Brighton want Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall - so should Leicester sell up?
The Daily Telegraph’s report yesterday that Brighton and Hove Albion are sniffing around Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall got us thinking - should Leicester City accept a bid in the region of £30million if it arrives?
Keep him for Coops
James Knight
I think there is a strong argument that taking the money before KDH embroils himself in the Premier League again is the right long term move in a vacuum. Particularly with the PSR implications of selling a home grown player for pure, sweet profit.
However, profit isn't going to score you any goals, and it's hard to trust that the club would replace him in any adequate way. Selling him now would be disastrous for the vibes, and would leave us with virtually no midfield. The only player Steve Cooper namechecked in his in-house PR interview with the club the other day was Dewsbury-Hall. How many legs can you cut off from underneath the manager before he even starts?
Take KDH out, and suddenly you need a lot of players just to get back to the level you were at last season. At least with him you feel like there's a chance you've kept a key source of goals you can build around.
Ultimately, it just feels like it would send totally the wrong signal at a time when the fan base needs to be reassured that this season is going to be better than our worst fears. Which probably means he'll be sold by the weekend.
Sell, sell, sell
David Bevan
If we get an offer of £30million before 30th June and that sorts us out for PSR, I’ll drive KDH to Brighton myself.
This would be our get-out of the mess we’ve created for ourselves, when we could take the -6 for our 2022/23 breach and that could be the end of it. These are the tough decisions our club has seemingly been too afraid to make in recent years, holding onto players forever and seeing them go for free.
There’s no point getting emotionally attached to individual players who haven’t proven themselves consistently at the highest level. And, perhaps more controversially, I don’t think Dewsbury-Hall is proven at Premier League level. £30million would be a great price for us which we could then use once the calendar ticks into July to reinforce the squad. He’s 25 years old. This kind of offer may not come again.
These are the smart decisions that clubs like ours make, that our club used to make. The reason we’re in the financial mess we are is, once again, not because we haven’t got any money - it’s because our transfer business started going south.
Ultimately, I still think the tweet that provoked his reaction all those months ago had an element of truth to it. He was too good for the Championship, but that doesn’t mean he’s the player we should be building our Premier League midfield around if we have the choice.
Relax, don’t do it
Helen Thompson
£30million sounds reasonable but my every instinct says don't sell. The article makes a fairly compelling case but how much of that fee would we realistically be able to chalk off for PSR because we would need to reinvest some of that to replace Dewsbury-Hall. The current squad has no immediate, ready to go equivalent.
And while there's arguments for him being replaceable, like all playes, how much would it cost to get a player at his level, or better, as the replacement? The free transfers we could entice aren't exactly thrilling and with all clubs looking for funds, we'd be looking to leagues abroad for relative bargains and they'd be unproven at this level.
Personally, when you know a player doesn't want the move, it feels a bit murky too. I'm sure Dewsbury-Hall would come to understand, see Matt Piper for a slightly more extreme example, but it'd be a sour way to end the relationship. And ultimately would it make a big enough difference? The club have done the damage already and it feels like it'll take more to unpick than the fortunate offloading of a manager and the sale of a key player.
Steve Cooper's job already involves plugging some pretty glaring holes and weaknesses in the squad. They’ll be compounded if he, or we, can't convince Wilfred Ndidi to renew and losing Dewsbury-Hall would strain the midfield even more. Midfield shouldn't even be the squad area on paper that looks the weakest so can we afford to strip out some more creativity? Unless it fundamentally makes a difference, such as reducing any punishments, it doesn't feel worth it for me.
Maybe…
Iain Wright
On the one hand, the rumoured £30m sounds very reasonable, especially as I can't really see his value rising higher than that, especially with him being 26 shortly. He'd need to produce an exceptional season for teams to part with more than that next year at 27. Regardless of the financial position, every player has their price, and that feels like it could be a fair deal all round.
However, what muddies the water is our old enemy Profit and Sustainability. As we've seemingly been left out of the Villa/Chelsea/Everton triumvirate, where they are selling ball boys for £20m to obtain a ticket to the P&S lifeboat, surely the decision depends on whether selling KDH means we are in the black on the balance sheet come Monday morning?
I know a lot of fans who simply think 'sod it', let the EFL try and chase us, but that doesn't sit well with me. Aside from the cloud it'd create over the promotion, it could be storing up serious problems if the imminent points deduction means a return to the EFL next year? They would surely be licking their lips at the thought of punishing us next season, especially if we purposely failed by holding onto a player?
But... he is the heartbeat of the team, a local boy done good and was superb last season. He also wants to stay to play for us (rather than bank his wage), which is quite rare going by the recent past.
So, my thoughts in summary are this.
If it means avoiding another financial issue before 1st July, we sell.
If the Enzo money has miraculously already done the job financially, we then consider the impact of the imminent points deduction. The club must have an idea what it'll be, so if it's a terminal figure, we sell and just bank the cash ahead of a zombie season.
However, if we're in the clear on P&S and have a feeling we're getting a competitive deduction imminently, we turn down the £30m...and see if they'll go to £40m.
