All this talk about the huge signing on fee and wages Marc will earn is, in my opinion, twaddle. Every team has limits with goal scorers being the best paid. The backs are down the pecking order when it comes to money. Clubs will not want their players to feel hard done by a newcomer. Yes he will get a nice welcome payment of £1m or so and a substantial weekly wage in the region of £150-200k plus bonuses. He will also get big endorsement from companies associated with his employer. By our standards its massive but until he has proved himself over time the he will not yet be among the best paid centre backs in the world.
Guehi has his limitations. At only 6.0ft he is not a towering dominant header of the ball and his distribution out of defence is limited. We see this demonstrated weekly by his reluctance to play balls to forward to advanced players preferring to put short passes to Lacroix or Mitchell and occasionally Wharton/Hughes/Lerma who come right back to receive it. His attraction to other teams is his speed, tackling, reading of the game and calmness under pressure. He is very much in the Vincent Kompany mould and therefore of particular interest to Manchester City.
We took on Marc when others didn’t want him, gave him an opportunity to improve his defensive skills under Roy’s experienced eye and game time to hone them. He has received a good wage (£2.5m pa) and been offered a substantial increase, not to stop his ambition of moving to a top club but to help us get a replacement. Was that too much to ask? I wish him well but also that he might have had the good grace to do as Olise and Eze had and thank former clubs for the help they gave.
England
Ireland
Scotland