Roughly the same (€15), though Monaco retain 25% of his contract, apparently. Thought that was becoming illegal, so it might just be a sell-on clause.
There's a strange rumour doing the rounds that Lazio are interested in buying Pritchard. Hoping for a Gazza Mk II, possibly? We should tell them to piss right off this time.
Interesting quote from Southampton's Les Reed via The Daily Echo about Alderweireld: “We believe we bid more than Spurs. I did ask whether financially there was an issue with his contract that we needed to talk about and was assured no there wasn’t, it wasn’t salary, it wasn’t with Atletico a transfer fee, it was just that Toby felt his future lay at Tottenham Hotspur." They bid more, they were prepared to offer him more money and he signed for us anyway.
Interesting. That wasn’t how I read it, but it might explain why his dad said he was still for sale when others said he was committed to Spurs. That’s good to hear. Now we just sit tight and wait for our Belgians to unsettle Hazard.
The Euro championship is next summer and Belgium must fancy their chances of making the latter stages, anyway. I would think that Alderweireld wants to be part of that and feels that he needs not only regular football, but to have the advantage of spending a season alongside some of his Belgiam teammates to give himself the best chance of being selected. . From our point of view he should hopefully slot straight in there alongside Vertonghen.
I seem to recall that Liverpool were bidding more than we were for Sigurdsson a couple of seasons ago.
So Alderweireld likes us and/or wants to join his compatriot(s), Cabaye wants to rejoin his old manager, Carrasco and Martial want CL football or a club nearer home, and moves to the richest clubs explain themselves. Why the hell does Xerdan Shaquiri want to go to Stoke?
Mark Hughes perhaps? He was well known as a player including in Europe because of Barcelona. Or alternatively just fear, you don't mess with Stoke.
You need to post this on the Saints board, PNP, so that they know that Alderweireld would never have gone to them, no matter how much they bid. It will give those lads some degree of comfort, knowing that.
This doesn't really surprise me. We are by a country mile the 6th biggest team in the most popular league in world football. Of the 5 teams who are noticeably bigger than us, we cannot hope to compete with the spending power of 3 (City, Utd and Chelsea), nor with the CL allure of the 4th (Arsenal - like it or not). This leaves ourselves and Liverpool scrapping over similarly priced, similarly reputable players, to varying degrees of success (cf. 'How to waste a war chest in 5 easy steps, by Liverpool and Tottenham). Meaning absolutely no disrespect as I have a heck of a lot of time for the club, Koeman's brand of football and their general set-up, but if Soton and Spurs entered a foot race for a player and we came out second best, I would be left mightily disillusioned as to the true standing of Spurs as a name. There's only cause for eyebrow-raising imho when we go in for a player with United, City or Arsenal etc. and the player commits to Spurs despite the lower wage and no guarantee of CL football, because he believes in the 'project' at the club. I can't think of too many examples of this over the past 6-7 years when we firmly established ourselves as a top 6 team. Even Siggy is a poor example as he turned down Pool when they were shockingly bad.
Not at all. It's just that I wouldn't presume to take PNP's good news to the Saints lads and claim it as my own. The Saints boys deserve better than that.
Surely not! Sa1nts said we're a sideways move so why would he turn down more money with them? Still annoyed we didn't go for Matip instead though, he's got a big future I reckon and Newcastle have been linked with him for £10mill
The Saints fans at work, (being Andover, there is a lot),are besides themselves he signed for us,they were sure he was theirs
Let's be honest, we all knew Lloris won't be a Spurs player for much longer. The interesting one is Kane, if Utd bid then I think he will ask to leave too.
