If it was £150 million then I would take it. If we could get Bernardo silva as part of the deal and then sign one of Martínez or Vlahovic and then with the leftover of say £40-50m another top class centre back then it wouldn’t be so bad. No point in keeping a player who doesn’t want to be here. I get your point though!!
I think we should test the waters with Laporte and Silva. If we could get both to agree to come it would plug 2 massive gaps in the squad. If Levy could squeeze £80 mill that gives us more than enough for Martinez and if we can offload Aurier and Sissoko we can get Vlahovic or another striker.
Thumbs up from me. Lefty too IIRC which we don’t have at CB. No idea how reliable the journo is though.
the issue with swap deals is that it’s always hard to get all parties to agree. Silva and/or Laporte wouldn’t come to us. we’re better off squeezing every last penny out of them and going for our own targets.
€150m is roughly £125m ... seriously? Why are we not publicly slaughtering them. Something along the lines of ... "Kane is only leaving for trophies so tell him to take a pay cut and forgo a signing on fee so you can afford the fee...either that or stfu you total spoons. "
WTF has happened in the financial markets today that has caused one quid to now be worth 0.94 Euros ??
An interesting angle on things although I would argue that our lack of a Plan B is less to do with being so reliant on Kane and more to do with a lack of real depth to the squad. All too often the real gap between us and our rivals (aside from getting exponentially less out of officials than them) lay not in the respective first teams but in who sat on the bench. We made a concerted effort to solve the issue when we signed Janssen but he was thrown in the deep end too early and his confidence was crushed as a result. Then we paid a heavy price in 2019/20 when we lost Kane and Son to injury. Had it not been for Covid i honestly think we would have finished 14th that season. I'd say our closest thing to a functioning Plan b was Llorente. He was instrumental after coming on in both the City and Ajax games in the CL and offered a genuinely different skill set that anyone else we had on the pitch, which is precisely what got opposition sides panicking and reorganising. If only Defoe or Crouch were 5 years younger. Having them on the bench with Kane first choice in 16/17 and we would have won the league. Of that i am certain.
I rate Cancelo but I think he's harder to convince as he is a regular. Laporte and Silva would be easier to convince because they get less game time.
The low intelligence of those players would be hilarious. Suppose Kane is the final piece to Citeh winning the CL. If you go in a swap to Spurs, then your chances of a CL medal drop (to zero this season) . If you stay, well you may not win the CL but likely you'll get some more domestic winners medals. WTF would you want to leave for Spurs or similar unless Pep the false messiah has told you your game time this season will be countable on your fingers. Levy just needs to set the ball-busting transfer fee that Citeh must pay, and before pay-up time mercilessly WUM them with cash + player deal demands that Citeh could not force said players to accept.
If Grealish is worth £100million (and Villa would have demanded more if not for his release clause) then how can City expect to sign Kane for less than £200million
Couple sources (including Gianluigi Longari who was one of the first on the scene about Romero) are saying we’ve began talks with Fiorentina for Vlahovic, Atleti also interested.
I think Martinez was/is the priority, with or without Kane. Vlahovic was the next option if we lost Kane. Seeing as it looks inevitable he’s going to city, I expect this news of stepping up interest in Vlahovic is also part of a plan to make Inter **** their pants that we’ll “look elsewhere”, and lower their price for Martinez. When in reality, we actually want both players anyway!
Anyone know how we stand on Overseas/Home Grown (PL rules). Seems like we were near the limit and only buy overseas players. 17 allowed I think - must be close to that now.
Torres* replacing Sanchez Tomiyasu replacing Aurier * - until tomorrow, when a different CB is prominently linked
Surely by telling certain players (Sissoko, Aurier) that they won’t be registered, that would make them even more eager to leave
