Bristol City used online transfer marketplace TransferRoom to help facilitate the sale of Antoine Semenyo to Bournemouth and calculate a fair price for the Ghana international.
A report in the Athletic has revealed that the Robins took to the platform, which was founded in 2016 by Jonas Ankersen, the brother of Southampton director of football Rasmus, in the January window to make top-flight sides aware of the striker’s availability.
More than 650 clubs across 100 leagues are now signed up to the site which aims to bring greater transparency and give clubs more accurate and reliable market information in conducting business and has been at the heart of more than 3,000 deals across the world since inception.
Semenyo joined Bournemouth on January 27 for an initial £9m plus further appearance based add-ons taking it past the £10m mark, with City increasingly in a position of needing to sell one of their prized assets as his contract was expiring in the summer of 2024.
The sale, one of CEO Richard Gould's final acts before departing to take up a role with the ECB, also enabled City to then sign Anis Mehmeti from Wycombe Wanderers and Harry Cornick from Luton Town. New CEO Phil Alexander is understood to have been a big influence on completing both deals on deadline day.
Having turned down a bid from Nottingham Forest in the previous January window, Semenyo’s shin injury, sustained last summer while on international duty, meant expected offers from Crystal Palace and Bournemouth never materialised.
The 23-year-old made 23 Championship appearances for the Robins over the first half of the season, scoring six goals and adding three assists, and with Bournemouth’s interest remaining, and the Cherries furnished with new owner Bill Foley’s investment, there was an acceptance within the City hierarchy that the forward was likely to leave or, more pertinently, had to be sold due to his contract situation.
There had been a degree of frustration within the fanbase that the fee was a comparatively low eight figures, having seen defender Lloyd Kelly sold to the Cherries in 2019 for an initial £13.5m and Adam Webster to Brighton & Hove Albion the same summer for £20m.
However, TransferRoom also allowed Gould to evaluate what would be considered a fair market price for the former SGS pupil and having turned down two initial bids from the Premier League club eventually accepted a third.
The Expected Transfer Value (xTV) feature calculates what can be considered a “fair” price at both ends of the deal, based on market conditions (such as Covid’s impact on the Championship and deals with top-flight clubs), recent examples of similar transfers plus the relevant players’ age, position, contract situation and the financial health of the selling club.
According to the Athletic, City used the ‘Super Pitch’ function to directly advertise Semenyo to certain Premier League clubs as Southampton and Crystal Palace were also notified of his availability at a particular price point and were identified as potential landing spots due to their desire to attack in transition and the striker’s obvious talents and attributes that fitted such an approach.
As reported at the time, after accepting Bournemouth’s third offer, Palace - Semenyo’s preferred destination due to his family being based in London - were made aware of the situation and invited to match that bid but the Eagles, who conducted minimal business in the window, declined.
Since signing for Bournemouth, managed by former City midfielder Gary O'Neil, Semenyo has made two Premier League starts and a further four appearances off the bench and is yet to find the target.
Gould has spoken previously of the value of TransferRoom, using the platform to move Adam Nagy in September 2021 as the Hungarian midfielder was keen on a return to Italy and Pisa eventually took the last 12 months of his contract off the Robins’ hands, albeit with City unable to extract a transfer fee.
Gould joined City from Surrey CC in the summer of 2021, and having been out of the football industry for several years, TransferRoom also enabled the 53-year-old to get a better and more coherent understanding of what constitutes value in what was a turbulent market at the time due to the impact of Covid.
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