fit for a while. There is no point us paying £11.11-million for a player who isn't fit.

Franck Passi is the manager of Marseille and he has revealed that Marseille have budgeted for his sale this window.  The French club need outgoings before they can bring anyone in.

They thought they had a deal that would have netted them a £5.19-million profit, money they could then invest in the squad. Had Marseille had N'Koudou training then the deal may well have gone through by now. As it is he is in a London hotel, not training and getting more unfit as the weeks pass. He is not in the Marseille squad for the Toulouse game, where a player in this country would be playing, unless he were trying to force a move.

Lassana Diarra has been offered to clubs (including ourselves) to try and get him off the wage list despite being made captain. He isn't keen on staying. Everything about Marseille seems to be about saving money and raising money from transfers. If Diarra leaves a loan or free player is expected to come in, that's who their sporting director has been targeting.

They need to male or save money, thus us new terms don't suit them at all, they suit us, which the French press seem to be surprised by. The player isn't the player we tried to buy. It took the French so long to sort Njie out that they are now trying to sell us a player who has only done gym work and has had no pre-season. If he joined he'd have to have one which is going to take a month. You saw the game against Everton and how after 2 weeks the players aren't really ready.

I don't for a minute see a loan deal with purchase option unless it is at a drastically reduced fee, similar to the fee they want to pay for Njie, whose wages we would still have to partially cover. We must still be talking or N'Koudou wouldn't still be in a London hotel. The fact that Njie is training with us and thereby maintaining fitness simply puts us in a stronger position over price.

In effect, with N'Koudou not being fit, he is in effect faulty goods. Marseille can't do anything until they offload players and wages, we are thus in a strong bargaining position which puts more pressure on with each day that passes.