With Rafa Benitez’s latest contract proposal said to include an offer of £60m to spend PLUS player sales, the Chronicle have named 8 players the Spaniard could cash in on to raise funds this summer.
This is all dependant on him signing a new deal at the club in the coming weeks, but it’s fair to say several players would be sold to raise funds, free up the wage bill and create some space in the squad.
Here are the EIGHT players the Chronicle believe could be sacrificed by Benitez, along with their expected asking price:
- Isaac Hayden (£15-20m)
- Jonjo Shelvey (£12-20m)
- Dwight Gayle (£10-15m)
- Jacob Murphy (£10m)
- Javier Manquillo (£2-5m)
- Ciaran Clark (£2-5m)
- Karl Darlow (£3-5m)
- Joselu (£1.7m)
Some of these valuations are a little off for me – I don’t see us getting our money back for Jacob Murphy! – however moves away for all eight of the players above could potentially raise around £60m.
Rafa will be desperate to keep Hayden, but the fact he’s wanted to leave for over a year now means he looks likely to go.
Shelvey’s future is up in the air and it could be argued he’s worth too much to be sitting on the bench, while the likes of Clark, Darlow and Joselu are squad players needing moves away to get any form of first-team football.
As for Murphy and Manquillo, it’s been reported that Rafa still believes the former could make it at Premier League level, while the latter has done a good job in recent months, however I’m sure he’d happily cash in if it raised funds to allow superior replacements to arrive.
In reality, there’s a few other senior players he could cash in on this summer. The likes of Aarons, Lazaar, Colback, Saivet and Elliot don’t seem to have futures at the club, although I don’t imagine any of these 5 would demand fees above £1-2m.
if you add up all the lowest values you get £55.7million which is a big improvement on an uncompetitive budget and i would take that over only £60million but its still not enough
Sam Ward(Quote)