It's the mail, FFS.
Wesley Sneijder
- Thread starter RedLars
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It's the mail, FFS.
If VDS was to stay on another season then sure, I can see us writing that £25million cheque for Sneijder. But what I'm trying to get at is we're not going to buy a £20mil goalkeeper AND a £25mill outfield player all in the same transfer window.
Since VDS's retirement does seem imminent and unpreventable, you can be sure we're going to sign a keeper, so that doesn't bode well for any aspirations of signing another £20mill+ player to go with him.
You will buy a keeper and try to get a midfielder - whether you can get one for less than £30M bidding against Chelsea and Man City remains to be seen.
Why does it matter when we sign them, though? If we need to spend that much on a midfielder at some point, and if the time looks right to get one of Sneijder's quality for that kind of price, would it really put us off? I don't think we'll sign him, I just don't think it'd be for that reason.
It's as fairy tale as it gets. Inter are not going to let him go for £25m, in fact I doubt they will let him go at all but if they do they will have Chelsea and City at their door step the very same moment - both ready to offer much more than we can possibly afford. He's an extremely unrealistic target.
I think we won't be buying a midfielder. Ferguson clearly has a lot of trust in the current lot, and Cleverley who can play there is coming back from loan. We will most likely get a goalkeeper if we can find one cheaper than £15m and maybe a bargain signing like Young who enters last year of his contract. If we wanted a midfielder, we would have signed him by now I think, last year or the Summer before.
If we do, it'll be a Hernandez-like signing, someone no one would be expecting and someone who wouldn't like trigger a bidding war between us and City/Chavski, which unfortunately Sneijder probably would.
I think Defour could be this transfer. Obviously he has a profile whereas Hernandez didn't but we could snap him up for around £10m and he'd fit the price/age/position/potential that seems to add up to Ferguson's "value".
I don't want to open up a new can of worms regarding our owners, but something tells me we're not going to be able to spend an upwards of £50million in a single transfer window.
I'm not sure about that. Fletcher was not supposed to disappear, Anderson was keyed in to step up and Gibson was a work in progress plus Hargreaves could come back from the dead and Scholes might go on for a few more years. All those options look much more problematic a year on.
Absolutely, unexpected doesn't necessarily mean an unknown profile. I suppose the Michael Owen signing would be a similar story to relate to.
The only 'high-profile' signing we're likely to make is a keeper IMO.
Just can't really see us committing that much to a keeper and leaving the midfield to chance myself, and we've spent more than 50m just a few seasons ago. But, ho hum, we'll see I guess.
I think Scholes will extend his current deal, Hargreaves might get an extension as well, and we will count on Fletcher retaining his form and Anderson replicating the kind of performances he has put in during the early stages of this season. Carrick doesn't worry me that much as he has shown glimpses of his top form lately and if he doesn't disappear completely after his City mistake he will come good. Gibson is reliable enough to play ten or fifteen league games a season.
If we sign a midfielder, it will be someone cheap as RedKaos has said. I cannot see us spending more than £20m net in the Summer and goalkeeper will eat into a large chunk of that money, though we are likely to receive £5m for Kuszczak if he goes.
Well it all depends on what SAF feels confident with.
He's already publicly admitted that he made a mistake in not signing an established keeper after Schmikes left, which makes me inclined to believe he'll do all he can to bring over a world class keeper in the summer when VDS retires.
On the other hand he seems to be relatively confident with the midfield for the most part though, supposedly he likes what he's seen from the likes of Cleverley, and him continuing to start Gibson in some games suggests he hasn't entirely given up on him either. Like Pexbo said, if we make a sign a midfielder or two (which I'm not objecting to believing), then it'll be an unexpected name out of the blue.
When's the last time we spent £50million in the summer btw?
Round about the time of your joining the forum, was certainly around that number anyway. Market's grown as well even since then.
Edit -
Pretty sure Tevez came with a not-insignificant loan fee too.
Right, but that was a total of 4 signings, neither of which were particularly 'high-profile' names. In fact I think the only competition we had was from Spurs - for Nani, which they more or less opted out of when they signed Bale.
What does it matter how big the names were? The subject is price. You can argue that City can come in and price Sneijder out of our reach - fine. But that wasn't my argument.
Even taking price as the sole factor - each of those signings averaged around £12million each, and it helped that there was practically zero competition too. They would also each probably be determined as 'good value' even today.
And for the record even if we do try and sign Sneijder this summer, I don't think we'll ever get him for around £25million, since you can bet your buck that City will swoop in even if its just to deny us grabbing him.
I'm confused, I thought we were talking about it being impossible for us to spend over £50m? Sneijder at £25m is great value. I don't think we'd get him for that price either, but that was never my point.
Signing the key player of the team that won the treble last season kind of is fairytale stuff. Thats not to say its impossible but the vast majority of the time its other clubs who do that kind of business. It would be the first time we ever did that and we havent done anything even remotely similar in god knows how many years
I was saying it would impossible for us to spend over £50million on two players.
Ahh yes, because Hamilton, Button, Schumacher 'who all work for British owned an operated teams', spend less then 90 days a year in England
But if thats an issue, explain to me why one of the toure's is on considerably less tax then for example say Rooney?
Ahh yes, because Hamilton, Button, Schumacher 'who all work for British owned an operated teams', spend less then 90 days a year in England
But if thats an issue, explain to me why one of the toure's is on considerably less tax then for example say Rooney?
Err, they do spend 90 days or less in England per year.
Where have you pulled that Toure and Rooney nonsense from?
It was a term floating around at the Rooney debacle that Toure was only having to pay 30% tax compared to Full english citizens like Rooney who were paying 90%
90%? We're going back to the 1970s under Labour now.
Citizenship has no relation to the tax you pay, residency status does.
F1 drivers can become non resident fairly easy, footballers have no chance. They can, however, own shares in non resident companies to which payments are made instead of to them, as well as be beneficiaries to employer benefit trusts and other such tricks to reduce the tax they pay. I'd love to catch a look at the fine print on a top players contract to see exactly what they're doing, but have it on very good authority that they pay very little (as a %) in taxes compares to the norm.
F1 drivers can become non resident fairly easy, footballers have no chance. They can, however, own shares in non resident companies to which payments are made instead of to them, as well as be beneficiaries to employer benefit trusts and other such tricks to reduce the tax they pay. I'd love to catch a look at the fine print on a top players contract to see exactly what they're doing, but have it on very good authority that they pay very little (as a %) in taxes compares to the norm.
Of course it isn't impossible. We're perfectly capable of spending over £50m on two players. It's the combination of large transfer fees and huge salaries that we'll be avoiding. Fergie and Gill have both come out and explained this but people carry on regardless with their Sneijder fantasies.
So we'll never sign another midfielder?
Each year our midfield gets weaker as Giggs and Scholes get older. Each year we're more, not less likely, to sign a new midfielder
So basically what you're saying is that we're capable of signing two players for £50million providing we don't offer them paying contracts?
No, I'm saying we're capable of signing two players for £50m providing they don't also demand huge contracts. And by ''huge'' I'm talking about 150k-200k+.
Take Porto's forward Hulk as an example. A player that Porto will most likely demand a transfer fee for in the region of £25m-£30m. The same player however will not demand a salary of 150k-200k per week because he'll be earning (relative) buttons at Porto and so will be more than happy to move to a bigger club and see his salary doubled/tripled to c. 80k-90k per week.
There's no way they're paying 50% tax. Arsenal had a scheme a few years back that saw players keeping over 90% gross. It got blocked but there are 14,000 declared avoidance/evasion schemes and probably at least double that if you include the undeclared -so they're off doing something else.
I think the rumour was that City arranged his salary to give him a net £180K (some of the journos interpreted this in different ways to arrive at a gross salary).
That would be the case for all the top European players though and so United, like Arsenal, would still be left with the problem of matching what the likes of Inter pay their star players. The pound's depreciation in value against the euro has really hurt us in that respect.
I think we will sign a midfielder a season after Scholes retires.
It might be irrelevant, but PIG was signed in 2006 with Carrick. Tevez is the name missing there, as someone pointed out.
I disgree. I think Fergie probably could raise another 20mil through the sales of Gibson, Macheda, Diouf and a few other reserve players.
Sneijder is a quality player, I just get this feeling he might struggle to adapt to the PL and turn out to be an expensive flop. Not sure quite why, but I had the same feeling with shevchenko
What exactly is the something that tells you this?
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