DubaiSpur
Ian Walker
Any chance the club will have him in for a chat, maybe a social with the players, during their training jaunt in Barcelona this week? The visit of Puyol to London and now this trip seem to be too much of a coincidence.
Dunno, but there's no way in hell that we'd agree to that 'paranoia clause' nonsense that Barca are apparently insisting on (as per Duncan Castles). I'm still of the mind that this lad isn't who we're looking for as a back-up for Kane (being too short, to my mind), but if the club want him, then why we don't just pay the 9 million quid release clause and sign him outright without bothering about this buy-back nonsense is beyond me. If the news about Townsend leaving for between ten and fourteen million quid in the next 48 hours is true (that Guardian story), we'd still end up with a nominal profit on the deal anyway.
But we absolutely shouldn't agree to a buy-back clause of any kind. If Barca want us to be an incubator for their talents, they'll have to get used to paying the same damn prices Madrid paid to prise a player or two from our ice-likd grip. If they can't deal with that, let's just move on and look elsewhere.