@LeGrove Absolutely fantastic, I agree on everything. We are a bit hamstrung by last year's drunken spending on a host of sub-elite players, a couple of which I would gladly shift on this summer.
The comparison to peak City maturity in the market is really apt.
@Simmons360@TheFalseNein If true, this begs the question why they didn't make a clearly superior target their top one to begin with - were they hoping to land an inferior player just because they thought he would be cheaper?
@TheFalseNein Moreover, each alternative must be at least as good as said target, not 95% as good and not 99% as good. We did not win the league just to allow our rivals to gain ground on us.
@RyanCooley96@YankeeGunner I'm not convinced he *was* our number one target (that's just what some journos are saying). When Declan Rice was his number one target, the club blew City out of the water to get him, and it's clear to me they would have done the same here.
@YankeeGunner Counterpoint: what if (the likely scenario) it was more like "Listen, Mikel, we can get Rogers for you, but that means Kone instead of Bruno"? Can you even imagine a dominant manager like Arteta not being heavily involved in the decision making?
@afcstuff Definitely throws panic in defences: we haven't had that since prime Saka. But I don't think it's genuine: the club probably tries to put pressure on PSG to sell us Barcola.
@and_got@NSftbl Our only chance to get it done at closer to "our terms" was having the player absolutely sold on us, and he clearly wasn't. Either unimpressed by being another "spinning plate", or he knew he wasn't a winger.
@and_got@NSftbl I don't disagree. But then again, we knew our relationship with Villa (through some manufactured rivalry) is sour and we knew the Anderson sale price. It was *always* going to be in that ballpark, so why bother unless we were willing to go the distance?