Well exactly, so do you really believe arsenal went in with a bid they knew wouldn’t be even worth the time?
Why would they have done that after months of discussion with both player and club (from what we’re told).
Like I said before, I don’t buy this notion of arsenal sending in blind bid like it’s faxed over and West Ham receive it like ‘wtf?’. Surely execs from each team are in a room hashing out the numbers and the split on a regular basis til they find an agreement. The rest is just Twitter bollocks.
Fair enough but I really don’t think it works like that. That’s very football manager.
In the real world I’d be surprised if it works like that and hence don’t really trust these rumours where club X bids price Y. Look at how many rumours had mac Allister going at 60m or 80m and he ends up 35m
And even then the seller is free to reject a bid even after intimating that bid would be successful.
Just hypothetically, if West Ham had some intermediary or even David Sullivan himself call Edu and say something suitably slippery like “I think Declan is invaluable to us but we could reinvest a 90m fee, shake hands and part friends” does that mean Arsenal have to start bidding at 90m? Maybe they’d start at 80m with more up front? And if Arsenal started at 90m what’s going to stop West Ham from saying “Well, things are different now. You submitted an official bid and we’re rejecting it. Looking at the way your bid is structured and the topline number, we don’t think you’re actually meeting the value he has for us.”
This whole idea that Edu knew exactly the fee required to sign the player is laughable. That only works if you have a release clause. Everyone knew Man City were signing Haaland for that outrageously low number because of the clause. PSG were able to strongarm Barcelona over Neymar because of the release clause. Those don’t really exist in the PL. It’s a lot of squishy “understandings” or “acknowledgements” that a club won’t stand in a player’s way if a “suitable bid” comes in. Well who the fuck knows what that means? Just saying “Edu ffs bid 150m and then he’s our player” doesn’t make any sense because even then West Ham could say they wanted more.
Stop with the ‘reactions’ towards Edu! NOTHING has actually happened today. Let’s wait and see what happens in respect of Rice tomorrow. The idea that the Rice deal would go smoothly from start to finish is nonsense. West Ham want to extract the most from this transfer. If we had gone in with £100m, they would have pushed for more. It was always likely that that other clubs would come in for the player. We have a good project and can make a very competitive offer to the club and the player. Before you all put Edu on the BBQ, let’s wait and see what he is actually cooking!
If we start with 100m (not in 10 installments), we probably could have signed him already.
Of course, the international break could delay that, but still, the 100m first bid never happened, so, it could go both ways. Nobody knows.
The fact is, we low-ball it and got rejected twice
Ok but if we went in with £100m would they have accepted it? You are assuming that they would have, but the likihood is that they would have tried to push for more or better payment terms. Very rare that a first bid, especially for this sort of fee, gets accepted from the off. City’s rumoured bid was the same as our 2nd bid - £75m with £15m in add ons, ok more likely achievable add ons, but they are not rumoured to be giving what West Ham want. We have laid the ground work and if we want the player we up our bid. Simple as that. I have no issue starting lower and working our way up, we just need to move quickly between the bids if we are serious about the player.
I am not assuming anything, as I said it could go both ways.
Starting bid is one thing.
If 80+10 was rejected because of total amount, number of installments and content of incentives. In what way we are placing an improved bid in 75+15??
More total fees?
Less installments?
Easy to achieve incentives?
WH did not mention about the total transfer fee when rejecting our 2nd bid (thought it still be 100m minimum), they just mentioned the difficulties of making the incentives…
So my understanding is, maybe we shortened the years of payments, but the incentives is very difficult and almost impossible to achieve, which means WH could possibly only get 75m in the end.
If you were WH, would you do it?
Possibly/most likely 25m off from what they requested.
We said other clubs low balling is when trying to buy from us, aren’t we doing the same?
Regarding the Rice deal, this is currently a war of attrition atm. Whoever bids first today will lose out on Rice imo. Nobody knows what’ll truly make WHU/Sullivan accept.
If Arsenal bid first and they reject, then City can just improve on it and bid a few hours later.
I think the best part here on Arsenal’s side is to just wait for City/Utd to bid and see if it’s accepted. If so, then we just need to match it, which I’m confident we can.
OK, but is this not all negotiation? None of us were in the initial conversations, it could be low-balling as suggested, it could be that it was indicated that an overall package around £90m would be enough and so the second bid improved on total up front, more achievable incentives, etc. I trust that Arteta/Edu have the clubs best interests at heart in EVERYTHING they do.
IF Rice ends up at Arsenal, then will all the critics of this low-balling malarkey then give Edu/Arteta kudos and next negotiation trust them? I bet not and I bet all the same rhetoric goes on again about low-balling, insulting bids, blah blah.
If Rice is sold for less than £100m (to City/Arsenal), even more so, it shows that the negotiations were on the right track.
It is naïve to think offering £100m guaranteed the transfer. If other clubs (City/Utd) want Rice, you wait for Arsenal to negotiate whatever price and then improve minimally on that and we are in the exact same situation (unless we are overpaying and other interested clubs don’t feel the price is worth it)
You know City can just offer more no matter when we bid. If we match their bid, they’ll just up it by another 5 million.
Like I said in the Rice thread, I think this is City ensuring we don’t get him so that we are less of a threat next season. It sucks how one club can blatantly flout all FFP rules, and continue to spend like there are no limits, and everyone else just has to live with it, but that’s what it is. I fucking hope the chickens come home to roost for City on this and they are heavily penalized (fined, docked points, and banned from Champions League for a few years).
