Toby signs for Spurs - official.

Well it's not exactly a straight forward transfer is it. It's just a mess.

 

Hopefully Ron

Well then I won't be the only one to think that we've mugged ourselves off.
Especially if we sign an alternative centre back for more than £7m

 

How have we mugged ourselves off?

 

I don't think we have. Why would we pay £5-6 million more now, even though he is worth it, when we think a legally binding agreement has been broken and the player and Koeman himself has said that he wants to remain at Saints? Info leaked to the press have said that Saints will more than match Tottenham's offer. Why pay more when we may not have to?

 

Because we wouldn't chuck someone £6m that they weren't entitled to, duh.

And in the process of matching, or going higher than Spurs, we'd probably have then initiated a bidding war that would've resulted in the difference between the agreed figure and the bidding figure growing beyond £6m.

 

Exactly that's why nobodies got a clue. We'll just have to wait and see what happens. I just hope that it's sooner rather than later so we can get a replacement in for preseason if we need one.

 

It will be done soon.

 

By not signing a world class player who wants to come here.

It's great to have principles, but I do hope we take a view on this battle with AM and come to an arrangement.
Sometimes in life you have to pick the right fights

As others have said. Compensation will be a hollow victory

 

If they're prepared to break it and pay compensation if we win in arbitration, then we'll look far worse for sticking to our agreement than if we just topped up our offer and got the damned player.

 

Would we win a court case if we actually agreed to the new terms, though? I mean, that'd kind of accept the first contract was worth nothing.

(genuine question)

 

I don't think we would.

 

There wouldn't be a court case, I would imagine. We'd offer a bit less than Spurs and waive the case, and we'd still get Toby.

If we're hellbent to get a couple million in compensation (and realistically, that's all it will be) while Toby goes to Spurs rather than actually signing him ourselves, we'll quite rightly be laughed at by most of football.

 

I think this whole thing will be brought to a close by Toby stating that he's happy to sign for Spurs ahead of Saints, and signing a contract, making what we might have offered largely redundant.

 

Only if Atletico judges that they'd get more money by selling him to us at the originally agreed price, rather than selling him to Spurs, fighting the arbitration, and paying out compensation.

My guess is that they'd get more money with the latter at the moment.

 

But until July 1, we DIDN'T have a binding legal agreement to Alderweireld, because they could buy out our option. And we had every reason to suspect that Spurs were going to make an offer which might prompt Atletico to do exactly that.

Why wouldn't Atletico come to us and say "Tottenham is willing to pay us 11.5m. So pay us 13m and he's all yours?" It's more money for them.

And if that happened, why would Saints say "Hmm... well there's a chance they could buy us out and sell to Spurs, so why don't we accept that offer?"

There was no reason for Saints to act like the transfer was in the bag when, by the terms of the contract, AM had an out clause.

Us making the claim that AM didn't pay us the money in time can only occur AFTER the fact. If they fax us a money order for 1.5m at 11:59:59 or whatever, then we would have lost Alderweireld perfectly legally.

 

I'd imagine Saints were sitting quietly because they knew AM were sleep-walking into losing Toby for £6.8m by failing to know the details of the agreement they'd signed.

I can't imagine they were working on the basis that AM would totally ignore the contract and do whatever they wanted.

 

More to run in this one, then.

 

For what it's worth, the Spurs stuff doesn't sit right with me. It hasn't from day 1. They may be interested, but the 'noises' that have been coming from seemingly the Spurs side have been very suspicious.

 

Sven Claes has been mocking the other Belgium reporter who claimed Toby was going for a medical with spurs.

I think this guy has the inside with Toby's camp and he was reliable on the loan and other Belgian football news