Ted Hughes wrote:Slim wrote:Deluded doesn't even begin to cover it. Clubs take us to ransom over players and Milner wouldn't be worth £15M if it wasn't City coming knocking. Comment that we have made our own bed with concerns to transfer fees, but £25.5M for Tevez and these idiots want £35M for Milner?
http://www.astonvilla.vitalfootball.co. ... ?a=7504509
Fact is we'll probably pay well over the odds for most if not all of our signings. Clubs will refuse to sell to us otherwise & if we want the players we'll just have to pay it.
It has the unfortunate knock on effect of ruining most of Manchester Utd's transfer plans as they can't get any 'value' in the market. I recon we can cock them up just by registering an interest in a player & not even bidding.
Pity.
The transfer market is extremely complicated this season, for starters there is going to be a further premium on English home grown players more than there usually is. In addition the now top 8 clubs have heightened ambitions to be challenging for 4th.. so on the one hand they will not want to let their key players go while offering more competition for the best players available..
The playing field has leveled up considerably.. Spurs have a bit of extra dosh, rags and pool less.. City top the lot.. and in many ways the rest of the bunch are perhaps going to wait and see what City do, as a kind of strategy to determine firstly how the market is going to be effected by City's purchasing power.. and secondly as a way of letting City get on with it, get who they can/want and then hope that we will shut up and let the rest of them do their business in peace as it were.
i can understand Villa fans getting irate about losing Milner, he is a key player for them and selling him really does make it seem like they are not serious about getting a higher than 6th spot finish.
Im looking at this bid thinking that the 20 mil was just to test the water at Villa, also perhaps to start the whole thing off in a more sensible way so we dont get accused of distorting the market as much as we would if we had gone in with an initial bid of say 26 or 27 mil.
Milner is a terrific player and helps with the quota thing, so there is going to be more and more of a premium on that. He is versatile, has vision and a serious work rate, he also has something that Gerrard has, which i would describe as never stops trying to find different ways of breaking teams down, i have watched him a lot with the U21's etc and he is a cut above the average in that sense, he is a Gerrard or a Lampard in the making.. and as such it is up to City to determine what he is worth to us. i would still be happy with 30 mil, but that is based on him being proven Prem and English, it isn't a gamble, we know what we would be getting.