Two weird things I will never be able to get my head around:
How Harry and Charlie played this so badly. It seemed blindingly obvious from the beginning that Levy wasn’t going to sell unless an offer that met his value came in. He wasn’t going to be bullied around with talk of a gentleman’s agreement. They seemed to think that leaks, the Neville interview, the lack of returning to training would put pressure on Levy to sell, but it just made him more determined. This seemed obvious from the beginning…how did the Kanes not understand this and play their hand so badly, and why did they not get more certainty from City that they would make a serious bid before very nearly burning all of Harry’s bridges with us? Utterly bizarre.
Secondly, some of the coverage around this has also just been straight weird. I heard Ornstein reporting that City feel ‘Spurs need to come to the table if they want to get the deal done’. Just a very weird reading of a situation where we clearly had no intention to sell. What was going on there?
It really seems like Harry has been used as a pawn in a bit of City PR to help show the world they won’t be taken to the cleaners on prices going forward. And I bet they were probably happy to keep it going once the fixtures came out in the hope it would disrupt us for the first game. That didn’t work. I feel bad for Harry, he’s been stupid, he’s played this badly, he’s been used, and he now has some making up to do. Here’s hoping he does it with his performances.