I think a useful exercise, from reading this forum, may be to imagine what we would say if City, Spurs or Liverpool were closing in on a player. There is certainly risk attached to every signing, but I think United fans on Redcafe find it far easier to see the positives and benefits of a potential rival signing, whereas any negative is accentuated if it’s us.
I won’t pretend that I had been posting we should sign Lemina for ages or anything, but I’m aware of the positives he has, so if we have decided we can get those things out of him regularly, then it certainly excites me. He’s very talented - to a ‘much better than Southampton’ level. Sometimes these players do ‘find their level’ at Southampton of course, perhaps due to lack of application or just a sequence of events breaking like that. Other times, it’s not the case. I remember the caf debate to sign Mousa Dembele, also for £15m, when he was at Fulham. Many were in favour, but we also had many of the same dismissing as we have with Lemina. Same with Wijnaldum at Newcastle.
Lemina at £15m or whatever makes the gamble on his significant talent being realised far more worth it. It’s maybe like buying a cat-C 2018 Benz for £10k. The price immediately makes the potential upside the prominent factor. If the same car was £50k, I appreciate the risk would be greater and the focus would be more on what could go right. The fact is, the price makes failure or success any more or less likely to happen. Just determines the worthiness of it. Lemina is like said Mercedes for me, and at the quoted prices, there is still a very real and tangible reason for believing we could end up getting the value of a £50k Benz for £10k here I think.