Lebowski
Full Member
It was reported by one source and not a particularly reliable one, the local beat writers for Forest like Bailey said there was nothing in it and considering they were in the middle of negotiating for Sangare who they have today signed I think it was total bs. The valuation mentioned in almost all reporting this summer has been around 30M Euro and guess what, we are paying a 10M Euro fee with an option to buy for a further 20M Euro. The structure might be odd but it is what it is and either way we are getting a player at a position of need for a relatively low fee. The moaning and negativity in this thread is ridiculous.
Fair point - I have no idea how reliable the £17m figure was. It could be that Fiorentina were accepting lower bids as the deadline approached knowing the player was essentially on strike and the prospect of losing him for nothing in 12 months drew on, but it's at least equally likely that it was bullshit and they were always looking for £25-30m like you say.
Either way, if he's a midfielder that we are confident on, surely it'd have been preferable to buy him for £25-30 million in June and have him training with Ten Haag all summer rather than have a poor start to the season and end up paying £10m for a loan on deadline day?