It's old ground now, but you did keep coming back time after time when we had said he was not for sale (which we are legally entitled to say).
Only reason being was that Levy has previously caved when the price is right. There were only two official bids made and an apparent last minute £40m one.
Chelsea are on course to pass FFP comfortably. Your CL win about covers you if you sign nobody. Thats not happening so it really makes no difference. You have been buying and paying players at a loss for 8 years. 1 CL win will not make any difference other than a short term cash injection from footballing sources. Something FFP will consider legal income. £40million as winners so about £15million more than a season where you reach the semi finals or £10million more than a season you lose in the final. Its not much difference really. Reach the last 4 and you make very good money regardless. What works in your favour is the players coming off the wage bill. In the next 2 seasons Lampard £7.5million pa, Terry £7.5million pa, Drogba 7.5million pa, Kalou £80k pw etc.... as long as your new players are on much less ( 30% or more ) than the players they are replacing you will be ok. Question is whether or not they will be on less. I wouldnt be confident.
"Reasonable" is subjective though. IMO it wasn't reasonable for United to spend £30m on a Central Defender and offer him 70k wages. And it wasn't "reasonable" for United to spend £30m on a teenager and offer him close to 100k a week. But that is of course... my opinion. Salaries were truly broken in the 90s with the introduction of Sky and the reformation of the European Cup. I'd argue it could be traced back to Liverpool. When English clubs got banned from Europe all the good English players we had i.e Lineker, Ince, Hoddle, Rush went elsewhere to apply their trade. Serie A had a golden era and became the most lucrative league to join. Juve, Inter, Milan etc could offer them stupid wages and they had to, why else would you leave England to go to a place where English isn't native tongue? Anyway the roles soon reversed and the likes of Gullit, Zola, Bergkamp, Henry who were in their twilight years or in the case of the latter rejects at Italian clubs wanted to see out their years in England. We basically became what Russia, China are now. The only way to entice these foreign stars was to offer wages which could at least match that of their previous employers, English players became too expensive and all the talent was monopolised by the likes of United anyway so clubs like us and Arsenal took a shortcut and looked abroad. And due to the Sky money it became affordable. Spurs cannot complain, it was your greed that resulted in this change and you were one of the main reasons behind the formation of the PL so it's a case of "You reap what you sow"
