[Salopbaggie]

I would think that if he looks good in his first year at Bremen we'll extend his contract anyway so we have an option for more of him. It's entirely aimed at building our image in China anyway, which may be good in the future even if he leaves us (that may be what the SCP article is saying, but I can't be bothered with it now).

It certainly looks as if building football in China is part of the bigger plan, I do wonder though how much of this will be of benefit to the club.  I would even go as far as to question, whether we will ever even see Zhang in game, playing for us anyway.

It all just looks strange, I understand that Chinese clubs are paying over the top, but if we put this in relation to Rondon, whom I think most of us thought the Chinese were "a little generous" in offering £32M for him.

Using the same escalator, the Transfer Markt valuation.

Rondon value £12.750,000
Zhang value €595,000

So to pay  €9,000,000 for Zhang is the equivalent of paying €219,811,000 for Rondon, based on their Transfer Markt values and today's XE foreign exchange prices, so something very weird is going on here.

---

I think the transfer was undisclosed, so that €9 million could be speculation? I suspect we would announce if we'd paid that much - as fans are assuming he was a nominal fee (and might be right).

To be honest, he looked sh*t even on Youtube, so I doubt we'd pay that unless there's some guarantee on return from a marketing point of view. I'm sure the money men know what they are doing, but I'd be surprised if the fee was as high as the South China Post are claiming.

Agreed Slick, but its not only the SCP claiming this, I actually saw it it 3 or 4 UK articles before seeing this one, if I remember right even the Birmingham Mail ran with undisclosed; believed to be 9M euro.

Here is one of the Mail articles
http://www.birminghammail.co.uk/sport/fo...s-13330710