I was going to say the same but you beat me to it. Money talks in Football, sleeping giant walks. Would Man City's players have gone there because they are sleeping giant or because they are backed by a ton of Arab money and paid better than other clubs.
Not totally our of our limits - if we did sell either Hoedt or Gunn we would have the money - whether we would spend it all on 1 player is another matter. Having not seen him play I find it hard to judge whether we should pay that much or not - hopefully if he lives up to the hype we will go for him.
We spent £20 million on Ings, so hes definitely not outside of what the club would be prepared to spend. Very much depends (if true) on how much of the deadwood we can ship out I'd imagine.
And about the same we spent on Carrillo and Vestegarrd If the club can tie McKennie to a decent term contract and be confident RH can improve him further at 21, he should fit the selling on profile. Harrison Reed won't be going anywhere for £45m+ in two seasons time.
I think if Ralph really wants this player, And this player wants to come to Saints / Premiership, then ultimately i think the board will back him. We will be getting 15 upfront for Pierre and a further 8 for Reed.. That easily covers the $25 Million. But i think it's a negotiation tactic to try and get Mckennies price down.
If we do yeah - I can't see either going tbh. We have tried to sell before (not so much Vestergaard) but so many of our players wages are too high to sell. Hoedt, Carrillo, Forster & maybe Lemina won't be leaving til their contracts expire imo.
Were we once rumoured to be in for Romanian winger Nicolae Stanciu? Leeds are reportedly close to signing him for £7m.
Think next season will have the same problem as before, regarding trying to get in new players whilst spending too much on wages of previous bad buys. This will take us a few seasons to get over. Luckily we have a pretty decent team....made even better by a good manager. Expect a window of compromises with a couple of loans/purchases that hopefully turn up trumps.
I think you’re pretty much spot on with this - I’d suggest they know they need to address CB and RB, and are doing just that. PEH going may be covered by a loan or with what we have, but filling the two positions identified was an absolute priority.
Adam Blackmore on Twitter: So we're paying £12m for KWP - a reasonable price I think, especially when Hoedt, Vest etc were £15m+. And also from his tweet it looks like it will be an absolute total of £18m for Hojbjerg even when add ons are taken into account.
