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One of FFO’s stand out features and events that is looked forward to each season is the NON FFO auction.
This event happens twice a season, firstly prior to the season and then roughly half way through the season and brings in a number of players of all shapes and sizes and clubs are asked to place a blind bid on the player that they desire.
Certain rules are in place such as 1 bid per club, a minimum fee for each player (Usually depending on their skill level), a minimum squad number requirement and the club must bid within their budget.
In the past clubs have overpaid, clubs have got an absolute steal, while others have been outbid time and time again.
Many managers use the auctions as a way to bring in a new face while others avoid and conclude their business outside of said auctions, well this past week saw FFO’s mid season auction take place.
In previous auctions, the bidding process lasted a couple of days while on this occasion, a measly 12 hours was the allotted time given for managers to place their bid.
The list of players was made public the evening before bidding was allowed so everyone had plenty of time to make their decision.
After Round 1 had been concluded, it turns out that on this occasion that Juventus had been heated to the signature of 22 year old winger A_Gordon.
The Italian team had placed a bid of £89,475,000 but were well beaten by the £150,000,000 bid from Manchester United.
Gordon was the subject of a few bids from the likes of Manchester United, Juventus, Atletico Madrid and more.
This is what Juventus manager Andy Banks had to say after reading the auction results, his bid and other players on the list;
‘It’s disappointing to miss out on Gordon but in truth we didn’t have that much interest in him.
He’d have made us better but only slightly so we won’t lose any sleep over it.
We weren’t really overwhelmed with the list of players on offer if I’m honest.
We had some interest in H_Elliott at first but despite him being very versatile we felt he’d never be good enough for our first team so decided against it.
Our other potential target was the goalkeeper B_Verbruggen who went to Bayern Munich for over £60,000,000.
Our original plan was to bid the £40,000,000 minimum on the 20 year old but we changed our minds in the end. Not that it would have mattered as Bayern would have outbid us at that price.
As for our actual bid on Gordon, we could have bid higher and he’s worth more but for the slight improvement he’d have given us we weren’t willing to shell out that much so we opted for £89,475,000 in order to leave ourselves £100,000,000 but in the end we failed in our attempt to sign him and we have to move onto round 2 where we’ll be one of the top balances.”
This meant that Juventus would have to go into the second round of bidding and after careful consideration they placed their second bid on 20 year old defender O_Diomande and were this time successful beating Millwall to his signature with a bid of £70,000,000.
We caught up with Banks again shortly after his Juventus team successfully bid at auction in round 2;
“We’re delighted to bring O_Diomande to the club, but if we’re honest he won’t be staying. He’s been signed as bait for another player.
A Bayern Munich player, A_Davies.
We’ve tracked Davies for years now and after seeing Munich release a statement after the first round that they’d be offering Davies to the team that signed Diomande in round 2, well we saw the opportunity and took it.
We still weren’t prepared to bid big money and after careful consideration £70,000,000 was the fee that we as a club decided was the right price to bid on the young lad.
We beat Millwall, the only other bidder by some £20,000,000+ so we’re delighted with the deal as we feel we got him under market value.”
As Banks eluded to, Juventus were then keen to trade the 20 year old, un established defender for 23 year old, established defender A_Davies and that’s exactly what happened.
A deal between Juventus and Bayern Munich was quickly hammered out and for the second time in as many auctions, Juventus signed a defender and then promptly sold him to Bayern Munich for a more developed player.
The signing of Diomande and then swap for Davies meant that Juventus had a 6th defender, one too many for Banks as he swiftly moved out T_Nianzou to Southampton for a fee of £110,000,000.
Banks had this to say on the sale of Nianzou;
“The auction provided us with a 6th defender which is too many when you consider the two defensive midfield players that we have at the club.
We knew we had to act fast as to not allow the defensive group stagnate due to having to rotate 6 players over 5 and we set off to find a suitable buyer.
Southampton, Atletico Madrid & Celtic were the three teams that we identified as teams who had the cash and could possibly need a defender like Nianzou.
Celtic were in a position of weakness as they’d have to raise the money in order to make an offer.
Atletico Madrid were in no rush to make an offer and very rarely splurge the cash as has been shown in previous auctions, backed up by a sizeable bank balance which left only Southampton.
After a short negotiation period, a deal was struck at £110,000,000 which effectively meant that we were paid £40,000,000 to improve our team. The magic of the auction eh!”
This series of transfers caused quite a stir amongst some of the FFO managers with questions being asked such as:
Why did Juventus sell Nianzou for £110,000,000 when they only bought him half a season ago for £175,000,000?
Why would Bayern Munich sell their best defender to bring in their worst defender in a straight swap deal?
Was there somehow auction collusion between the Banks brothers?
What does Banks Jr have on Banks Snr to make him take that kind of deal?
Banks had the following to say;
“First of all, allow me to clear up the price of Nianzou. We may have taken a £65,000,000 hit in just a couple of months but being realistic, we had to sell him as we really couldn’t keep him at the club.
We wouldn’t get the game time and would lose value that way.
While we’ve taken a lower figure than what we paid, the transfer market is totally different now and a players’ value pre season vs now are worlds apart.
Add to that there aren’t many clubs out there that have £100,000,000+ and the ones who do, have no need for a player like Nianzou so we made the best of a bad situation and added £110,000,000 back into our bank balance.
I think you also have to factor in the price we paid for Diomande, £70,000,000 is under market value for a player of his potential and then when you add in that we traded him away for a player who will be our best defender, a think losing money on Nianzou is the least of our worries.
As for why Bayern would look to move off of Davies, well I can’t speak for them but I wasn’t hanging around to ask why when the deal was presented to me by my football director. Bayern have a thing for young players and Diomande fits that vision so we were happy to take advantage of…I mean negotiate with Munich and quickly come to an agreement.
The current rumours that are flying around, they’re laughable. Everyone knows if I had something on Jon that I’d spill anyway. Like the fact that he gets pegged on a Sunday evening. The world knows this now but no collusion happened and it never has done between myself and Jon or any other manager for that matter!”
Banks went on to say;
“Davies will join us this week and alongside Simakan, Mendes and Gvardiol with Timber backing them up we’ve definitely strengthened this last week which is exactly what we needed.
These deals now give us a new balance of almost £230,000,000 which puts us in the top 5 or so teams in the world so we’ll be looking to use that to our advantage and bring in a new goalkeeper or attacking midfielder in the close season alongside using a portion to improve our stadium. The future may just be bright at Juventus.”
This event happens twice a season, firstly prior to the season and then roughly half way through the season and brings in a number of players of all shapes and sizes and clubs are asked to place a blind bid on the player that they desire.
Certain rules are in place such as 1 bid per club, a minimum fee for each player (Usually depending on their skill level), a minimum squad number requirement and the club must bid within their budget.
In the past clubs have overpaid, clubs have got an absolute steal, while others have been outbid time and time again.
Many managers use the auctions as a way to bring in a new face while others avoid and conclude their business outside of said auctions, well this past week saw FFO’s mid season auction take place.
In previous auctions, the bidding process lasted a couple of days while on this occasion, a measly 12 hours was the allotted time given for managers to place their bid.
The list of players was made public the evening before bidding was allowed so everyone had plenty of time to make their decision.
After Round 1 had been concluded, it turns out that on this occasion that Juventus had been heated to the signature of 22 year old winger A_Gordon.
The Italian team had placed a bid of £89,475,000 but were well beaten by the £150,000,000 bid from Manchester United.
Gordon was the subject of a few bids from the likes of Manchester United, Juventus, Atletico Madrid and more.
This is what Juventus manager Andy Banks had to say after reading the auction results, his bid and other players on the list;
‘It’s disappointing to miss out on Gordon but in truth we didn’t have that much interest in him.
He’d have made us better but only slightly so we won’t lose any sleep over it.
We weren’t really overwhelmed with the list of players on offer if I’m honest.
We had some interest in H_Elliott at first but despite him being very versatile we felt he’d never be good enough for our first team so decided against it.
Our other potential target was the goalkeeper B_Verbruggen who went to Bayern Munich for over £60,000,000.
Our original plan was to bid the £40,000,000 minimum on the 20 year old but we changed our minds in the end. Not that it would have mattered as Bayern would have outbid us at that price.
As for our actual bid on Gordon, we could have bid higher and he’s worth more but for the slight improvement he’d have given us we weren’t willing to shell out that much so we opted for £89,475,000 in order to leave ourselves £100,000,000 but in the end we failed in our attempt to sign him and we have to move onto round 2 where we’ll be one of the top balances.”
This meant that Juventus would have to go into the second round of bidding and after careful consideration they placed their second bid on 20 year old defender O_Diomande and were this time successful beating Millwall to his signature with a bid of £70,000,000.
We caught up with Banks again shortly after his Juventus team successfully bid at auction in round 2;
“We’re delighted to bring O_Diomande to the club, but if we’re honest he won’t be staying. He’s been signed as bait for another player.
A Bayern Munich player, A_Davies.
We’ve tracked Davies for years now and after seeing Munich release a statement after the first round that they’d be offering Davies to the team that signed Diomande in round 2, well we saw the opportunity and took it.
We still weren’t prepared to bid big money and after careful consideration £70,000,000 was the fee that we as a club decided was the right price to bid on the young lad.
We beat Millwall, the only other bidder by some £20,000,000+ so we’re delighted with the deal as we feel we got him under market value.”
As Banks eluded to, Juventus were then keen to trade the 20 year old, un established defender for 23 year old, established defender A_Davies and that’s exactly what happened.
A deal between Juventus and Bayern Munich was quickly hammered out and for the second time in as many auctions, Juventus signed a defender and then promptly sold him to Bayern Munich for a more developed player.
The signing of Diomande and then swap for Davies meant that Juventus had a 6th defender, one too many for Banks as he swiftly moved out T_Nianzou to Southampton for a fee of £110,000,000.
Banks had this to say on the sale of Nianzou;
“The auction provided us with a 6th defender which is too many when you consider the two defensive midfield players that we have at the club.
We knew we had to act fast as to not allow the defensive group stagnate due to having to rotate 6 players over 5 and we set off to find a suitable buyer.
Southampton, Atletico Madrid & Celtic were the three teams that we identified as teams who had the cash and could possibly need a defender like Nianzou.
Celtic were in a position of weakness as they’d have to raise the money in order to make an offer.
Atletico Madrid were in no rush to make an offer and very rarely splurge the cash as has been shown in previous auctions, backed up by a sizeable bank balance which left only Southampton.
After a short negotiation period, a deal was struck at £110,000,000 which effectively meant that we were paid £40,000,000 to improve our team. The magic of the auction eh!”
This series of transfers caused quite a stir amongst some of the FFO managers with questions being asked such as:
Why did Juventus sell Nianzou for £110,000,000 when they only bought him half a season ago for £175,000,000?
Why would Bayern Munich sell their best defender to bring in their worst defender in a straight swap deal?
Was there somehow auction collusion between the Banks brothers?
What does Banks Jr have on Banks Snr to make him take that kind of deal?
Banks had the following to say;
“First of all, allow me to clear up the price of Nianzou. We may have taken a £65,000,000 hit in just a couple of months but being realistic, we had to sell him as we really couldn’t keep him at the club.
We wouldn’t get the game time and would lose value that way.
While we’ve taken a lower figure than what we paid, the transfer market is totally different now and a players’ value pre season vs now are worlds apart.
Add to that there aren’t many clubs out there that have £100,000,000+ and the ones who do, have no need for a player like Nianzou so we made the best of a bad situation and added £110,000,000 back into our bank balance.
I think you also have to factor in the price we paid for Diomande, £70,000,000 is under market value for a player of his potential and then when you add in that we traded him away for a player who will be our best defender, a think losing money on Nianzou is the least of our worries.
As for why Bayern would look to move off of Davies, well I can’t speak for them but I wasn’t hanging around to ask why when the deal was presented to me by my football director. Bayern have a thing for young players and Diomande fits that vision so we were happy to take advantage of…I mean negotiate with Munich and quickly come to an agreement.
The current rumours that are flying around, they’re laughable. Everyone knows if I had something on Jon that I’d spill anyway. Like the fact that he gets pegged on a Sunday evening. The world knows this now but no collusion happened and it never has done between myself and Jon or any other manager for that matter!”
Banks went on to say;
“Davies will join us this week and alongside Simakan, Mendes and Gvardiol with Timber backing them up we’ve definitely strengthened this last week which is exactly what we needed.
These deals now give us a new balance of almost £230,000,000 which puts us in the top 5 or so teams in the world so we’ll be looking to use that to our advantage and bring in a new goalkeeper or attacking midfielder in the close season alongside using a portion to improve our stadium. The future may just be bright at Juventus.”