Cash in on RVP

Let's not delude ourselves. At the end of this season RVP will want to leave this club. I don't doubt that he likes it here, or that he loves the club, but that hasn't stopped others in the past.

Today really showed that he is our only truly world class player left. Despite being marked out of the game, he showed flashes of inspiration. He's playing with average players, on an average wage (relatively speaking) for an average club. He could get into any team in the world at the moment.

I think if we sold him in the summer, despite his contract situation, we would get around £30million for him. This is due to the fact that City would love him, and Real would love him. Hopefully they will start a bidding war - I wouldn't be surprised to see United and Barca and Milan showing interest as well. Either way, we would get a phenominal fee for him that we would be missing out on if we kept him.

He's probably only got 4 years left at the top level - he's 28 and still pretty injury prone. If we get him on a long term contract there is always the danger some like Cattermole or De Jong will break him. Besides, he has actually disappeared a bit in recent games. He has been marked really well, and unless we buy some more top players, teams will be able to keep doing that. Despite him being the best player in the team, he might not always get us 25 goals a season.

If we sell him at a reasonable time in the summer window, and avoid a situation like the Fabregas or Nasri one, we won't have to panic buy on the last day. We'll avoid that morale-sapping saga, cash in, and strengthen the squad. We know there are forwards available - Sow, Podolski and someone like Kagawa would be a proper strike force for around the money we would get from the sale of Robin.

I think it's time we stop kidding ourselves that he's going to stick with us and actually prepare for life without him properly rather than having yet another summer of speculation and restricted signings.