Matty Pollock - stay or go?

Simple question.

Do we sell Matty Pollock?

You need another option of "sell but loaned back til end of season"

Quoted from Southwark Mariner

You need another option of "sell but loaned back til end of season"

This.

Since we're facing a relegation battle, it's hard to find sense in selling a good defender who's also our top goalscorer.

If we get him loaned back, then things are different...

Why would we sell one of our best players the position we’re in ?!!

I don't know how to copy and paste on this Amazon Fire tablet, but the words to the Clash's 'should I stay or should I go'  go through my head each time I see this post.

It has to be down to Matty at the end of the day. As we all know the footballers career can be a very short one and if a young lad gets the opportunity to earn enough to set him up for life, can he afford to turn it down? I would be sorry to see him go.

Quoted from Southwark Mariner

You need another option of "sell but loaned back til end of season"

Agree with this, ideal scenario decent cash offer say £500k plus stay to help keep us up.

Quoted from Southwark Mariner

You need another option of "sell but loaned back til end of season"

Agree with this, ideal scenario decent cash offer say £500k plus stay to help keep us up.

Has there even been any concrete interest or is just speculation ?

You should never stop a young lad from progressing under better facilities etc.

But as someone else has said, who every buys him, a loan back till end of season would suit everybody

Is there an option to sell him with three minutes of the transfer window left? Because let's be honest that's how this is gonna go down if it does.

In all honesty, there isn't one player in the current squad who has impressed to the levels this season that they're irreplaceable.  Far from it.

Pollock is a talent, but just because it has been such an absolute shower over the last 6 months he hasn't pulled up any trees and definitely hasn't reached the levels of last season.  Fully appreciate that there's so many factors at play, including the players around him.

At this moment in time, our left side is our weak spot.  Pollock is the left sided centre back but lacks pace, Preston is the left back but lacks confidence and in my opinion needs a break.  Ahead of him it has been Kyle Bennett of late who offers minimal protection but whoever has played there all season has offered little.  The best has come from Max Wright when he's played.  It's a real area of concern and Pollock's lack of pace is playing into the perfect little storm.  

I hate thinking short-term but if (and we're going down a big if scenario now), selling Pollock allowed us to bring in one, two, maybe even three players who we need and would massively improve us (talking the levels of when Andy Todd lifted us or even the three loan signings under Newell of Henderson, Sweeney and Conlon - thinking just of the loan period, not the permanent results for the latter two) then I would reluctantly say let us sell a key future asset.

Pollock might be worth a fortune in the future, but I'd put money on the fact that our Football League status is worth far more.  

Other considerations are, would we actually get that much money for him with the academy rules? Got to be honest I don't know the in's and out's of it, but my understanding is that we sold our soul with the annual payments we get to run the academy and as a result get a pittance should anyone come in and sign our players.  Also would any sale actually make a difference? Is there a decent war chest already in place?

More thinking out loud here than anything, but maybe our best scenario is a sale with part of the deal allowing us a couple of good loan players from a higher level.

I do not get the obsession with selling our best young players as soon as they have a few decent games and there is some interest, selling to Peterborough and the like is not going to advance us. It is not fair to hold back players who have the chance to earn loads more in the Prem or Championship but surely we should be selling them a future at our club with ambition to rise, how would we feel if he went to Lincoln? This is now a club in a better position than Peterborough because they had the ambition to hold on to their better players

But if you don't sell them, they will leave anyway for free. Once a player knows he is playing below his level, he is going to be looking to move on at some point, and you can't stand in the way of a player bettering himself.

Like it or not, we are a bottom feeder in the EFL and can't hang on to players. We will take players from the leagues below us, that's how it goes.

At the end of the day, every club is a selling club, no matter who they are, if the deal is the correct one for the clubs concerned.

Quoted from ginnywings

But if you don't sell them, they will leave anyway for free. Once a player knows he is playing below his level, he is going to be looking to move on at some point, and you can't stand in the way of a player bettering himself.

Like it or not, we are a bottom feeder in the EFL and can't hang on to players. We will take players from the leagues below us, that's how it goes.

At the end of the day, every club is a selling club, no matter who they are, if the deal is the correct one for the clubs concerned.

Has Pollock asked for a transfer? Should we force a sale?
If anytime we have decent player we as fans call for them to be sold will never see us improve. Why can we not sell them the ambition of the club? Surely it’s for the board to worry about the financial side, that is the perk of being a director, as fans we should want to keep our best players, we have been sold a mindset that we are bottom feeders, we have lived with failure so long we are buying into saying any decent players are beyond us to keep

I find these debates a little bit daft. The reality is that we, or any club for that matter, will sell any player in the event that a bid is made of an acceptable value. Whether that's Grimsby Town and Matty Pollock, or PSG and Kylian Mbappé, the same is true - the only real variable is what constitutes 'acceptable'. There are a few factors in that, primarily:

• The typical going rate for a player of that position, of that age, at that level
  
• The remaining time on the player's contract
  
• The significance of that player to the selling club
  
• The implications to the current season (will selling decrease / increase the chances of promotion / relegation)
  
• The financial state of the selling club
  
• The player's attitude towards staying at the selling club
  

If we work through that, the last three big sales of young centre backs from League Two were Ben Godfrey, Ethan Ampadu and Ben Wilmot, averaging out at around £2m. They're probably standout players in that all have gone on to play a decent amount of top flight football and are probably worth between £10m - £25m each (Norwich have already moved Godfrey on for £20m) as of right now.

Is Pollock that good? I'm not convinced, so beyond that players tend to go for between £750k and £1m. With 40 odd games under his belt, Pollock is more proven than most at is age so on that basis the basic benchmark should be towards the higher end of that for me.

We are of course at risk of relegation, and even at 19 years of age he is one of our better players and, scandalously, our top scorer. That needs factoring in, but concerns should be offset if the management has confidence that any fees generated could be used to compensate through the reinforcement of the squad. That said, January is not a great time to be attempting to sign quality players when you are at risk of non-league relegation, so that also needs factoring in.

As far as I am aware, we are not in dire need of cash however the potential kicker is that he has 18 months to run on his contract. Letting an in-demand player get to within 12 months of his contract is a risky game and it's unlikely we'd get a bigger offer in the summer, particularly if the unthinkable happens between now and then.

Personally, I think any offer of seven figures or above needs to be given serious consideration, but should be done in the context of the broader reconstruction of the squad.

I think posts like this to be very unnecessary.
Surely the time to do this is, when an offer is made.

What Mattie thinks when he reads this post must be confusing.

Depends on the fee.

He's a good player, with great potential. But he is only one player. If he went for £1m plus, we could buy eight or nine excellent players with that kind of cash and transform the team.

Quoted from RonMariner

Depends on the fee.

He's a good player, with great potential. But he is only one player. If he went for £1m plus, we could buy eight or nine excellent players with that kind of cash and transform the team.

Indeed. I hear Akwasi Asante, Gavin Gunning, Chris Clements and Adi Yussuf are all available.

I'd definitely take the last two names on that list at the minute.  Yussuf especially!

Maybe Luke Maxwell too?

Quoted from Poojah

Indeed. I hear Akwasi Asante, Gavin Gunning, Chris Clements and Adi Yussuf are all available.

I wonder what the issue was with Asante. Never really given a chance here.

Quoted from diehardmariner

I'd definitely take the last two names on that list at the minute.  Yussuf especially!

Maybe Luke Maxwell too?

To be fair, they weren't all bad players. It just never really felt like we got good value from the sale of Bogle. Whatever happens if we do sell Pollock, we have to spend with greater diligence.

As far as salvation this season is concerned I don’t think Pollock will be central to Hurst’s plans. He can find a solid centre back under most stones in the West Riding if he needs to.   In terms of the club’s future it could be a bit shortsighted and send out the wrong messages I suppose. Although I haven’t seen enough of him to be convinced Matty is Championship or PL material, he must be a good player at this level to attract attention and the money might be more use to the manager than the player. That is assuming a fee goes into the transfer pot.

Quoted from Poojah

To be fair, they weren't all bad players. It just never really felt like we got good value from the sale of Bogle. Whatever happens if we do sell Pollock, we have to spend with greater diligence.

Absolutely!  From memory we brought in Asante, Yussuf, Clements, Osborne and Gunning with the money from Bogle.

Still can't understand why we let Yussuf go at the begining of the 18/19 season, he'd looked our best striker in pre-season and has since gone on to have a decent return, to the extent he got a move to League One.  I was always fairly impressed with him when he played for us, what we would give for a striker with a bit of pace and presence about them.  Could probably read the same about Asante in the sense that we brought them up a level and then expected them to be the end product straight away.

Osborne had all the potential in the world and I still maintain that had we looked after him better, we would have got more out of him - unfortunate injury aside.  

Clements was a good footballer, as with Osborne, there was clearly an issue regards what was agreed in relation to relocation and travel.  Since promotion to the football league we've failed to have a creative midfielder who wasn't on loan, Clements was probably the closest we've come to having someone capable of pinging a pass more than 10 yards.  

Gunning....well, 4 out of 5 isn't bad!

Bignot was mad as a bag of frogs but he had the right idea here.  Bring players in with the view to develop them (more so in the cases of the two strikers and Osborne) but you have to give players time and room to grow.  No different to the situation we're in now with Gibson, Sissay, Jackson and Spokes...we've brought them in without a plan for them to develop.  We're in a reserve league with about 3 other teams so they're not going to get any game time, they're not the end product so they're not going to get game time there.  Have we signed these players thinking they'll develop beyond belief in training?  

A lack of forward thinking is another thing that can go on the list of achievements of this club in the last 20 odd years.