oldtype

If Howe had gotten a hold of 24 year old Bramble I’d feel pretty good about him.

Very fast, very strong, tall. Pretty much maxed out physical attributes for a CB.

It’s true that there are many variables involved in selling a player, but all of that is ultimately factored into the asking price. And having to pay the third largest transfer fee in the history of the world qualifies as “absolute hell” in my book. (Although I don’t really care about the optics or the buying club at all).

Why, we’re allowed to use the money to strengthen in positions other than striker.

If Wissa can be even just 70% of Isak, is it that hard to imagine that him and another signing could contribute more to the team overall than Isak alone would?

I said this a few posts ago, but if the players we buy with the money improve us more than Isak strengthens Liverpool, then we’re not actually strengthening a domestic rival.

It’s fine and natural if fans feel that way. But if the people making financial decisions at the club do, then they should be sacked.

shut up Kanji it’s 5:30pm here and people are wrong on the internet.

“We don’t want to sell to domestic rivals” is just wholesale emotional nonsense. Fine, quote them an inflated fee, but if your domestic rival is willing to pay it, why on earth would you stop them from making that mistake.

It seems that you just don’t accept the premise that we could buy a collection of players for 150m that would be more valuable to us than Isak alone, in which case I can’t really argue.

if the assumption is that we are so incompetently run that we will never buy good players again then this all goes out the window and we might as well fold the club.

I’m repeating myself, but why would we want to deter them if they’re meeting or exceeding our asking price. We want to induce them to do that, if anything.

I couldn’t care in the slightest about selling domestically or abroad. Even assuming for argument’s sake that we were on the same level as Liverpool, the chances of the two of us being in a title race and Aleksander Isak being the exact margin between them winning and us finishing second is so incredibly low that it’s not worth thinking about. And in any case, as long as we are getting the right fee, the players we bring in will improve us more than Isak improves them.

Is Man United food? Liverpool? Barcelona? Chelsea? All have sold their best players at one time or another when their asking price was met.

As the selling club, I think it’s safe to assume that the fee that we are demanding as or opening negotiating position (150m) is what people at the club deem to be an inflated fee. Again, its only the third highest fee in history. I absolutely do not want our club to be run by people who know that 150m would be a great deal for us but hold out for more because Liverpool hurt our feelings or whatever. We have no margin for error, we need to be cold hearted killers in the transfer market.

Respect your opinion as well, but I disagree and I would never want the decision makers at the club to operate that way.

It’s absolutely emotional behavior to be refuse to sell a player at an inflated fee that you should accept just so you can “look tough” or whatever. Every club sells their best players when they can get a price they are satisfied with. There is absolutely nothing small time about that. Man United did not become a tin-pot club when they sold Ronaldo to Real, nor did Barcelona become one when they sold Neymar to PSG.

if we don’t get 150m (or something close) then I agree we shouldn’t sell.

They’re not our rival next season and in any case, we can use the money to improve us more than Isak would improve them. Would be utter malpractice not to accept an offer close to 150m just because we’re angry they “tapped him up.” Emotional decision making like that is exactly why fans should not be in charge of clubs

Where we disagree is the idea that 150m is somehow “below market” for anyone other than prime Ronaldo or Messi. It would be the third highest transfer fee in the history of world football. If they want to pay that, have at it.

All of this of course assumes that we have a competent transfer team to replace him which we may not have at the moment But 150m is enough money that I’d be tempted to accept even if the striker replacement isn’t 100% the exact player we want.

Again, why do we care as long as we’re “emboldening” them to pay the exact amount of money that we demand.

Why do we care that clubs are buying our best players if they are capitulating and paying the price that we demand. That just allows us to re-invest and improve. I've said this before, but a 150m player is typically not three times better than three 50m players. Once you get to this level of ridiculously high fee, I always want to be on the side that's getting the money.

Getting Liverpool to bite on the 150m is the best case outcome here and Eddie is smart enough to know it.

It looks like we refuse to give Romano any information and that’s why he won’t go out of his way to write anything positive about us.