Independent Leyton Orient Forum

Bandy Legs wrote: Tue Jun 30, 2026 10:58 am

Top of the JES wrote: Tue Jun 30, 2026 10:42 am

Hoover Attack wrote: Tue Jun 30, 2026 8:39 am If a bid of £3-4m came in, we’d snap their hand off.

Dom has at least made it to the start of pre season training. Didn’t Ethan last year? I know he was gone in the first week, before the game v Brentwood (as was Brown).

Not sure we would take that. There will be interest in him and while the £15 million price tag that Wellen's mentioned was a bit tongue in cheek we can afford to wait. He's got 2 years and another as an option on his contract, he's not unhappy at the club and is very level headed. It may be a lot closer to the deadline but I think we will get £5 million plus which would be a good fee for a player with one good season in League one behind him.

Exactly
Why the hell would we take anything less than £6 million
And even that would be less than most of us want

Goal scorers are in short demand. If the likes of West Ham enter the race and more than 2 other clubs join the bidding then the sky is the limit. I agree £6 million is the start off point.As we don’t need to sell we can wait for the right bid to come in

moonwalk19 wrote: Fri Jul 03, 2026 8:10 am

Bandy Legs wrote: Tue Jun 30, 2026 10:58 am

Top of the JES wrote: Tue Jun 30, 2026 10:42 am

Not sure we would take that. There will be interest in him and while the £15 million price tag that Wellen's mentioned was a bit tongue in cheek we can afford to wait. He's got 2 years and another as an option on his contract, he's not unhappy at the club and is very level headed. It may be a lot closer to the deadline but I think we will get £5 million plus which would be a good fee for a player with one good season in League one behind him.

Exactly
Why the hell would we take anything less than £6 million
And even that would be less than most of us want

Goal scorers are in short demand. If the likes of West Ham enter the race and more than 2 other clubs join the bidding then the sky is the limit. I agree £6 million is the start off point.As we don’t need to sell we can wait for the right bid to come in

Agreed
£7m should be our absolute baseline

If they even entertain anything less than £8m I would be incredibly pissed off. None of this “buy now” pay in 10 years bullshit either.
We hold all the cards in this scenario and I think whatever happens with this, it will show if this club has any genuine ambition.

Honestly think we should be saying he's not for sale this summer, whatever the offer.

Let him go next summer when he's been L1 top scorer for 2 seasons in a row and we're in the Championship and his price will be even higher. He would of course also be welcome to stay if he wishes.

It makes sense.

Hoover Attack wrote: Fri Jul 03, 2026 11:00 am Honestly think we should be saying he's not for sale this summer, whatever the offer.

Let him go next summer when he's been L1 top scorer for 2 seasons in a row and we're in the Championship and his price will be even higher. He would of course also be welcome to stay if he wishes.

Agree, or even Jan. but the reality is it’s all well and good saying he’s not for sale this summer if someone comes in with £10m. We aren’t turning that sort of money down and we then look like clowns

If the season is going well, January is off the table.

If things don't pan out as we all hope then fair enough, might be able to get a desperate Championship club to pay over the odds. But I don't think that's really fair on Dom, he deserves to go to the right club, not just whoever will stump up the most money.

He's just turned 21. He's a level headed kid. I'm sure he'll realise how much he developed here last season playing regular football and that another, improved season of that, playing 50 games and scoring God knows how many goals with some actual proper creative players behind him would be better right now than sitting on Bristol City or West Hams bench.

Oh, and give him a pay rise.

He should be the highest earning player at the club, no question.

Hoover Attack wrote: Fri Jul 03, 2026 11:38 am Oh, and give him a pay rise.

He should be the highest earning player at the club, no question.

Absolutely agree with this I think with the team we are building he could be the difference of promotion or not. If we are serious about being in the championship give him a pay rise and see what offers we get when he's a championship player with us

Who the F#ck authorised this story ?
Hope it wasnt anyone from Leyton Orient !
5 million ?
F#ck off !
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/ar ... 24dz58d90o

What ever the price is you can bet your life it will be undisclosed.

It seems Bristol City fans are slowly
moving on from Dom
https://www.otib.co.uk/topic/234332-rum ... s/page/13/

3 million , and 5k of wetherspoons vouchers should do it

The club keeps saying, we do not have to sell Ballard.
I hope we don’t have unless a £10m+ bid comes in from Hammers and Ballard wants to go.
£10m (less Southampton cash) would be be hard for club to turn down.
Personally I really hope he stays and we get Dom & Aaron fit and ready to terrorise L1 defences.
We also need another No.9 to help up front, Dom can’t play every min of every game all season again.

I hope we use the Gailbraith money and whatever the transfer budget is for this season to bring in the players we need.

2CB, 2CM, 1Winger, 1Striker
And a few good loans.

He won't go for less than £20m + appearances + sell-on.

(Well, everyone else is being stupid so I thought I'd join in.)

Ofcourse the club are going to say we don’t want to sell Ballard
It’s called a negotiating tactic!
He will go when we get the right price

Yes, in effect he's already gone.

Interesting that in the Southampton local paper article Bandy Legs helpfully retrieved above it says:

"Saints were offered the chance to re-sign Ballard in January this year, but opted against pursuing their academy graduate months after his exit."

CharlieO wrote: Sun Jul 05, 2026 2:42 pm Interesting that in the Southampton local paper article Bandy Legs helpfully retrieved above it says:

"Saints were offered the chance to re-sign Ballard in January this year, but opted against pursuing their academy graduate months after his exit."

Odd if true. Seems ridiculous though

Rich Tea Wellin wrote: Sun Jul 05, 2026 3:02 pm

CharlieO wrote: Sun Jul 05, 2026 2:42 pm Interesting that in the Southampton local paper article Bandy Legs helpfully retrieved above it says:

"Saints were offered the chance to re-sign Ballard in January this year, but opted against pursuing their academy graduate months after his exit."

Odd if true. Seems ridiculous though

Nah, I definitely found it.
Nothing odd at all

I reckon the club will deal around £5-6 million with add-ons and sell-on clause to get it done and move on with the next signings

As others have said, we hold all the cards. It sounds like Dom is a decent lad who'll carry on working hard no matter how disappointed he is. He's under contract for the foreseeable. We're not in desperate need of cash ASAP. We're ambitious and want promotion. Why put a figure on him before you know what clubs are willing to go to? If we tell clubs we want £4m then that's what we'll eventually get. Let the interested clubs drive the price up. The only slight caveat I'd have is that the longer it goes on the less time we have to do anything with the money. £8m is great but if you've only got a week to spend it then...not so much, especially when everyone and their dog knows you've got £8m burning a hole in your pocket. I would argue that once we get within sight of the start of the season we should be knocking back any bid that isn't ridiculous, because it could bugger up our season.

So I'd insist we want to keep him but have a rough cut off date, say two weeks before the season starts, after which we don't entertain offers. If anyone makes a bid that knocks our socks off before that then we wish Dom well and move quickly to get in a replacement.

Crunchie wrote: Sun Jul 19, 2026 6:03 pm So I'd insist we want to keep him but have a rough cut off date, say two weeks before the season starts, after which we don't entertain offers. If anyone makes a bid that knocks our socks off before that then we wish Dom well and move quickly to get in a replacement.

Yup very good points made in this post. We all saw what the Isak situation did to Newcastle's season. A week or two of trying to push a bidding war now the World Cup is done would be beneficial to the bottom line but we need time to get Ballard replacement + another to compete / cover up top