6 minutes ago, usavaliant said:

1.2 million pounds is paltry? You must be minted pal. Why don't you put some of that fortune you have into helping run the vale?

Was it only £1.2m btw? That’s a joke. There’s league 2 clubs who could have paid that release clause. We should’ve be ashamed. Getting relegated from league 1 will cost us £2-3m in revenue. 
 

The club is plainly being run by fools. 
 

What will £1.2m buy these days in player terms? Well Tolaj clearly but for us? 

11 minutes ago, TJHValiant said:

Our record transfer fee still received is Ainsworth for £2 million in 1998 not adjusted for inflation. So Tolaj went for less than a player we had 28 years ago!! 
 

Putting release clauses in lower than that is just not on. Oh you can quibble about his will, but I still have no idea how such a low figure for Tolaj was reached? Nobody triggers a release clause unless a player does well, so why did anyone think such a low figure was acceptable? Why not a club in same league clause? That’s reasonable. 
 

in negotiation we can easily say to Tolaj if he said that was unacceptable..so which clubs in leagues 1 or 2 would you rather play for if they came along than Vale? That would soon sort that out. 
 

I have also never heard or seen any evidence to suggest that if such a figure was not agreed he would sign elsewhere, except hearsay. I also doubt that if he had gone to say one of the rivals, say Bradford or Notts C as rumoured at the time, that they would let him go or agree to so little. 
 

Can you imagine say, had it been Bradford who actually finished below us last season after many more years in league 2 had signed him and Plymouth came along that he would honestly have left Bradford in league 1? 

I can’t imagine it. Yet Vale somehow, it wasn’t just imaginable but expected. 

You’re talking about a League 2 club though which we were at the time. How many strikers go for more than that in that league? It’s not the unreasonable figure it’s being made out to be.

Just for comparison Macaulay Langstaff who had far more of a track record of goal scoring in L2 (which is where all bar one of his goals for us came from) at the time he left Notts for Millwall went for £700k. So we got half a million more than a forward now in the Championship cost.

Edited April 27Apr 27 by Guppys left peg

2 minutes ago, Guppys left peg said:

You’re talking about a League 2 club though which we were at the time. How many strikers go for more than that in that league? It’s not the unreasonable figure it’s being made out to be.

Just for comparison Macaulay Langstaff who had far more of a track record of goal scoring in L2 (which is where all bar one of his goals for us came from) at the time he left Notts for Millwall went for £700k.

We had to my knowledge no intention of being a league 2 club, so to negotiate a release clause based on those circumstances means you remain a league 2 club. 
 

Which overall I think appears to be the problem. League 2 mentality means league 2 football which forgive me on this, but that’s what Notts County currently enjoy and probably will for many years….

@TJHValiant I dont think theres been a more expensive signing by a league one club this season than Tolaj for a start? Could be wrong...have been before!

Also...as someone rightly pointed out, Tolaj hadn't lit the efl up before is and was a gamble coming out of non league. If weve made a million in profit on a player through 1 seasons work then weve smashed it. 

What we really need to do now, which we turned our backs on for some reason, is copy the model moving forward. Spend money in non league, turn a profit and use the money to eventually become a more consistent competitor at a higher level.  

I know theres lots to be angry at, I get it, but knocking the club for selling a player at a release clause we agreed for a massive profit just isnt one of the things we should ve complaining about right now.

Not replacing him...thats the real crime here

Edited April 27Apr 27 by usavaliant

12 minutes ago, TJHValiant said:

We had to my knowledge no intention of being a league 2 club, so to negotiate a release clause based on those circumstances means you remain a league 2 club. 
 

Which overall I think appears to be the problem. League 2 mentality means league 2 football which forgive me on this, but that’s what Notts County currently enjoy and probably will for many years….

I’m sure we didn’t but just think about the context of the time that summer. We had just been relegated to L2 in abysmal fashion with a squad that without major surgery would likely have struggled again (sounds familiar). It’s a major leap of faith in itself for any player to commit to joining that despite all the claims of aiming for L1 etc. Of course as a player if you commit to sign you’ll want some sort of protection / clause in there. We got a good return on our investment which is exactly the model we should follow and for some reason Moore then didn’t try to do again. Which just shows there’s no strategy to his recruitment just collecting players for the sake of it and hoping to get lucky.

I do respect what you’re saying but on this I just think context matters. The real issue is thinking Mo Faal, Dajuane Brown and Devante Cole were the answer. None of whom come close to matching the same characteristics Tolaj has never mind ability.

Edited April 27Apr 27 by Guppys left peg

9 minutes ago, usavaliant said:

@TJHValiant I dont think theres been a more expensive signing by a league one club this season than Tolaj for a start? Could be wrong...have been before!

Also...as someone rightly pointed out, Tolaj hadn't lit the efl up before is and was a gamble coming out of non league. If weve made a million in profit on a player through 1 seasons work then weve smashed it. 

What we really need to do now, which we turned our backs on for some reason, is copy the model moving forward. Spend money in non league, turn a profit and use the money to eventually become a more consistent competitor at a higher level.  

I know theres lots to be angry at, I get it, but knocking the club for selling a player at a release clause we agreed for a massive profit just isnt one of the things we should ve complaining about right now.

Not replacing him...thats the real crime here

I think Alfie May cost more, but that is a fair point. The actual money for what he was doesn’t seem bad, although to us certainly worth more in terms of his on pitch contributions.

He did badly in the FL before. That’s true too. 
 

So yes, fair comments all round! 

21 minutes ago, TJHValiant said:

I think Alfie May cost more, but that is a fair point. The actual money for what he was doesn’t seem bad, although to us certainly worth more in terms of his on pitch contributions.

He did badly in the FL before. That’s true too. 
 

So yes, fair comments all round! 

Tolaj was a gamble, started with Brighton at 16 learning at a decent club, but never sparkled in his loans until a good season at Aldershot. Now a championship and Leicester target. We had our cut, but if a player wants to move that is it.

So, are we just going to keep revising what ifs about Tolaj forever now? Perhaps its time to move on and just accept what's done is done. If he goes on to even bigger things that only underscores he was never sticking around with us for much longer even without the release clause. 

Does anyone know what Tolajs release clause was?

What ever the ins and outs of Tolaj situation! It cost us our league place!  Over the years I have heard it all before he wants to leave ! He refuses to play! We have always sold for peanuts and never tried to hang on to anyone. I said at the time January is the worst possible time to sell your best player! It just sends out the wrong signals. 

40 minutes ago, NW9Valiant said:

So, are we just going to keep revising what ifs about Tolaj forever now? Perhaps its time to move on and just accept what's done is done. If he goes on to even bigger things that only underscores he was never sticking around with us for much longer even without the release clause. 

It is amazing, nobody on here knows what happened. Players move, deals are made, conversations ensue. Any financial windfall maybe news one day, but the past cant be changed.

Perfect storm for Tolaj to go. Plymouth paid more than they wanted to, but having missed 3 or 4 targets with loads of injuries and a stinker of a start to the season they had no choice. I don't think any other club would have been in for him at a million plus. I think the football world at the whole saw it as a risk. I didn't because I'd seen him play for over 1,000 minutes I person so it was obvious he had the skillset to cause Champ level defenders problems, let alone league 1. We were unlucky, but didn't replace properly, but we had no time to do so. Plymouth had been looking for weeks and just about got target 3 or 4 over the line. We had hours and took a punt on Cole, who looked promising in the first 4 or 5 games.

1 minute ago, bomber said:

What ever the ins and outs of Tolaj situation! It cost us our league place!  Over the years I have heard it all before he wants to leave ! He refuses to play! We have always sold for peanuts and never tried to hang on to anyone. I said at the time January is the worst possible time to sell your best player! It just sends out the wrong signals. 

There will always be clubs who can offer better deals than lesser clubs even in the Prem never mind EFL

1 hour ago, Fosse69 said:

Tolaj was a gamble, started with Brighton at 16 learning at a decent club, but never sparkled in his loans until a good season at Aldershot. Now a championship and Leicester target. We had our cut, but if a player wants to move that is it.

For me it was a massive gamble to take Tolaj from Aldershot, not every player from that level makes the step up I don't think the club gets the credit it deserves signing him in the first place, it's  so easy to criticise after the event, saying he should have had this or that in his contract, he might not have signed in the first place, he might have been a flop then all the usual suspects could have put the boot in from another perspective.

29 minutes ago, bomber said:

What ever the ins and outs of Tolaj situation! It cost us our league place!  Over the years I have heard it all before he wants to leave ! He refuses to play! We have always sold for peanuts and never tried to hang on to anyone. I said at the time January is the worst possible time to sell your best player! It just sends out the wrong signals. 

We didn’t sell Tolaj in January…..we sold him in August at the end of the first window- unless you’re thinking of someone else who was our best player that we sold in January? The problem was that we didn’t replace him with someone as good 

Edited April 27Apr 27 by MagicFlask