Stellenbosch FC's Head of Recruitment Brendon Fourie has explained how they manage to remain competitive despite selling the likes of Junior Mendieta, Ashley Du Preez and Iqraam Rayners, while also naming the players who attracted their interest as replacements.
Stellies have remained in the top six in the elite division for the past three years, in spite of selling their best attacking players, such as Du Preez to Kaizer Chiefs, Mendieta to Mamelodi Sundowns and recently Rayners to Chloorkop too.
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The side, who also sold their captain Deano Van Rooyen to Orlando Pirates in the previous transfer window, had their players in demand, like as Fawaaz Basadien and Ismael Toure.
Fourie has credited head coach Steve Barker for coming up with a formula they started after the sale of the Argentine to Masandawana, as after they could not afford a similar player in the market, they off-set his impact in terms of goal contributions by upgrading their defence.
The intention was to concede less than in the previous campaign.
"He [Mendieta] was 29 years old and had just had the best season of his career. We said can we replace Mendieta one for one? Can we replace 16 goal involvements in the PSL? The players we thought were at that level were Themba Zwane, Peter Shalulile, Ashley Du Preez was there, Monnapule Saleng and Nduduzo Sibiya," Fourie said at the Business of Football Network gathering.
"Can we afford any of those players? No. So, what do we do? We had to sell Junior and replace him in the aggregate. We said we can't score the same amount of goals that we did with Mendieta, but we can concede less. He was worth around nine-goal difference to us.
"There was a defender on the market, Ismael Toure, worth 9,3 expected goal difference. The upgrade on Toure was the same as Junior Mendieta had. It was difficult to explain to everyone, like we're crazy. The upgrade on the centre-back was so big we had a free shot on the left wing.
"Luckily, we [signed] a winger Anicet Oura, he exceeded our expectations, but he was basically a free hit [not expected to replace Mendieta], we could take a chance and he turned out to be exceptional," Fourie added.
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After finishing third last season, the Cape Winelands outfit have remained competitive this term, in spite of selling Rayners and Van Rooyen, lying fourth in the standings after seven matches.
They also won their first trophy, the Carling Knockout, in December last year.