The Semenyo Thread - Now a Bournemouth Player. Deal Confirmed

[Leveller]

7 minutes ago, Engvall’s Splinter said:

Agreed. Yet if he takes his chance and hits the ground running we’ll see a decent sell on fee in the summer. 

I doubt it. I’d see him as likely to be the same as Brownhill - content to join a yo-yo club and hang on for a re promotion. 

[Fordy62]

4 minutes ago, GrahamC said:

No worries.

His critics would of course highlight the Atkinson fee, but as time goes on I sadly think that will be an outlier.

I’ve been reading the Relentless book for the last couple of nights. The recruitment that year… absolutely incredible.

[petehinton]

54 minutes ago, Mattredrobin said:

Could this be a case of Antoine wanting to go, saying he wouldn't sign a new contract If we offered him one and City not wanting to lose out on what they could get now rather then risk holding out for more and no one actually willing to pay it.

I doubt we would have got much more for him in the summer with his contract running down.

Finally, someone said it. 
 

I imagine once Antoine got wind of the wages they were offering, over a 4 year contract period, and that massively swung him to ultimately say to the club that he would like to explore the option. 
 

Can’t really manage yourself out of that one as a club once it happens

[Fordy62]

Just now, petehinton said:

Finally, someone said it. 
 

I imagine once Antoine got wind of the wages they were offering, over a 4 year contract period, and that massively swung him to ultimately say to the club that he would like to explore the option. 
 

Can’t really manage yourself out of that one as a club once it happens

And doesn’t it make young Alex Scott’s decision even more commendable?

[deadredfred]

2 minutes ago, Fordy62 said:

And doesn’t it make young Alex Scott’s decision even more commendable?

Kind of. But Scott is tied to a much longer contract (credit to the club again for sorting that).

We're not time-bound to make any decision on Scott like we were with Antoine, and he is a lot younger, consistently playing at a level above his age. Fully expect a lot of interest in the summer, when we really do hold all the cards. Nige mentioned yesterday that the Semenyo fee isn't needed for FFP compliance, so same must be applicable to any fee for Scott, so there will be no temptation to sell ourselves short.

Those frustrated with the fee for Semenyo, suggesting we hold out for more are going to be more satisfied with our negotiating position when it comes to Scott moving on (and I think he will).

[mozo]

2 minutes ago, petehinton said:

Finally, someone said it. 
 

I imagine once Antoine got wind of the wages they were offering, over a 4 year contract period, and that massively swung him to ultimately say to the club that he would like to explore the option. 
 

Can’t really manage yourself out of that one as a club once it happens

I don't think the offer from Bournemouth would have been the first event in this sequence though. He's got an agent who will have been advising their client for a much longer period that a lucrative move was in Antoine's reach in the short term. The fact that there hasn't been talk of a contract extension tells me that Semenyo was keeping his options open to secure just this kind of deal, per the advise he was being given. I doubt the money involved has come as much of a surprise to him, but it's certainly easy to accept. 

[tin]

48 minutes ago, Davefevs said:

He is the Godfather of transfer stories.

Kid said Antoine was pushing.

It’s pretty clear Antoine was pushing ever since he got a new agent in September. I think it’s pretty clear they’ve blown smoke up his arse pre-World Cup.

[mozo]

5 minutes ago, deadredfred said:

Kind of. But Scott is tied to a much longer contract (credit to the club again for sorting that).

We're not time-bound to make any decision on Scott like we were with Antoine, and he is a lot younger, consistently playing at a level above his age. Fully expect a lot of interest in the summer, when we really do hold all the cards. Nige mentioned yesterday that the Semenyo fee isn't needed for FFP compliance, so same must be applicable to any fee for Scott, so there will be no temptation to sell ourselves short.

Those frustrated with the fee for Semenyo, suggesting we hold out for more are going to be more satisfied with our negotiating position when it comes to Scott moving on (and I think he will).

Yeah Alex Scott is leaving City in the not too distant future. There just wasn't enough incentive for any of the parties to get it done in this window.

Edited January 27, 2023 by mozo

[TonyTonyTony]

2 hours ago, Agard Days Night said:

Will soon be forgotten. 

I always track ex players careers after they leave city, particularly home grown players. Its always interesting to see how much they develop, and where they end up

[mozo]

2 minutes ago, tin said:

It’s pretty clear Antoine was pushing ever since he got a new agent in September. I think it’s pretty clear they’ve blown smoke up his arse pre-World Cup.

He sounds like a smart kid. Progressing his career at precisely the right time. 

He also sounds like a really nice, humble kid, but he's not going to be too sentimental about Bristol City in all of this.

[Fordy62]

2 minutes ago, mozo said:

Yeah Alex Scott is leaving City in the not too distant future. There just wasn't enough incentive for anuly of the parties to get it done in this window.

He might not leave. Not if we win every game from here on in…

[One Team]

8 minutes ago, TomF said:

Wonder if we'll hold back the announcement till we have a replacement pretty much through the door as well. 

I think Pearson strongly infers this in his press conference.

[mozo]

Just now, Fordy62 said:

He might not leave. Not if we win every game from here on in…

I'd forgotten about that scenario! 

[Mattredrobin]

15 minutes ago, petehinton said:

Finally, someone said it. 
 

I imagine once Antoine got wind of the wages they were offering, over a 4 year contract period, and that massively swung him to ultimately say to the club that he would like to explore the option. 
 

Can’t really manage yourself out of that one as a club once it happens

Yeah you can't blame the club at all, But some will if a replacement isn't brought in, But from some of the reports and from what Pearson has said were in the process of doing that, And we have to give the new guy a chance

It wasn't long ago that most people were up in arms about Aaron Wilbraham joining and he didn't turn our too bad.

[tin]

4 minutes ago, mozo said:

He sounds like a smart kid. Progressing his career at precisely the right time. 

He also sounds like a really nice, humble kid, but he's not going to be too sentimental about Bristol City in all of this.

I don’t think he’s smart, but agree he’s humble and likeable.

If I was advising him, I’d be telling him to aim higher than Bournemouth as it’s clear they’ll go down. They can’t score goals and I’ll be surprised if he scores enough goals to keep them up. 

[robinforlife2]

4 minutes ago, Fordy62 said:

He might not leave. Not if we win every game from here on in…

I think Alex Scott knows at 18, the move will come at some point, he is in no hurry. Semenyo may see this as his big chance to play top flight football.

When Scott is sold, it will be a move that benefits him and the club. I know he has mentioned he will consider his options in the summer, but I think he'll actually give it the summer. I think he'll see how we recruit and how we start. as I personally feel if we can be competitive and push towards promotion and the playoffs next season, he wont be in a hurry to move on, as he would only be 19, and time is on his hands. I would not be surprised to see us keep Scott until the end of next season and then when we are in a position to progress he will move on, where we will be financially be able to replace him. He strikes me as someone who knows he will make it to the very top, so why be in a hurry to move on, when things are going well and your career is progressing, to potentially make the wrong move and end up in the same division you are now, or at a big club getting shipped out on loan left right and centre. I feel Scott is very well grounded, and realises right now, the best place for him to be is Bristol City. 

[Kid in the Riot]

1 minute ago, tin said:

I don’t think he’s smart, but agree he’s humble and likeable.

If I was advising him, I’d be telling him to aim higher than Bournemouth as it’s clear they’ll go down. They can’t score goals and I’ll be surprised if he scores enough goals to keep them up. 

Interesting how their form dropped off a cliff the moment they announced O'Neil on a permanent deal. He was doing very well up to that point. They should've kept it quiet!

[robinforlife2]

3 minutes ago, Mattredrobin said:

Yeah you can't blame the club at all, But some will if a replacement isn't brought in, But from some of the reports and from what Pearson has said were in the process of doing that, And we have to give the new guy a chance

It wasn't long ago that most people were up in arms about Aaron Wilbraham joining and he didn't turn our too bad.

I don't think anyone can blame Antoine for forcing the move either. The club have simply utilised the situation in hand and got the best deal they can at the time, to have waited and held out for more, could have had an adverse affect. 

[robinforlife2]

4 minutes ago, tin said:

I don’t think he’s smart, but agree he’s humble and likeable.

If I was advising him, I’d be telling him to aim higher than Bournemouth as it’s clear they’ll go down. They can’t score goals and I’ll be surprised if he scores enough goals to keep them up. 

That's all well and good, but at the same time, you're basically saying "Antoine, look the clubs you should want to sign you, aren't willing to pay what Bristol City will accept for you, so here's what to do, turn down Bournemouth, see out the season at Bristol City and lets see who wants you in the summer. But also bare in mind, that if you get an injury or don't keep firing in goals, the clubs you want to play for may not want to pay much for you in the summer as you only have a year left, and also Antoine, you could do well in France, Holland or perhaps Germany, so maybe we wait 12 months and sign a pre contract abroad".

The fact is, there was money on the table now, most agents get 5% from the selling team, 5% from the buying team. They get 10% off their player of a signing on fee, and get paid 10-20% of a players wages to manage and protect their finances for them. If you think his agent is going to tell him to wait and hold out, in a risky environment, when there is the best part of a £1m coming his way, and 5-10K a week, you are sadly mistaken. 

[sunningdalered]

51 minutes ago, Fordy62 said:

Please don’t interpret that as me saying I don’t rate semenyo. I really do. On his day he’s a top championship player and probably is low end Prem. I just think that 10m is a lot of money for someone who has as many off days as they do good ones. 

I hope he does well, but I genuinely think it’s a good enough fee, especially as part of the securing the financial stability of the club.

And I don’t think the form will regress… at least I hope not.

He’ll be a big loss that’s for sure, but I think it’s good money.

 

All a matter of perspectives. If I was a Bournemouth fan, which is an odd thing to imagine, I think that I'd have this firmly in the expensive punt category. An 8-figure fee for a player who has delivered what Antoine has in his career to date is mind-boggling. Even very recently, there have been games where Antoine has been virtually absent, shown the worst first touch of any player on the pitch, and failed to work the goalkeeper on numerous occasions. Yes, there looks like there's a special player in there somewhere, but confidence is a very fragile thing, and a downward spiral can hit just as easily as a sustained period of high confidence. Good business for City. If we squander the money from Antoine on poor signings, that's another matter. 

[JoeAman08]

I think it is probably 10-20% less up front than I expected but probably a necessity considering everything. 
 

We needed a sale. So this sorts ffp to an extent. Don’t have to worry about it as much. 
 

There is a week left in the window. Selling now instead of holding out for an extra 1-2m up front means we have some time to shop. 
 

Now, our valuation on Scott is even more protected. There is not as big a need to sell him. It’ll help a rebuild massively but we have a bit more power in negotiations imo. This goes for any saleable assets really. 
 

Semenyo has been around the first team here for 3-4 years now. He has been linked with bigger clubs constantly. He has been pretty patient to be fair and kept his head down and gotten better. This has come up and we’d be crazy to prevent him from moving now imo. 
 

So all in all decent business. Not perfect like has been in past but we have to build back up to that. It will take more years and more sales to get there but we are on track again. 

[Davefevs]

Re Scott and Semenyo from a purely financial point of view, one sale in this years accounts and one in next years (from 1st June onwards) is gonna help us…even in the new FFP rules.

[IAmNick]

If you sell a player with an add-on (say, you get money if they get X caps, or after Y appearances) and they get sold, what happens to your addon? Is it just null and void, do they get carried along, or what?

Could two clubs just swap a player back and forth to cancel add-ons from the original transfers? It's obviously unlikely to happen, but I'm just curious.

 

As an example, let's say we get £1m if Semenyo makes 10 more international appearances. He makes 9, gets sold, then makes the 10th. Are we out of luck? I'm guessing so - although the sell ons can transfer with them I think in some cases?

[Mendip City]

6 minutes ago, robinforlife2 said:

That's all well and good, but at the same time, you're basically saying "Antoine, look the clubs you should want to sign you, aren't willing to pay what Bristol City will accept for you, so here's what to do, turn down Bournemouth, see out the season at Bristol City and lets see who wants you in the summer. But also bare in mind, that if you get an injury or don't keep firing in goals, the clubs you want to play for may not want to pay much for you in the summer as you only have a year left, and also Antoine, you could do well in France, Holland or perhaps Germany, so maybe we wait 12 months and sign a pre contract abroad".

The fact is, there was money on the table now, most agents get 5% from the selling team, 5% from the buying team. They get 10% off their player of a signing on fee, and get paid 10-20% of a players wages to manage and protect their finances for them. If you think his agent is going to tell him to wait and hold out, in a risky environment, when there is the best part of a £1m coming his way, and 5-10K a week, you are sadly mistaken. 

Agree. Also he’ll back his own ability (rightly so)… if he makes a bit of an impact, scores a couple of goals but B’mouth get relegated he’ll be straight back in the Prem with someone else… likely on even more money with a sell-on to us. His worse case scenario is ending up at the top end of the Champ with B’mouth… so still a step up from where he is now. 
Wish we could keep him but good luck to him. We need to get out of this division and turn the cycle of little Bournemouth poaching our best young players! 

[mozo]

32 minutes ago, tin said:

I don’t think he’s smart, but agree he’s humble and likeable.

If I was advising him, I’d be telling him to aim higher than Bournemouth as it’s clear they’ll go down. They can’t score goals and I’ll be surprised if he scores enough goals to keep them up. 

That's understandable. I don't think there's a clear right or wrong as there's an element of a gamble both ways.

Personally I think he has taken an option that is both lucrative and gives him a good chance of first team football. 

I expect Bournemouth to go down, then to go straight back up. They'll have a huge advantage, one being Antoine!

17 minutes ago, Davefevs said:

Re Scott and Semenyo from a purely financial point of view, one sale in this years accounts and one in next years (from 1st June onwards) is gonna help us…even in the new FFP rules.

As much as it would pain me to stop watching Scott play for us, I think selling in the summer might be prudent. Get a big fee and use it to add depth to the squad (with low fee, low wage players, naturally). It would take take pressure off FFP and also help balance the books somewhat for that financial year (ie reduce the annual losses).

In theory we could then have a balanced squad with all the high earners gone and still plenty of players with their best years ahead of them. 

[cider-manc]

27 minutes ago, sunningdalered said:

 An 8-figure fee for a player who has delivered what Antoine has in his career to date is mind-boggling.

I keep seeing this kind of thing. But a 8 figure fee for a player who has delivered like AS has since that game at fulham is not so unbelievable. 

For this season and last he has a goal contribution of about 1 in 2 games. He tends to blow hot or cold, but he's getting better and better, is still relatively young, and is now a full international with world cup appearances to his name.

[Davefevs]

44 minutes ago, IAmNick said:

If you sell a player with an add-on (say, you get money if they get X caps, or after Y appearances) and they get sold, what happens to your addon? Is it just null and void, do they get carried along, or what?

Could two clubs just swap a player back and forth to cancel add-ons from the original transfers? It's obviously unlikely to happen, but I'm just curious.

 

As an example, let's say we get £1m if Semenyo makes 10 more international appearances. He makes 9, gets sold, then makes the 10th. Are we out of luck? I'm guessing so - although the sell ons can transfer with them I think in some cases?

The simple answer is - it depends.  You can right whatever you want in a transfer contract.

Things like sell-on percentage usually persist through multiple transfers (as long as they keep increasing in value), but I’ve heard on examples where they are constrained by the contract term.  For example, player x signs for team a on a 4 year deal with a 20% sell on, but that sell-on is only paid if a sale is completed within that 4 years.  The same can happen for other add-ons too.

11 minutes ago, cider-manc said:

I keep seeing this kind of thing. But a 8 figure fee for a player who has delivered like AS has since that game at fulham is not so unbelievable. 

For this season and last he has a goal contribution of about 1 in 2 games. He tends to blow hot or cold, but he's getting better and better, is still relatively young, and is now a full international with world cup appearances to his name.

Agree, they are preparing to pay £20m for Jackson, circa £10m for Semenyo is not unbelievable at all, imho.

[Spike]

I don't understand our fan base at all, like we have fans saying the board are shit for selling Semenyo for so low but then we also have the same fans bitching that Massengo is going to leave for free and we don't even use him. 

Semenyo would have ended up being the same situation had we not sold him because Pearson wants players in his team that will help get us some consistency. It's unfortunate that Semenyo has had to go when we've just found it but it's obvious that the board and Pearson know the finances and this was not really an option, it was something that was always going to happen, if it wasnt Semenyo it would have been Scott. 

I remember a few years back reading "Semenyo will never get into the team, he's crap" and comments about how he wasn't good enough, he never scored enough etc Now those same fans are kicking off that we've sold him for £10m with possibility to get more. 

Bell is exactly where Semenyo was not so long ago, only Semenyo needed to fight his way into the team, Bell will see this as an opportunity to prove he can make that step up and in top of that a new face will help keep our strikers on their toes so that they do not lose their place in the team. Weimann may actually get to play Striker when he's fit, Conway will certainly be itching not to fall out of the pecking order but our fans are acting like the world has come to an end because we've sold a striker. 

[steviestevieneville]

1 hour ago, JoeAman08 said:

I think it is probably 10-20% less up front than I expected but probably a necessity considering everything. 
 

We needed a sale. So this sorts ffp to an extent. Don’t have to worry about it as much. 
 

There is a week left in the window. Selling now instead of holding out for an extra 1-2m up front means we have some time to shop. 
 

Now, our valuation on Scott is even more protected. There is not as big a need to sell him. It’ll help a rebuild massively but we have a bit more power in negotiations imo. This goes for any saleable assets really. 
 

Semenyo has been around the first team here for 3-4 years now. He has been linked with bigger clubs constantly. He has been pretty patient to be fair and kept his head down and gotten better. This has come up and we’d be crazy to prevent him from moving now imo. 
 

So all in all decent business. Not perfect like has been in past but we have to build back up to that. It will take more years and more sales to get there but we are on track again. 

It not been stated how much up front has it ? The £9m would usually be paid in instalments . I hope the £9m is upfront but I doubt it. Would the club prefer staged payments to offset deficits further down the line ?  

[LondonBristolian]

1 minute ago, steviestevieneville said:

It not been stated how much up front has it ? The £9m would usually be paid in instalments . I hope the £9m is upfront but I doubt it. Would the club prefer staged payments to offset deficits further down the line ?  

I've always assumed - perhaps wrongly - that it doesn't matter too much from an accounting perspective whether the money is all in one go or installments - as long as it is an agreed amount we know we will receive. From an accounting perspective, its income we know we have and whatever installments are due to us can be recorded as known income and money owed to us.

It obviously makes a difference from a cashflow perspective - and that might matter in terms of who we buy and how we pay for them -  but I'm not sure how important it is in terms of accounting.