Valencia president Anil Murthy: “We didn’t sell our best players”

Valencia president Anil Murthy has said that he believes the club didn’t sell their best players during this past transfer window.

Murthy, who hasn’t spoken to the Spanish media for some time, was speaking in England in comments carried by Marca.

Murthy didn’t go into details regarding the club’s management or their reaction to the fall in income from not competing in the Champions League combined with the pandemic.

Speaking of players including Rodrigo, Dani Parejo, Ezequiel Garay, Ferran Torres and Francis Coquelin, who were sold or released during the summer window, Murthy said that the players currently at the club are better than them.

“We sold players for the simple reason that we saw revenue drop from €200m to €100m,” he said. “If you don’t sell players, you don’t have money to pay salaries, debts, service providers that help the players or the operation of the club.

“I repeat, we didn’t sell the best players. They’re still with us.”

Valencia have endured a tumultuous opening to the season, with coach Javi Gracia trying to leave the club, underperformance on the pitch and delays in payments to the squad. Despite this, Murthy sought to praise the performance of the club.

“I think everything has been handled very well,” he said. “It hit us like a storm but La Liga and all the clubs reacted very well. It was quite scary at the time because any little thing that wasn’t solved could have sunk the ship.”

Murthy also praised the importance of the club’s academy in creating a new future. “Today’s academy is nurturing a strong identity for the club. I call it Project Academy,” he said.

“In the long term, we want to use the academy to nurture identity and philosophy. We want a minimum of seven homegrown players in the first team. This situation has given us the opportunity to do something we wanted to do for years.”

Featured image courtesy of Valencia CF.

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