Ruel looks to be off to Bristol

I’d have been happy if he had stayed too. But clearly he didn’t want to and judging by his contract renewal history he fancied a move away at some point. No problem with that at all.  More money, regular starter, new faces? Who knows.  What we do know is he was offered a new contract and it wasn’t good enough for him. He rejected us. He wasn’t turned away.

i believe our club are fair to players and treat them with respect.  Our offer would have been a reflection on our view of his worth. Who knows what adjustments were made during negotiations.  If others value him more that’s fine, that’s football.

Not the first player we’ve lost and won’t be the last.  What matters is who we replace him with, only then will we be in a position to judge. 

If SalarySport.com is to be believed, he was on 1.7k a week. That makes our top scorer two seasons in a row something like our 18th highest paid player

So what did we offer him? If it was in the region of 2-2.5k a week then I'd say we effectively did turn him away. We'll obviously never know, but I don't see us offering much more than that. Many other clubs at this level would.

If figures stated for the offered amount, no wonder he looked elsewhere. Chesterfield last year were reported paying their players 2.5k per week with top earners on 4k per week.

Sorry to see Ruel go,but you make some very valid points.Remember the thread;If Ruel is the answer.

The season that KJ was replaced, Matt Harold was put in charge on a temporary basis and he brought Ruel back into the team ( later RW became the new manager ) and Ruels goals for the rest of that season were a big factor in the Os avoiding relegation back to the National league.

Totally agree. He scored some fantastic goals, several of which were key to us last season. I particularly remember that at Exeter away, which helped shift us from downward to upward looking. Good luck Ruel, thank you.

I think Donuts last post is correct. If RW had wanted to keep him, we’d have kept him. The dig about his contract says it all to me. It’s happened, it’s over we move on, now it’s down to RW and ML to find a player as good as if not better to replace him. That excites me.

Yeah, RW has repeatedly stated he wanted to keep Sotiriou. But at the end of the season he also said he didn't expect him to stay.

You haven't understood the point I was trying to make so I'll rephrase it:

1) You said "he wasn't turned away", but since we don't know how much was offered, can we say that definitively? We certainly don't know if we made any serious attempt to keep him.

2) We weren't paying him much and still wouldn't be even with a fairly significant pay rise. (Even 100% would be less than we were paying Drinan.) When his old contract was signed is irrelevant.

To elaborate, we know Richie sees him as an impact sub rather than a starter. So does anyone really believe we made him an offer in line with what the top scorer at a L1 club should be earning?

Anything less would be an offer everyone at the club would fully expect Ruel to turn down. They all know Ruel isn't happy being an impact sub. Richie has openly said it.

So I think it's reasonable to assume we didn't make any serious attempt to keep him. Maybe we made him a great offer, as Richie says, but it still would've been a great offer for an impact sub 🤷

As for my personal stance on him, I would've liked to have kept him but also see him as an impact sub. I wish him all the best.