Just one source that confirmed we must have made a ****ty bid : Speaking to The Telegraph about his failed Spurs switch, he said: "Of course there's going to be disappointment there. They've beaten Manchester United 3-0 at Old Trafford, they're playing Barcelona in the Champions League next week. "I felt that if I'd gone there I could have maybe been in the England squad by the end of the year "At the start of the season my head was swivelled, it was all over the place. Even after the transfer window closed, until the end of August, I wasn't right."
That’s the king of lowball offers. I actually liked Josh at the time and thought he could’ve gone on to be a decent a player but offering an unproven youngster and £3m for a team’s star player is just a pure piss take, especially now in hindsight realising just how good Grealish has become, lol.
This is why I don’t see Levy as the financial genius that some do. He could be selling Grealish this summer for £100million if he hadn’t messed it up so bad in 2018.
Yeah that’s reported in this article too, they also show a tweet from a t-shirt printing company sending Levy a shirt with “£3m & Josh Onomah” on it, looks like they sent it to Lilywhite House too https://www.birminghammail.co.uk/sp...ttenham-villa-jack-grealish-transfer-20438372
I think he’s a very astute businessman in general who has done a fair bit right in his many years (not the last 4-5 though) but that particular offer will haunt him forever. It’ll haunt us too as it goes
That post was 28 July. After the Villa takeover. I remember saying that Grealish wasn't a Winks upgrade because in a 4231 Grealish plays on the left or centre of the 3 and Winks in the 2.
So according to what was published at the time we made no offer at all before the takeover and offered the full 25m at the end. Offering 25m earlier on would not have had a different outcome as Villa knew they would be talking to buyers before the window opened.
So could every other chairman at every club in the world. Levy is well above average as a chairman. But nearly half his decisions will be wrong. He didn't buy Berahino. Anyone think he should have? The odd thing is that we were actually the club who made the highest bid for Grealish and therefore the closest to being right and the same for Berahino so the closest to being wrong!
We were linked with Grealish pretty much after the end of the Championship playoff final which would’ve been May, when Villa lost that game the rumours increased, especially around June as that’s when news broke about facing a winding up order and Villa were going to need to sell high earners/ biggest assets. In July I was probably still optimistic we’d get the deal done. By all accounts everyone expected it, media, Steve Bruce and as we saw at the end of the window Grealish expected it too when he spoke about the failed move. That 17/18 season Grealish played CM which was I wanted him as he would’ve been a solid replacement for Dembele who eventually left the following January. Instead we had to persist with Winks who’s an upgrade on nobody and not better than Grealish in any single formation.
I’ve just had to go old school and scroll through the transfer thread and reach pages where the dates are circa May-June 2018 as my search function only dates back to 2021 for some weird reason, this is a post by HBIC mentioning our interest in Grealish (dated 31st May): https://www.not606.com/threads/transfer-thread-fact-and-fiction.343033/page-302#post-11798242 I responded shortly afterwards saying the rumoured asking price was £40m and that he’s good but not that good. This was before Villa’s winding up order though, hence why rumoured fee was extortionate. This is then the first post I’ve found of my mine mentioning a bid (dated 13th June) this may have been the first bid or I may have missed other posts of others. Hard to say if the winding up order was before or after this post as I’ve now stopped searching but it shows our interest way before claims of first bid after the takeover. https://www.not606.com/threads/transfer-thread-fact-and-fiction.343033/page-318#post-11831380 We chased Grealish for months, practically the whole summer window and failed to get him.
Utd looking like they’ll finally sign Sancho after failing last year to get him. Pool also apparently in talks with Donyell Malen. Ahhh, must be nice signing players and looking forward to seeing them in action next season.
The only crumbs of comfort that I can offer regarding Grealish are that Poch wouldn't have picked him for 6 months whilst he settled in, he would have then come into a side that wasn't playing well and been benched after making little impact in his first few games. History would then play out in a similar manner Poch gets sacked and Jose doesn't think Grealish works hard enough and we loan him back to Villa.
Except we started that season pretty well and were going at more than 2 points a game until January. More likely Grealish wouldn't have been picked much at all.
Florentino Perez continues his application to be manager of the Overlook Hotel by insisting that none of the clubs who signed up can ever leave I'm going to suggest that Perez's face was one of the following colours as he said this please log in to view this image please log in to view this image please log in to view this image please log in to view this image
