So ETH thinks having a player around who doesn’t want to be there is good for Man Utd?
Is Baldrick his assistant?
I get your point but its risk mitigation from ETH/Negotiation team.
Negotiations are entirely different when you have leverage.
For example, say you have a buyer and a seller, and assume you're the buyer. The seller's price would be dictated by how much his asset would fetch from the market (in this case, no one else other than the buyer is interested), whereas the buyer's value for the asset would be dictated by what other options he/she has.
Now translate that to the footballing situation we have. We have a keeper (DDG who is not good enough but can do a job), Henderson (not tested thoroughly but looks like he is not good enough for the level we want to be), and a goalkeeper we want to buy (ex: Costa).
Now say we let DDG go and sell Henderson to Forest. Then we walk into Porto's offices and ask the price of Costa. That price will skyrocket compared to what they would want now.
Now imagine the same scenario where we feed the media that Henderson might get a shot at Nb 1 if DDG leaves, or feed the media that DDG might sign a new short term contract, and then go to negotiate with Porto. We'd get a far more reasonable price for Costa, because if Porto feck around with the asking price, we'd turn our backs and say "fine, we'll work with DDG/Henderson for a reason then look for other options". Keep in mind Porto reportedly need to sell in order to buy.
