@billyiddo, you also haven't answered my question - would you like what happened at Arsenal to happen here? Adebayor, Sagna, Clichy, Nasri, Van Persie, and there must be other blokes I'm forgetting.
They were pillaged by their rivals every year, and it was only Wenger's knack for finishing fourth that kept drawing them over the line.
Make no mistake, the same will happen here, with us. Levy is no smarter than their directors were when they moved into their new stadium.
Would that be worth not being 'petty?
The thing with Arsenal is that they were all first team players they didn’t want to lose. We’ve just played most of last season without him. And Poch clearly wants him gone.
He will improve United but I don’t see other European clubs coming in for him. He’s 29 and just coming off an injury prone season. Who do Barca et al have at CB and why would they want Toby?
I don’t think this is like Carrick or Berbatov because it’s as much wanting him gone to maintain our standards of respect, our team spirit, our culture, our buy in to the plan etc etc which you may not think are important but are key reasons as to why we’ve been able to be so consistent.
If United came for Eriksen I think we would laugh it off, similarly Dele. The only reason they are getting Toby potentially is because we don’t mind letting him go. It’s part of making the right long term decision. Not the best decision for this month, or even for this season, but what is the best way to keep us moving on an upward trajectory over the next 3 to 5 years? That may be about getting one of the last players out (Toby alongside Rose) who never seemed fully committed to building his career here, like Jan did, like Kane does. It also may be about getting him out now because it might be too painful a transition to try and replace 2 CBs in one summer (maybe Jan won’t be on the way out but maybe we want to future proof him next year too) so it’s best to start that transition now.
With most of our other players, I think we’re in a position to offer them good money - if the Kane contract is anything to go by - where the only move they really will ever want to make is Barca or Madrid (I’m thinking Eriksen here in a couple of years could be tempted to satisfy a life long ambition in spite of what money we may offer). We could have afforded to pay Toby good money - probably not much less than United will offer (considering their CBs reportedly aren’t earning that much) but it wasn’t about that. By all accounts, he - or he allowed his agent to - dingdong us around by having Poch go to bat for a new contract for him, getting it, and then moving the goal posts. Some things - the standards and the respect for the people at this club and the way we do things which have dragged us up from being best of the rest to one of the most consistent sides in the country - are more important than worrying about whether this means United are stronger for this season. Levy and Poch will be thinking long term.
And that’s the right thing to do. To be honest I’m sure they calculated the same thing with Walker - that City could go and buy another right back from wherever they wanted and they still probably would have ran away with the League last year. But we would have kept a sulky player that wanted to move back up north, who we’d already dropped for the biggest games too. We may as well have gotten an inflated fee for him, because last year probably wasn’t going to be our year getting ahead of City because of the Wembley adjustment.
Toby is the last of our squad I can see that would sulk and be a risk to morale if he didn’t get a move (Rose is too far removed from a consistent run to have a real case that he deserves one). And the long term consideration here is, can we sell abroad for the same price or near to it, or even for good money but a knock down compared to United? If not, what will United do? Move for Maguire? Move for someone else? What will we do? Keep Toby on the bench for a year and sell him for cheap next summer? Not be able to bring in De Ligt or Maguire ourselves? United will sign someone regardless when it’s a position they want to strengthen, so we may as well get paid over the odds for it.
And just to be clear, I wouldn’t be advocating this approach with Kane, Eriksen, Dele, Son, Dier (and the thing you seem to have ignored is we absolutely DID make a stand against United with Dier, which was the comment Jose made in relation to) but for Toby - a player we have already shown we can do without, who we want to move on for the sake of our own standards and harmony, and so we can get paid over the odds to find the best replacement for us. If we sell Toby and sign De Ligt, it will be a great move. If we sell Toby and get Martial, also a great move. They will sign a CB anyway.
