People do get awfully precious about "developing players for other teams".
That's the way football works unfortunately ; a fundamental part of our model is to develop players for others.
Clearly when we sign/own those players we are hoping to turn a profit for our "efforts" ; however, it's simply a game of risk/reward (and seemingly a game we have been losing over the last 3-4 seasons.)
For every Fofana or Maddison, who we can bring in, develop and sell on. There is a Soumare or a Daka. By loaning a player, yes you don't stand to make the big profits, but you don't stand to stomach the losses either.
The simple fact of the matter is that the club needs to be very careful financially ; we all accept that we will need to end this window with 5/6/7/8 new players. If one or two of those can be brought in at essentially zero financial risk, whilst contributing to us staying up, that's a positive for me.
Clearly having an option would be nice, but Brighton are very shrewd - this is a 19 year old, creative, Argentinian international. If he has a good enough season for us (fingers crossed) that would make us want to sign him permanently, then you're looking at a price probably into the £30-50M range, based on that profile. By all accounts, we probably can't afford that anyway.
Instead, if he buys us 12 months to continue to refine Alves/Golding etc. so that they can step into the role permanently when he returns (and, particularly, if he helps us stay up), then I can only really see positives.
I also see the perspective that if he proves to be good and helps us stay up, then other players will see what he did for us / the role he played / the attention it brought him and will be excited to come and play for us to fill that role.
The last season Tielemens was here, all we were doing was developing him for someone else. Same with Soyuncu towards the end of that season. Regardless, you have to make use of the best players you have/you can get your hands on, particularly when you're in a difficult situation.
The last time we got promoted, we signed an Argentine midfielder for 12 months, who cost us nothing to sign, made us no profit when he left and I've no complaints about that deal!
