Quote Originally Posted by Niall_Quinn View Post
Not saying it's impossible or even that we can afford not to get the business done this summer. But there are additional complications for teams that are applying a real world business model. I think we'll pay over the odds anyway, if the Sagna story is true then the whole market just took another huge hit and this will ripple through every club. £150k pw for a bench player, and there will probably be an £80k or even 100K pw player behind him too so they have 3 quality internationals per position. True, you can only play 11 but that's what the ludicrous wages are for, to bribe players with offers they can't refuse who would normally be playing to sit it out on standby.

The FA could do something about this, and something very effective. They could ban chav and gypo English players from playing for the national team while their clubs are in breach of rules and sound business practices. This would have a knock on effect with FFP because no top English players would want to go to these clubs so they'd be short of home grown players, this compounding the breach of FFP rules and forcing the crook Platini's hand. Won't happen but it's a very easy solution that would very quickly solve the problem of financial doping.

But fact is, we still have to compete on this badly tilted playing field so Wenger and the crew will need to be very smart and very cagey in this transfer window. To a degree we'll always be looking for certain types of deals, players the dopers don't instantly want (for example Costa is now beyond our reach whereas he shouldn't really be as if FFP was applied we might well have more spending power than the chavs this summer), players that have potential (these don't interest dopers as much as they want immediate success), last minutes stuff that catches the dopers unaware (like the Ozil deal). Then there's the World Cup, which is an agent sharkfest, and the one or two big deals on which many other deals will hinge, Suarez for instance. I guess he has to agree to go to Madrid if we are to have any chance with Benzema.

We know we need to get the business done but that doesn't remove the obstacles we're bound to face. Hell, even in the light of all this we had a deal for Suarez last year and we've reached the stage where club owners can just ignore the contract. It's tough to get these things done.
Whilst that is all very true we know how the market works and if you don't "play by the market rules" then you will get nowhere. I am not for one minute suggesting we compete with City or Chelsea for players but what I am suggesting is that if we identify somebody we want we make our moves with realistic offers.

We have a history of dithering and lowballing...it's the worst kept secret in football.