Here’s a novel idea for running a football club: sell your best players once they’re peaking and commanding the biggest transfer fee they’re likely to in their career. They’ll go downhill after that. Sign a replacement in their early 20’s at half the cost. Then sell the replacement player in 4 or 5 years for a profit as well. Make money, conquer Europe, piece of piss.

Daivd Sullivan is on the right path, not quite hitting the nail on the head though with his mooted suggestion of selling Upson in my opinion. Defenders peak later than attacking players and can play at a high level into their mid thirties as they don’t have to rely so much on pace. Upson is 30 and could probably play at the top until he’s 35. Maldini through good conditioning played on until 40, Ryan Giggs has been moved centrally where he doesn’t need to be as quick to prolong his career and will probably carry on until he’s 38.

I don’t know why David Sullivan has decided, with 4 months of the season still to go, to publicly declare his intention to sell Upson. Could have a negative affect on the players motivation and can only be PR to get West Ham fans used to the idea. If Upson himself publicly states he wants out that’s a different matter but we should be prepared to put a new contract on the table for him. Matthew Upson is the rock in our defence, we have no young player already in the squad ready to step up. Tomkins is already partnering him and Bondz N’Gala is a way off and is still too young and inexperienced to determine whether he’ll make it. If we sold Upson we’d likely be looking at 8 or 9 million for him I fancy. We’d have to spend the majority of that signing a replacement or someone who was untried in the league if we’re only talking a couple of million for a foreigner. He would imediately be expected to perform as there would be no time to introduce him slowly.

This situation is not comparable to West Ham selling Rio Ferdinand to Leeds for £18 million. He had his whole career ahead of him and was sold on for £30 million to Manchester United. The players we brought into replace him weren’t good enough (took a few seasons for Dailly to produce his best form at the club).

If you’re going to sell a player from the spine of the team I would say sell Carlton Cole instead. He would bring in a higher fee than Upson because he’s 26 and strikers sell for more. We could hope to get up to 15 million for him (obviously this is part speculation, based on what he was touted for before but if he makes England’s world cup squad that’ll boost his value), a player like Julio Baptista could be signed for half of that. The other half spent on a young prospect, a left winger ideally. West Ham we’ll be looking for Hines to step up as well next season as he’s had time to bed himself in this season so selling Cole would leave much less a gap than selling Upson would.

We released an experienced defender and our then captain last year in Lucas Neil and it hurt us. We were a lot more solid at the back then than with Faubert.

This is all assuming we stay up, if the worst happens and West Ham get relegated we’ll be probably forced to sell the entire spine of the team. Birmingham and Hull are massive games, time for Zola and the players to deliver.

This post is tagged david sullivan, matthew upson