I believe you are right. City normally is ruthless and decisive in transfer.
Declan Rice | signs for arsenal
- Thread starter Zoo
- Start date
- Status
It's definitely a flaw in Kroenkes approach. In other businesses starting negotiations by low balling might be good negotiation tactics but in modern football, when everyone knows there are entities like City it's just stupid to keep coming in under West Ham asking price. If the first bid just met the evaluation of 100m plus some addons this could have been wrapped up before City even came in. Could be a big missed opportunity for Edu. It might work out if Edu can land some combo of Caicedo/Zubi/Thuram or end up closing on Rice but paying more than asking price. But losing the identified top target over 10-20m after coming so close to the league title is just bad business. Penny wise and pound stupid.
I think players talk. Yes I think conversations they have are a factor. Probably not decisive but these lads have got a lot of shit spinning around in their heads.
I agree with you. But the tweet below puts things into perspective as far as how you run under the Kroenke's and how City are run. Edu can only do so much.
it is fine. Just go for the 2nd choice in the list. You have to make do with what you have.
Big news. Mount is taking him with him.
No way
Rice is always complimentary of us, and OT, after playing against us.
There’s no way we get involved without being told Rice wants to come here.
I’m trusting Ten Hag over Mount and Rice here. It’s testing me but that’s what I’m doing
kovacic cost 25 million raising to 30 when City win trophies.
He’s a Whm ITK and has been right on most things in the past but we'll see
They’re a huge West Ham ITK
Not sure I buy this grand conspiracy because it sounds like a waste of time for City. West Ham are quite able to negotiate a price without any outside assistance. They've been playing hard ball on Rice for years. It's not like he's never been available, they simply set absurd valuations nobody would meet. They've only relented to the extent they are now more willing to sell, but again at a high valuation. I don't think City's play is here nor there with respect to Rice going cheaply, it's not going to happen.
Sounds like sensible business practice to try and bid up the price of players that look like they’re going to rivals.
To be taken seriously, you have to actually follow through and buy some of them which we don’t usually do in recent years (we go for players nobody else really wants!).
Nothing on his actual twitter account but he has tweeted this.
I disagree. Both in regards to the selling and buying of players there has to be a walk away point. That is where the negotiation department gets their reputation. Currently United are viewed as a soft touch. Will overpay and will undersell, the only way to break the norm is play hardball. Even if it means a small set back or having an unwanted player.
Look at City. Early on they were viewed as an easy touch. Over payed and then sold for pretty low prices, but then we started to hear news about City walking away from signings because the price wasn’t right. Ironically based on at least 2-3 of those we can assume they were right: Sanchez, Fred, Maguire. So maybe those were the right players for the City board to make their “tough” statements with.
Yeah, that's a good point and the unfortunate reality we live in. The problem with dragging feet instead of being decisive can mean more than just missing out on the first target but also the second target, if indeed Edu-Arteta are still really interested in Caicedo, or even the third target. I still think they should have just offered the most they were willing to spend in the first bid (if that was 100m then bid that upfront) and then if rejected quickly move on to the next target since Caicedo wouldn't have cost less they presumably could have gotten that deal done. With the state-run clubs, I think its really important to be decisive and not wait around trying to negotiate over 10m when that might mean missing your top targets entirely.
Disagree. Paying more than you think the player is worth immediately just to improve your chance of landing the player is an insane approach that no club with a real budget can afford to take.
Declan Rice isn't some kind of generational talent, like the Mbappe of defensive midfielders. He's a good player and I hope we get him but like anybody else you need to set a limit and be willing to walk away. Because getting Caicedo for 75m, Zubimendi for 50m, or Lavia for 40m is going to be a better deal in the long run for the club than paying some kind of over the odds 100m plus add ons price for Declan Rice.
I think Arsenal have actually played their cards perfectly fine here. Just because you lose the player in the end doesn't mean you made a mistake, as we saw with the Mudryk deal. Sometimes the biggest possible mistake you can make is getting the player at the wrong price.
I don't think Arsenal trying to negotiate this cost them much really. If they went straight in with a 100m bid, City would have sprung into action earlier too.
Arent they intetested in both players?
Maguire would be a good signing for them I feel and McTominay is a step up from Soucek who was awful last season
Exactly right. Its not like City just woke up and decided on a whim to bid 90m-100m for Declan Rice. They'll have been planning this all along, have let West Ham know from the beginning that they would join the fray once they had clarity on Gundogan, and West Ham would then have started the process with the intention of stringing it out for a while.
The dumbest narrative about transfers is the idea that clubs could just get a player if they act quickly, but not if they dilly-dally. Except in rare circumstances, that is never actually realistic. Transfers tend to roll on until the selling club and the player are both quite confident that they've seen all there is to see in terms of potential offers. And at that point if you have the most compelling offer to the player and a sufficiently high offer to the club you get the player, if not you don't.
At the end of the day, City aren't mugs either. They'll have approached this summer with a very well thought out strategy, they'll have a valuation and a walk away price for Rice, and if they're willing to offer more than Arsenal both to the club and the player then there isn't much Arsenal can do.
But we have been refusing to sell players cheap for years - we don’t take what we can get for them at the stage when they are actually worth something. The reality is we hang onto players far too long. By the time we do sell them they’re worth next to nothing, sometimes after years of barely playing.
Better to get, say, £20m for McT now because his value is going south when we recruit yet another midfielder and he gets even fewer minutes, Scotland stop selecting him, he starts picking up niggles in training and ends up like, who knows, Phil Jones?
It could still work out of course as I mentioned but the danger is there if it's not just a miss on Rice but on Caicedo as well because other clubs bid for him and Edu hasn't even submitted a bid for them. And of course, we won't really know until next season if it makes sense to do it this way. Arteta/Edu really seemed to identify Rice as the key transfer, presumably because he fit in as an 8 or 6 in Arteta's system. That flexibility could offer additional value that getting some of the cheaper targets might not. And the reverse is also true, just because you are willing to lose out on a player over 10m doesn't mean that works out the best for the club in the end either. Sometimes the biggest possible mistake is not getting the player the manager really sees as crucial to moving forward. We'll just have to see how it really pans out.
Or you could live in the real world where it is a fact that Maguire is better than any defender currently at West Ham and McTominay would instantly be their best midfielder if Rice was gone.
WILL City keep Kalvin Phillips just for fun?
We're doing a Zilliacus.
Madness. Get him in!
Well, we’ll have to do a whole lot better than that if we want to have a chance of getting him.
Bottomless money pit helps.
Monitoring, reviewing, pondering, assessing, preparing, analysing…. The United way
Not a great offer
You do realise it’s a bid no?
That’s a reasonable opening offer if true, never going to be accepted but swap Elanga for Mctominay or even add him in and that would surely tempt them.
We are not in this race.
Maybe McT + Maguire + Elanga + 40M would be considered... but let's be honest, it will not happend.
A bid maybe, sounds more like an enquiry and I'd add cobbling to the list of things like monitoring, preparing.
A cobbled enquiry and we also need to work out if Elanga and Maguire want to go there. These proposals often fall flat when the player says no or the club say no to a particular player. Elanga might as well not be there. 40m plus Maguire would be like 80 million and around 20-30 million short of what West Ham want.
When has there ever been a deal where 3 players were traded one way as part of a transfer
, or even two for that matter?- Status