We are being linked with a lot of sub standard players at the moment.
We should be targeting players that will cost 50m plus and take wages of around 150k and more a week.
Hopefully a lot of this is unfounded rumours, as we should be competing for the top tier players in the world.
Which sub-standard players are we linked with? And who is linking them with us?
From what I can make out so far this summer the main links would seem to be:
1. Grealish.
2. Gomes.
3. De Ligt.
4. Martial.
I'm not sure that any of the above could be considered as 'sub-standard' players. Looking at each in turn:
1. Grealish is Villa's most valuable player and they need to sell due to their precarious financial situation. They will be looking for a large up-front/guaranteed transfer fee whereas we will be looking to do a deal that is heavily instalment based. The deal is therefore likely one that will take a lot of negotiation.
2. Gomes was a fantastic player for Valencia, but has struggled with Barcelona's tika-taka since going there for a big fee. Barcelona will want to recoup what they paid for him, but the player's wages mean that it would be a big total deal for any club. Again I would imagine that there would be a lot of negotiation on the deal with Barcelona probably wanting upwards of £30 million and us looking at the fact that he has only 1 year left on his deal. There is also added complexity where the player's agent knows his client can sign a pre-contract deal for a Bosman in 6 month's time and therefore the wage ask is likely to be high.
3. De Ligt is likely to cost upwards of £50 million. I think we can only spend that amount on a new centre back if Alderweireld is sold. There is probably also added complexity of interest from other big clubs (Emirates Marketing Project for example). If they are going to lose him then Ajax will want to create an auction for the player.
4. Martial is a player that Man Utd do not want to sell.... Or more pertinently a player that Man Utd do not want to sell to us. That means we either need to pay massively over the odds for him or be patient and play the waiting game and use the fact that Mourinho seemingly wants Alderweireld to try to do a deal that involves the players swapping clubs.
IMO both of the last two players are worth waiting for, as opposed to going out and buying alternatives - who are actually likely to be "sub-standard".
The four players above would likely cost around £140 million in total. Clearly we can only bring those players in if we can shift some players for decent fees.