Watford reject £37.5m Shanghai bid for Odion Ighalo

Bastian

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According to Sky.

"Watford have rejected a £37.5m bid from Shanghai SIPG for striker Odion Ighalo, according to Sky sources.

SIPG coach Sven-Goran Eriksson is keen to partner the Nigeria international up front with Brazilian striker Hulk, who joined the big-spending Chinese club in a £46m deal on Thursday.


Ighalo, capped 11 times by his country, has scored 37 goals in 63 appearances since joining Watford from Spanish side Granada in May 2014.

Watford have completed the signing of Belgian centre-back Christian Kabasele from Genk in a £5.8m deal and Sky sources also understand Hornets boss Walter Mazzarri has broken the club's transfer record to bring in Ighalo's compatriot Isaac Success from Granada for £12.5m."

Are midtable clubs in the Prem now so rich that it makes sense for them to reject such offers for players that are, frankly, nowhere near worth that fee? I can't quite believe it.

At least Troy Deeney is their captain and leader, and selling to Leicester would have strengthened another Prem team (though I can't imagine it was a 30m bid that was rejected).

What are OK players worth these days? 20m? Slightly better, 30m? Crazy.
 
If Woody had anything about him he'd offer them Rooney for £100 mil
 
Rooney for £60m sounds fair. He is still a big name and will boost Chinese football's profile.
 
Didn't they reject a 30 odd million bid for Deeney as well?
Feck me they're not worth much less than Messi, Suarez and Neymar:lol:
 
Can someone tell me how the Chinese league is able to afford this much on players?!

Is the league backed by the government or something?! Who's funding these crazy deals?!
 
Chelsea do this all the time (see Ramires, Mata, David Luiz etc).

If Woody had any sort of brain he'd sell Rooney, BFS, Darmian, Rojo, Young, Fellaini, Mata, Blind, Jones, and anyone else i'd forgotten about for a combined 1 billion to various Chinese clubs and repopulate the side with the likes of Neymar and Bale
 
Bastian said:
What are OK players worth these days? 20m? Slightly better, 30m? Crazy.
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Bit of an overreaction. A lot of circumstances in play here that are driving Ighalo's price up.
 
prarek said:
Rooney for £60m sounds fair. He is still a big name and will boost Chinese football's profile.
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Yeah, but he need to learn a few more languages. Starting with English.
 
OK I don't know what planet I am living on any more. Starting to think I might be worth about £10-£12million in todays transfer market, and the best club I have ever trained with is Boronia Athletic
 
prarek said:
Rooney for £60m sounds fair. He is still a big name and will boost Chinese football's profile.
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I'd be all for cashing in on him but do you think Rooney would go to China even for a shed load of cash? He doesn't strike me as the willing to travel type fella and not someone who would want to adapt to another culture.
 
We should definitely offer them Rooney for 60mn or something.

One of the rumoured reasons for the Chinese clubs doing this is it helps the owners funnel cash out of China... That and the cost of funding is pretty much zero so why not...
 
ADJUDICATOR said:
Bit of an overreaction. A lot of circumstances in play here that are driving Ighalo's price up.
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Perhaps. Hulk is a big name and they've been after big names. Ighalo is hardly a big name. Of course, European clubs would not table such an offer, but I did tie this in with the reported 30m offer for Deeney. I'm more interested in how a club in their position could turn down such a giant bid for a player who can be replaced. How many goals will Ighalo need to score in the Prem this season to justify rejecting this bid? 20?
 
We should definitely offer them Rooney for 60mn or something.

One of the rumoured reasons for the Chinese clubs doing this is it helps the owners funnel cash out of China... That and the cost of funding is pretty much zero so why not...
 
vk20legend said:
Can someone tell me how the Chinese league is able to afford this much on players?!

Is the league backed by the government or something?! Who's funding these crazy deals?!
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Will it not be Chinese businessmen with more money than sense?
 
vk20legend said:
Can someone tell me how the Chinese league is able to afford this much on players?!

Is the league backed by the government or something?! Who's funding these crazy deals?!
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They're mostly backed by massive companies in China. Pretty sure SIPG is something to do with the port authority in Shanghai whereas Jiangsu Suning are backed by the Suning electronics company (who also basically bought Inter Milan recently) and the champions Guangzhou are backed by Taobao which is the eBay of China.

Investment in football is encouraged from the top down here.
 
fellaini's barber said:
Ighalo will be gutted, must already be counting the $$ in his head
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My guess is that he has absolutely no interest in going to China, which is why the deal won't happen. If a club in a European league offered that Watford would bite their hand off
 
Ibi Dreams said:
My guess is that he has absolutely no interest in going to China, which is why the deal won't happen. If a club in a European league offered that Watford would bite their hand off
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I can imagine he might not want to retire just yet, but wouldn't the story then be "Ighalo not interested in move to China"?
 
Bastian said:
I can imagine he might not want to retire just yet, but wouldn't the story then be "Ighalo not interested in move to China"?
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Maybe he told them that and they rejected the bid because there was no point negotiating for a player who doesn't want to leave.
 
vk20legend said:
Can someone tell me how the Chinese league is able to afford this much on players?!

Is the league backed by the government or something?! Who's funding these crazy deals?!
Click to expand...
one billion population is a hell of a bunch of potential customers. Should football reach something like 100 million fans in China, then it will be absolutely buzzing to play over there. However I don't know anything about the actual interest.

But, yeah football is also a great way to blind the minds of people. It never worked in the SSSR though, since their teams weren't that successful. But it has worked pretty well to some extent in Greece, Italy, Croatia.
 
GazTheLegend said:
OK I don't know what planet I am living on any more. Starting to think I might be worth about £10-£12million in todays transfer market, and the best club I have ever trained with is Boronia Athletic
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Divide it by 10 and you pretty much got your fair value :)
 
Makes sense for them to turn it down. premier league clubs are getting an absolute fortune at the moment, having a player like him should mean they stay in the division which is worth 100s of millions. its great to see, hope more and more smaller premier league clubs get better and better.
 
@Twigginater
How much is it worth exactly? you say "100s of millions".

Do you not think 37.5m can be reinvested?
 
Bastian said:
@Twigginater
How much is it worth exactly? you say "100s of millions".

Do you not think 37.5m can be reinvested?
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It's becoming increasingly harder to buy players proven at this level. Townsend has had a nothing career so far and has just gone for 15 million. Players from other leagues keep coming in and flopping (not all but some). The league has gone mental, the money flowing in is something else. 35 million doesn't guarentee a team like Watford good enough players to stay up.
 
vk20legend said:
Can someone tell me how the Chinese league is able to afford this much on players?!

Is the league backed by the government or something?! Who's funding these crazy deals?!
Click to expand...

Im convinced that China are buying the originals, cloning them and selling off cheap copies to the market
 
well I think it has something to do with a fact that Ighalo and his agent didnt want to go. Imagine some Chinese club offers 500m for Messi and the barca chiefs goes like:
"Hey Leo how are you? You know what next season you play for Shenzghzen Tigerbeasts FC.
They offered us quite a lot of money for you. You know it's a hard decis..."
L: "Eh Whaat?"
BC: "Sorry. Feck off"
(All in Spanish)

And obviously Ighalo had a great season 18 goals is not that bad for his first premier league season for a lower table club. The boy has ambition to stay in the premier league and not to play in the riceland for his paycheck already..
 
Sarni said:
Maybe he told them that and they rejected the bid because there was no point negotiating for a player who doesn't want to leave.
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Yeah. Maybe that's what Sky wanted to do. Skip the obvious part of the story to create a headline so people like me would go "WTF". Mission accomplished.
 
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