Kid Icarus

N-O is simultaneously one of the most anti-bald and bald-energy corners of the internet.

Since Trafford I have no confidence in us signing anyone. Just gonna go on a ride now and not look into any players at all.

Course he is, that money exists within football and he and other players should be the ones compensated for it rather than agents, clubs, directors etc

He'll be good enough to start very soon I think.

Yeah but the source is...oh it's The Athletic, one of the most reputable sources going.

Surdashan Gopaladesikan Innocent coincidence?

Demanding £7m less than we rejected from Liverpool eh.

Even at the points you're talking about we were 10m apart from Burnley on a fee, a quarter of the total fee. Then a few journos mentioned that we were ready to walk away as we were unwilling to budge and were prioritising other positions. I'm just not having it on this one, sorry Yorkie. It was so clearly an open goal that we either fucked up or decided to walk away from.

What's the literally everything that points to that? Man City are currently negotiating paying less than the £40m buy back fee that Burnley quoted us. By all accounts available we got to £30m and refused to budge. The values are all well and good, but it's yielded barely anything. Elanga, which was also a long drawn out affair, and a series of seeming dead-certs we've failed to make happen for 2 years. I totally get bemoaning PSR, but that in itself isn't a solution and unless it's ever thrown out, we have to either work with it or work around it. Our strategy seems to be to work with it rather than around it and while it yielded some great results initially, since Staveley/Ghodoussi/Ashworth have left, it's been arduous, which would be fine if it still yielded results, but there's now a pattern of failed attempts where previously there weren't.

Because I see no evidence of that being the case, only the opposite. The reason I think we've walked away is for the reason the couple of journalists who hinted that this would happen gave, for the same reason we often seem to - because we've refused to budge on our valuation to the extent that it'll get a deal done and are persisting with this best-of-all-worlds strategy of trying to get a player for every position, that'll also take us to another level, that's also in budget.

I mean that is undeniably racist like

Man City currently trying to negotiate paying less than the buy back fee is a decent suggestion that they wouldn't have paid what we could have. That and they've only now decided to go for him.

Come on man Yorkie. He wants to come here, Man City are currently trying to negotiate paying less than the buy back fee - suggesting they wouldn't have paid the £40m we could have had him for (and potentially invalidating the buy back clause possibly) We've been after him for ages, we obviously see him as a long-term player, and we know we have the money. I think it says a lot when hypotheticals are being used to form an argument for excusing the club, rather than dealing with the reality of the situation we were in and voluntarily decided to walk away from.

This is the one I can't excuse in the slightest like. There was nothing but our own valuation holding us back and we've somehow managed to completely balls it up. Inexcusable.

He was outstanding until his dad was kidnapped. Never been the same player since.

Especially when he's absolutely shite.

Big but subtle difference between priority and a priority. We need a CM, but it doesn't take priority ahead of a striker and CB.

City are completely finished?

Spending the going rate on anyone, or adjusting our strategy to either buy fewer players or go for different targets would suffice.

More

Yeah it is up to them, players going up in value is completely normal. Us going in with the same offer after the season he's had is daft. £40m is the price, pay it or don't.

The valuation is still often affordable. We could have paid what was necessary to buy Trafford and chose not to. Now he's off to Man City to play for possibly the next 10 years over a £10m difference in valuation. We know what the environment we're working in is.

There's a clear pattern of us not meeting club's valuations and losing out regardless of other clubs swooping in. You can argue over lowballing, but if you're consistently making bids well below the selling club's valuation and they keep getting rejected, the buying club is the common denominator, so the choice then has to be pay more for fewer players or buy lower quality players. We work around it or we don't. Complaining about the environment is legitimate but it isn't a solution.