All the article i see is that your offer was 45m EUROs which is approximately 40m pounds. That 7m difference before we even talk about the extra 4.2m of add ons (discounting all of the 16.8m you are saying wont be achieved). That 11m difference between yours and levy. I don't care if sporting mugged themselves off but by taking United offer and not yours they certainly got mugged off less.
People are complaining because for apparantly a cool 51m (on our calculation above), you could have had a very classy looking midfielder.
Instead of saying how he is not needed or that you don't have the 51m you keep insisting that sporting mugged themselves off, United paid less than the release clause and deflecting from the fact you wanted him but didn't think he was worth 51m
No, people are complaining because that's all they are interested in doing
Also, allow me to point out the obvious flaw you continue to make: there was no offer from Man Utd last summer to compare to ours, and this is what the whiners/complainers fail to comprehend - they can't argue that we tried signing Fernandes on the cheap only to be gazumped by a slightly larger offer, because
a.) At which point did offering over £40m for a player constitute as "cheap"?
b.) There was no other offer, and Sporting mugged themselves believing there would be one
Also, more importantly, there's a whole hell of a lot of context - the Kryptonite of the Lunatic Fringe and their badly-written fiction - that they ignore when it comes to Fernandes: Poch's preferred system, both in pre-season and at the start of the season, was a 4312 formation (otherwise known in these parts as THAT BASTARD DIAMOND) but the point is that Fernandes wouldn't have played either in the 3 and not in the 1 either: he'd have played in a front 2 alongside Harry Kane
That's not guesswork on my part, you just have to look at how the team was set up in this period
Base of the midfield: Winks, Dier, Wanyama, Skipp
Centre midfield: Ndombele, Sissoko, Winks, Dele
Tip of midfield: Eriksen, Lo Celso, Dele, Lamela, Ndombele
Second striker: Son, Lucas, Lamela, Dele
Main striker: Kane, Son
Not to put too fine a point of it, Fernandes would have played in the second striker role alongside either Kane or Son, essentially in a similar role to what van der Vaart played when he was with us - and there's a reason this needs to be mentioned, which can be summed up in two words: Paulo Dybala
That's the one piece of the jigsaw that those howling about Fernandes every time he scratches his balls really don't want people to mention: once it was obvious that Sporting were only interested in playing silly buggers, we moved on to another target and made contact with Juve about signing Dybala, and while Sporting only wanted to waste our time Juve were far more accomodating, with Dybala flying in for a medical (which Fernandes never did) and, when it became clear image rights were holding up the deal, Juve attempted to help us in tidying them up before the deadline
That's the key difference: we made a bid for Dybala and Juve went to great lengths to try and make it happen, even though ultimately it failed due to there not being enough time to get it sorted (see also: our bid for Joao Moutinho, which was scuppered by third party bullshit, yet the Lunatic Fringe continue to claim that Levy lowballed Porto which has been debunked by numerous people, including Moutinho himself) yet we bid for Fernandes and Sporting did nothing but stall as they waited for a bid that never came
That's the reason the whiners and the complainers and whining and complaining: because they want people to forget we ever bid for Dybala when it was clear Sporting were taking the piss, that means they can pretend it never happened - and, as has been made abundantly clear with Spurlock's repeated claims that I "bullied" D.G.C off this site when in actual fact the mods banned him for being a colossal toolbag who'd harass posters via PM, they really do have a habit of clinging to Narratives rather than engaging with reality...
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