Dont bite, papers are writing *****
We are not a selling club.
Keane wanted out and we got way over the odds for him and made £15mil (memory) for a 6month loan
Berbatov pretty much went on strike and flew himself to Utd
Modric went on strike and was made to stay another year and then was sold cheaper to RM
Bale was convinced to give us one more year and was sold cheaper was a world record to RM
Players only go when the really force their way out and even then since Berbatov almost 10yrs ago we havent sold to a rival.
Well, Bale wouldn't have gone for 80m in 2012 - that price was entirely off the back of his 2012-2013 form. Other than that, I agree with you.
I still remember the Guardian laughably printing up a long, detailed article back in January 2011 that claimed that we were deep in discussions to sell Bale to.....Inter Milan. Maybe even as early as that summer. Apparently they had it from extremely reputable sources in Italy that we were willing to consider selling for 40m or something like that, and that the player's head had been turned by the star power of Inter - despite the fact that we'd just d*cked them 3-1 at the Lane and were heading into the CL knockout rounds on our first try, while they were labouring under Rafa Benitez and rapidly losing steam in an increasingly unattractive league.
That was utter flimflam - looked like it, smelt like it, probably was entirely fabricated based on Paolo Bandini needing to make a deadline. But c*nts at work were telling me that the Guardian was gospel and that this meant that he was off in the summer for 40m to Serie f*cking A.
The papers sometimes hit the tickle my balls with a feather in terms of indicating what the club's transfer plans are, the *general* (very broad) approach is, and so on. Very occasionally, they quote people directly related to the player or the club and that gives it more heft. Sometimes, they pick up on the player's (or club's) own public outbursts/statements.
In this case, direct quotes in the story are absent. There are directly attributable statements that suggest a bit more solidity than a random 'Walker wanted by United' article (I.e, the meeting with Poch after last week's disappointment and so on), but that still isn't much to go on.
So, long story short, the press are the press. I cut them more slack than most here, and I generally trust them a wee bit more than I perhaps should at times - but they are still wedded to their narratives, their lazy, occasionally very biased snapshots of the world as it should be. And that includes the notion of us being a 'selling club', which, as you say, died a cold, grim death in the real world at about the same time that Levy told Chelsea to f*ck off and stay f*cked off in 2011 when they were throwing money at us trying to get Modders.