Borussia Dortmund: £100M from Manchester City Wouldn't Replace Aubameyang

To say Borussia Dortmund have had a tumultuous transfer window would be an understatement to say the least, and that speaks volumes given that the summer 2016 window still won't open officially for a few more weeks.

BVB finished second in the Bundesliga with a points haul that would have been enough to win the German league in nearly any other year in history, yet they are hemorrhaging star players.

Mats Hummels and Ilkay Gundogan have already left, while Henrikh Mkhitaryan (whose contract expires next summer) still hasn't been convinced to sign an extension.

There have been some positives, such as the signing of Ousmane Dembele, but BVB have certainly taken a step back, at least in the short term. Their best players of the present keep leaving, replaced by talents who might be world class in several years.

Things went from bad to worse on Tuesday when journalist and transfer expert Gianluca Di Marzio announced on his Twitter account that Manchester City are "close" to signing Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, with talks underway between the player and club. That corroborated a report from David Maddock and Liam Corless in the Mirror that claimed City were prepared to pay £50 million to sign the Gabon international.

The reported fee for Aubameyang is far too low given the player's unique attributes and the fact that he is under contract until 2020. Yet even double that figure would be of little use to Dortmund. There are three main reasons why.

The first is that selling Aubameyang would probably mean that Mkhitaryan leaves Signal Iduna Park as well. The Armenian was BVB's best player of 2015-16 and perhaps the best in the Bundesliga.

Seeing two world-class players leave this summer was probably unnerving to the former Shakhtar Donetsk man, but losing a third who is under a long-term contract would be enough of a signal to Mkhitaryan that it's time to go.

Dortmund will eventually have their day, but not with him, an injured Marco Reus and a large collection of young talents. For a player who's 27 years old and coming off the best season of his career, it just doesn't make sense to commit his long-term future to that kind of environment. He'll be confident heading into next season and needs a club that can match his ambition.

The second factor is that shopping for a replacement will be extortionate. If Aubameyang is sold, all potential sellers will be aware that Dortmund are both sitting on a boatload of cash and desperate for a striker.

It's a great opportunity to make a killing, and if Dortmund were to sign a replacement, the selling club would take a fair portion of the proceeds. The more money Aubameyang is sold for, the more a potential selling club would demand for his replacement.

There are plenty of examples, including Shakhtar selling Mkhitaryan for €27.5 million (per Transfermarkt, a record for Dortmund) after BVB sold Mario Gotze for €37 million. It wasn't a question of whether Mkhitaryan was worth the fee paid; the more relevant factor was whether Dortmund were willing to pay just a bit more than they might have paid otherwise in order to sign a player who might have helped them approach the heights of the last year in which Gotze represented their club.

Jon Super/Associated Press

Similarly, Wolfsburg were made to pay a princely sum of €36 million (per Transfermarkt) for Julian Draxler not long after selling Kevin de Bruyne for more than twice that amount.

Never mind the fact that Draxler had scored just two goals and provided just two assists in all competitions in the season before; he was a player with potential, and Wolfsburg were forced to pay top dollar to take a risk on him. They ended up finishing eighth last season, missing out on all European football and the financial rewards that would have come with a return to the UEFA Champions League.

The third and final factor is that the cash would actually be of little use to Dortmund, who are without debt and haven't the capacity to reinvest the windfall that would come with selling a player like Aubameyang.

There has been plenty of confusion lately as to why Dortmund haven't invested much of the money from Hummels' and Gundogan's sales in big-name players: The highest-profile signings thus far are Dembele (a teenager) and Bayern Munich squad player Sebastian Rode.

BVB have signed three teenagers and just two more experienced players during the transfer window, and rumors linking them to big-name stars are sparse. It might come as a surprise given that Dortmund are set to profit from a return to the Champions League and have fetched a considerable amount of money for Hummels and Gundogan.

Here's the catch—transfer budget isn't a problem for BVB, but the wage bill is. It's not a matter of the money in the coffers, it's the cash flow.

Consider the current scenario: Dortmund signed Aubameyang before he became a star player. And even after his extension last summer, his salary is only €4 million per year (per Bild, in German). That is quadruple his previous wage, but it's still a pittance for a player who scored 39 goals last season.

Now, imagine Dortmund sell Aubameyang for some exorbitant cost, maybe €100 million or more. Imagine they reinvest all that money in a world-class replacement. That replacement will undoubtedly demand triple Aubameyang's current wage—after all, he is a €100 million man.

Dortmund's wage bill has ballooned in recent years as the club have tried to compete with Bayern Munich.

As Deutsche Welle's Stefan Bienkowski recently wrote via Twitter, BVB chief executive Hans-Joachim Watzke noted how Dortmund's wage bill has increased from €38 million in 2011 to likely over €100 million next season.

Still, that wage bill is becoming a greater percentage of revenue, and even if the club could afford a €100 million striker's transfer fee (as they could if Aubameyang fetched that price), they couldn't pay his wages.

The fact of the matter is that Dortmund got a better player in Aubameyang than they paid for in both his initial transfer fee from AS Saint-Etienne (€13 million, per Transfermarkt) and in the wages they've committed to pay him through to the end of his contract in 2020.

Yet there will come a time, sooner or later, that Dortmund start to pay more. Either they'll get Aubameyang to stay with a raise, or they'll replace him with a player who they'll pay more. Maybe not triple the Gabonese striker's wage, but certainly more than he earns now.

Thus, Aubameyang is really irreplaceable, and no price Manchester City could offer would adequately compensate BVB for the player's departure.

It would mean saying "farewell" to Mkhitaryan and completing the absolute gutting of the team's best players of 2015-16, it would mean being extorted by clubs that might sell a replacement, and no fee would solve the payroll issue.

Dortmund ought not to be seduced by City's cash. If they are and do sell Aubameyang, they will be getting the worse end of the deal.

@Mr_Bundesliga