Originally Posted by
selassie
You have totally missed the point of my post but I will reply to what you are harping on about.
City and Chelsea have skewed the market to an extent, as have all the other Big European spenders, but the reality is they dictate the market prices to a degree, that's not to say we should follow suit and match them bid for bid but if we are in the market for a player who is a young semi-established international talent that captains his club side then we are going to have to pay a price.
The point of my post was more about us lowballing, if the selling clubs demands a fee, then we should negotiate from a realistic starting point if we want the player. We have form for lowballing and missing out on players hence why I posted the comment, in this instance it appears to be a hoax and the player appears to be close to joining us but in the past we have lost out on a fair few players through a combination of lowballing and dithering.