Saints transfer rumour thread

What's his name? McMenemy?

 

should we not have signed a decent centre back by now given that fonte got injured and we prob have our biggest game of this month this weekend and as it stand we will be a severley weakened team.

 

We seem to be sniffing around quite a few players, according to rumours, so I'm sure we'll get a bite. We aim high so must expect more knock backs.

 

By the beard of zeus transfers take longer then you think, unless you just throw money at it.

 

"Severley wekeaned team"? How do you work that out with only 2 key players out?

Yes it's weakened, but not exactly severe is it?

 

Yes but people will start getting tetchy and twitchy. Would calm us (me!) down if we just signed up one now!

 

For the sake of a couple of million pounds, I'd rather get our signings in now with time to settle. If we haggle till 31st jan they wont settle till mid feb and 6 games would have passed.

 

I don't agree - a "couple of million pounds" isn't throwaway money! Let's play the rumour game and assume our bid for Astori is £8m and they want £12m (based on nothing more than red top reports). Would you rather we paid the £12m now, £4m more than we want, just so he's in earlier? That's four Lamberts. Or a Ramirez for every three deals we do. No, it's daft to treat a "couple of million" as meaningless.

 

Lets pay £50m for Astori, just to get him in time for the Villa game

 

And offer him 400k a day wages.

 

With a relegation release clause of £1.

 

A couple being £2 million, which i think we could budget considering the rewards of staying up

 

Double his wages after 10 international appearances

 

I'm sure Cortese could budget for a couple of million pounds if it would guarantee staying up, but there is no such guarantee. Laying out money you can't afford and then going down anyway wouldn't make sense. This is all a balancing act.

 

Indeed, imagine Liverpool bid £9m, will we just say "ah well off you go then"? No, we will bid £10m! If you have to pay a little more to get the right player then it's completely worth it.

 

Anyone know how long he has left on his contract. If its fairly long we should pay the extra few million now as its likely they wont sell at all in january unless they get what they want. Would be better for them to wait til summer then sell him for the same price then but having got an extra half a season out of him.

 

Could be worth it if we win the match and end up staying up by a single point...

 

Yet they haven't atm, Cortese is trying to get him for a cheaper price and fair play to him doing so. It's all about haggling, players are like cars you don't pay the full price without trying to haggle unless you're a mug.

 

I think we can rely on NC to get the best deal possible. It just takes so long!

 

Imagine you are Cagliari.

On January 6th Saints offer you 8 million pounds. Then four days later, Saints offer you 10 million pounds. Why would you agree to that instead of waiting another four days to see if Saints might up their offer yet again? If Cortese is going to bid against himself, Cagliari will let him do it all transfer window long. Saints will end up paying much more for the player and STILL not get him in any earlier.

If Saints want to get Astori earlier, they need to gain leverage not sweeten the deal. If Cagliari believe that Saints might buy another CB and they will lose that deal then they might sell earlier. Simply offering more money does nothing unless they make an offer so ridiculous that Cagliari can't refuse. Which would be a lot more than 2 million pounds extra.

It looks like some teams are coming in for Radja Nainggolan now. I don't know if Cagliari will still need to sell Astori if they sell Nainggolan. Or at least they may be more hesitant if only because the fans would be pretty unhappy if they sold their two best players.