Foreverinbluedreams wrote:Plain Speaking wrote:Beefymcfc wrote:We weren't 'over confident', we had an agreement in principle. Nothing was binding and you cannot legislate for another club coming in and raising the bar so high (if rumours are to believed) that he becomes one of the highest paid players in the world. If the transfer went through at those valuations then you are now talking about a player who would give you at least 5 years service and a possible resale value at the end of it. Don't get me wrong, we would pay big money if we really wanted him, which was shown in the summer, but to welsh on a deal, when trust is the ethos of the team, it's something you can't go back to.
However, I think we should at least match the Rags/Chavs offer, just to push the price up even more. Rags look like they need to get rid of a player before they can get him so it would be nice for them to lose put 2 ways.
Even better, Rags can't get a player out, we pull out at the 12th hour and Sanchez is left to rot at Arsenal. If Carlsberg did fuck ups, eh?
You obviously pay a lot more for a player when it's an open market. We didn't properly have that in summer, because even though China, PSG and Bayern were offering huge money. They were being told he wanted only us.
That only changed when our position changed. I believe we were happy to see him stay at Arsenal until summer and he was not. He had agreed lower wages with us and I think he would have stuck with that if we had not gone cold on him this window.
We didn't go cold, the same offer was on the table as was in the summer.
Going back to why I think you're being naive, do you really believe that Sanchez and his agent didn't consider that Arsenal and City may not agree a deal in January, especially given what had just transpired in the summer?
As soon as that move broke down in the summer Sanchez' agent would've made contingency plans in the event there was no agreement between the two clubs in January. The idea that Utd just had this sudden brainwave of going for him now is also naive, as soon as they missed out on Perisic plans would've been made to rectify that in January.
We went cold by not offering an acceptable transfer to Arsenal. We offered £20m, when they wanted £35m. What is more we said that's our final offer this window.
Sanchez's camp probably thought there was a very real possibility he would be stuck there until summer. We even declared that was our preferred option.
There was no need for Sanchez's camp to make contingency plans in summer, they were as frustrated as us with Arsenal. He wanted to come to one of the richest clubs in the world with the best manager and both sides were in agreement.
I'm sure United and many other clubs wanted him in summer, he's one of the best players in the PL, but you only bid for players when you get encouragement.
I believe he would have been ours if we had handled it better.
[/center]
