Selling to a rival club

Where do you stand on it?

This morning we have seen Xabi Alonso being linked to a direct rival of Liverpool in Arsenal. If true you can see benefits to both parties, Liverpool would get a large chunk of the Gareth Barry fee and Arsenal would fill a void with an experienced midfielder that they have so desperately need. But the Liverpool fans I have spoken to this morning all agree that this is a bad move and should not happen at any cost. If you cast your mind back to a year ago Gabriel Heinze wanted a £6.8m move to Liverpool, but Ferguson would not sanction it as he knew the risk this might pose in the future.

It is probably a much more frequent and accepted occurance on the continent. Hatem Ben Arfa has already completed a move to Marseille a direct rival to Lyon. In the early ninetees a plethora of players swapped between the two Milan clubs.

I wouldn't want any of our players playing for Liverpool, Arsenal or Chelsea unless it's someone like Dong who they wouldn't be interested in anyway.

Even though Heinze was clearly on the wane and behind Evra I'd still wanted him to go abroad rather than go to Liverpool.

i.e. Chelsea offer £100m for Ronaldo, Real Madrid offer £80m I think I'd still rather he went to Real Madrid than Chelsea.

still happens pretty commonly here...maybe not amongst the top 4, but amongst rivals - e.g. Blackburn have sold Friedel and Bentley to two teams they would be hoping to compete with. Tottenham sold Keane to Pool, Villa could be selling Barry..both teams ultimately aiming to usurp them and break into the top 4. Or for local rivals - Villa sold Ridgewell to Brum last year (that paid off in style )

What is the last transfer between 2 of the top 4, out of interest? I'm thinking Veron from Utd to Chelsea - but that was before Chelsea had fully bought their way in. Has there been any since then? I guess it doesn't help that some of these rivalries are quite bitter and personal between the managers, whose egos wouldn't allow them to do business, even if a deal might suit both.

Cole and Gallas?

The Alonso deal isn't comparable with the Heinze deal. Fergie didn't need the money for Heinze in the same way that Rafa needs the money for Alonso.

Glenn Hysén wrote:Cole and Gallas?

The Alonso deal isn't comparable with the Heinze deal. Fergie didn't need the money for Heinze in the same way that Rafa needs the money for Alonso.

Good call. Forgot about that one. Also Diarra to Arsenal came to mind. Not so rare then - at least between Arsenal and Chelsea.

We've done it too many times...
Carrick to Tottenham...
Kanouté to Tottenham...
Defoe to Tottenham...
Lampard to Chelsea...
Joe Cole to Chelsea...
Johnson to Chelsea...

I hate it when we do it...I'd rather sell them for less money to other clubs. We don't tend to do it anymore though. The only player we sold and didn't want to was Benayoun...

One big mistake clubs make, when selling to rival clubs, is that they only see what kind of deal they are getting... so lets say, if Inter value Stank at 10M and he is on sale, and Juve offer 15M, should Inter sell him?

One has to look at it from the other side as well, when selling to the rival... how much is Stank worth to Juve?? In this case, Stank could very well be the missing piece in the Juve jigsaw puzzle... some grit and teeth in the midfield, of an attacking nature. By making Juve so much stronger, Inter would beb causing real damage to their own title ambitions...

Thats one of the reasons I am usually against sales to rivals... unless I am sure that the rival does not tend to gain too much from the sale, I wouldn't do it.

Inter have made a lot of similar mistakes in the past, which have come back to haunt us... sales of Seedorf & Pirlo to Milan, and Cannavaro to Juve come to mind... in all these cases, I was not against the player getting sold, just against the club we were selling to.