Reports this morning claim that Fulham are considering various exit options for Anthony Knockaert after failing to engineer the winger’s exit during the summer transfer window.
Football League World’s story suggests that, despite interest from the likes of Celtic, West Brom, Nottingham Forest and Queens Park Rangers, the 29 year-old’s high wages proved a significant stumbling block to a deal. Knockaert is considered surplus to requirements at Craven Cottage by new head coach Marco Silva and his only appearance this season came in the League Cup win at Birmingham City last month.
Forest opted not to sign Knockaert on a permanent basis following his loan spell at the City Ground last season, where he scored three goals in 35 appearances. The French winger has been a disappointment since arriving in London from Brighton and Hove Albion, initially on a season-long loan that was then converted into a £10m transfer. He has made 50 appearances, scoring four goals for the Whites, but has fallen down the pecking order following the acquisition of Welsh international Harry Wilson from Liverpool. The former Leicester wide man has a further two years to run on his current Fulham contract.
The conversion of Cav’s and Knockaert’s contracts to permanent deals at end of our last Championship season was insane. Both were bang average in the Championship and we converted their loans into big salaries. At the time I was amazed we did that. Both signings were a complete waste of money. What did we pay for Cav? Was it £15m? Not 100% sure I have that right. Look at young Wilson for £12m, Chalobah for free, Reed for was it £8m. Not sure I have all the numbers right but Knocky and Cav were insane deals. There was no excuse as we’d watched them underperform for a season before we did it. Bizarre
I just cannot see any club who would be willing to continue to pay Knockhaet’s ridiculously high wages even if we let him go on a free. Now a very average player, who I suspect we will be stuck for the foreseeable future.
Football League World? Not the most reliable source it’s just a clickbait site.
Totally agree. Utter waste of money after both had proved their ordinariness. Jeez! The idea of a loan deal is to see firsthand if they are worth purchasing outright and it was clear to all and sundry that they weren’t. Thankfully, finally, we have a manager who is straight to the point and quickly outed one of the dynamic duo. Just Cavaleiro to go.
The problem was compounded not just by paying huge fees but offering both huge wages -which makes it extremely difficult to move them on even on loan deals. Witness the Anguissa/Napoli deal where we still have to cough up 50% of his salary every week.
This crazy expenditure then impacted our Premiership survival battle when, at a time when we were desperate to bring in a goalscorer, we could not spend any money and were restricted to a loan deal for Maja who, despite a good debut, ultimately just wasn’t good enough.
Massively costly error by T Khan.
We should never have signed him permanently anyway as his loan period was certainly nothing special,very over rated as all he can do is run into nowhere.Fulham are stuck with him nowadays no club will meet his wage demands
We needed him for the run in 2020 as we were getting injuries/suspensions etc so it was all hands on deck, this took him over the trigger figure of appearances that activated the terms of the transfer from Brighton.
I assume Fulham felt it was a practical option as it gained us promotion and all its riches, and I dare say we thought we could the sell him on and get our money back. !!
He was a loan with obligation to buy after he played a certain number of games.