Kid Icarus

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.

Us meeting a valuation and then another club sweeping in is hypothetical because we don't meet the selling club's valuation in the first place. We don't even necessarily need to look elsewhere either I think, we could pay what's needed and sign fewer high quality players in one window, prioritise one or two and maybe pay more, then get another one or two in another window. At the minute we seem to be trying to get everyone cheaper and ending up losing out.

Staveley was here when we were signing players after the 4th finish too. Whether it's Staveley, Ghodoussi, or Ashworth it's definitely fallen off a cliff in the last year.

We had money after 30th June last year and have plenty this summer too tbf.

Whether they do or not is another matter. Even getting to that point in the first place is the problem we seem to have with nigh on every transfer. Expensive taste but always at a discount.

Yeah, first refusal, but it still requires us to agree a fee with Burnley, which we failed to do.

You're at the point of inventing hypotheticals though. The reality is that we don't meet club's valuations in the first place, seemingly in the hope that it'll get closer to the transfer deadline and the price will come down. The decision to do that has nothing to do with any other clubs. We could have had Trafford tied up, bit the bullet on the fee and cut our cloth accordingly in order to get 4 signings instead of 5, or a cheaper player elsewhere. Instead we stick to this strategy that leaves us holding our dicks and with no alternatives. It doesn't work.

It needs looking at but this one is our doing. We could have paid the price long ago and haven't.

Yeah, that's undoubtedly the moment things stopped functioning properly in the transfer market.

Our idea of a fair price and club value aren't necessarily the same though. And our value is nigh on always way lower than club value. If Burnley have a price and we have the money to pay it it's our decision whether we pay it or not. If the decision is that we won't pay it because we need 5 players (for example) but the reality is that other clubs come in and pay the price leaving us with 0 players never mind 5, 4, 3, 2, or 1 then that's a problem with the transfer policy. By all accounts Trafford was desperate to come here and we've let him go because we won't pay the extra 5-10m (that we have and more) for a player who'd likely be here for 10 years. It's insanity.

I don't necessarily disagree on this one, but now do James Trafford...

How many pundits are there like?

Wtf are we doing man How many times are we going to stubbornly stick to our valuations and watch players we've been after for years go to other clubs? It's becoming farcical now.

Same reason every player thread is like this until it's over, because it isn't over until it's offically over. The thread will die organically if/when that happens, it always does.