Looks like we may have missed out on De Jong....

110% this, I trust them at our club, scouts and business men, to be as good as anyone in the game with player valuation, and I also know that they have other, equally good, targets. If the Wally with the Brolly wants to attempt to alleviate the sting of losing Tiote by over charging us for De Jong we will just walk away from the deal, never having paid a penny more than we should for the player.

 

Article in the Tubantia, from 19:01 CET:

'Luuk de Jong wants to leave Twente'

De Jong's agent Louis Laros states that De Jong made up his mind and says the player wants to leave the club. "If the right club bids, he goes. And it doesn't have to be a top of the list footclub. He wants to play at a higher level", according to Laros. Allthough Newcastle and Borussia Monchengladbach are the names that pop up regularly in the media, Laros is keeping his cards to his chest. "There are more then two clubs currently that have Luuk on the list."

Source: http://voetbal.tctubantia.nl/fc-twente/laros-luuk-er-zelf-wel-uit

Translated this into short version of the article. So the agent is not yet giving the green light for Borussia.

 

Also worth mentioning that despite Cove's generalisation about Dutch bartering, Ruiz aside Twente do not normally sell their players for much - Elia only went for £7m. They are shrewd, buying players on the cheap/developing them and selling them on, but they don't exactly sell for Carroll-esque fees. In fact recently they tried a bit of Freddy Shepherd business with Marco Janko.

 

They made a 4 million euro loss on Janko. But don't get caught on the basic price tags. Most of the money is in the clausules and incentives. Luis Suarez for example was sold for 22 million pounds, but add at least 4/5 million to that in clausules. Same happened with the Elia transfer. Initially they got 7 million euro's, but i'd bet a tenner they got another 2 to 3 million in clausules.
And most Dutch clubs add a clausule that they get 5 to 10% of the next transfer fee. Your Cheikh Tiot'e could mean big money for Twente in the future.

 

They tend to make sure they claw some money back after the deal is done.

 

True, but Twente, not saying the Dutch in general though, don't command large initial fees historically. They do tend to make a small profit each window, which you would assume is supported by add ons. My point is that Twente do not have a history of getting big fees up front for players in general.

 

A fair point

 

That is because Twente never was a big club. It almost went bankrupt in 2004. After that they had a drastic reorganization and since then they went up. FC Twente was usually a provincial club, hanging around place 9-10 in the league. It's been only since 2008 that they positioned themselves as a top club in The Netherlands.

 

I love how you still use "clausule" when you're writing in English. Sounds like a mini-clause.
Agent: "Hang on, what's this contract clause?"
Twente rep: "Don't worry, it's only a clausule."
Agent: "Oh, Ok, that's fine then - we'll sign."

 

Somebody's forged my signature, I didn't sign that.

 

My bad, thought it was the same, http://en.bab.la/dictionary/dutch-english/clausule.
Never occured to me that it's different in English. Should've known since you drive on the wrong side of the road aswell

 

Fair play!

 

So have we lost out on him? I'm not fussed either way as there are plenty more fish in the sea. I certainly don't want to start caving in the clubs like Twente who want to play hard ball. If we do that we'll take a massive step backwards as a club. 8m-10m is fair for the lad so if they want more we should let them find another buyer and move on. He still has plenty to prove afterall.

 

Well that is the entire problem with that thinking. Clubs are lined up for De Jong, in particular Benfica and Borussia Mönchengladbach. And if he stays at Twente for one more season you can add 10 more by the end of May next year. De Jong has already proven himself in the Dutch league, and it's not for a reason he was already in the national team when he was 19. He is quality and i have no doubt he will perform in the EPL or Bundesliga. And Twente knows that he's worth more than what NUFC is offering. And they know, next year they will be lining up for him, but they want to sell him this summer because the player might get issues if the club keeps turning down offers.

 

Let benfica or gladbach pay 15 mil for him. We won't pay that and I wouldn't want us too. I don't know how long he will have left on his contract next year but he won't go for 20 mil, no chance.

 

No problem with this thinking at all. There are a lot of good players in the world. I think he's an excellent young player and so do the club clearly. But I see no reason to get involved in a bidding war like the Newcastle of old. That is a poor line of thinking and one we've thankfully moved away from. We have an excellent scouting network which will find us a player of similar quality if it doesn't come off. He is not the only good young striker in the world.

We are clearly in the right ballpark given the other offers being rumoured. We just need to keep negotiating and if it happens it happens, if it doesn't we'll move on and find the another.