Selby White wrote:With regards to Barca my gut feeling is they were hoping we would get relegated so the could use the clause in his contract to get him cheap. feeling their interest may melt away now.
Nothing concrete just my prediction.
I suspect you are right.
Barcelona and Madrid are chancers, they know how to play the game, how to work the press, how to unsettle players and leverage agents but it's all just a game and is only relevant if we (or rather in this case our board) give them power in return for their gameplaying. If we just ignore them and stick to our guns their gameplaying is irrelevant.
The only issue we'll have to watch out for is Raphinha getting upset if he feels we're being unreasonable - and asking for what he's worth is not us being unreasonable!
I'd forgotten how much I hate the behaviour of media and fans during the transfer window, twitter makes me want to slap some sense into many people at this time of year
Polkadot wrote:Maybe we should create a special thread for Raphinha transfer rumors? I fear it will be a lot of posts in here about it
Yeah probably one for him and one for Kalvin. City def coming in for him. I am really hot and bothered about Rapha. We finally have a player of his value and Barca are broke so Leeds that. Also hearing the player swap stuff is on. I would happily take 50-60 if we got Dest and Puig I do worry players are never quite the same after leaving Barca. I can't think of many who thrived after.
Polkadot wrote:Maybe we should create a special thread for Raphinha transfer rumors? I fear it will be a lot of posts in here about it
Yeah it's going to be endless until it's resolved.
Alongside it will be all the rumours about the people replacing him - Noa Lang and Takumi Minamino being two obvious candidates who have already had 346576889 mentions in the press this week.
Polkadot wrote:Maybe we should create a special thread for Raphinha transfer rumors? I fear it will be a lot of posts in here about it
Yeah probably one for him and one for Kalvin. City def coming in for him. I am really hot and bothered about Rapha. We finally have a player of his value and Barca are broke so Leeds that. Also hearing the player swap stuff is on. I would happily take 50-60 if we got Dest and Puig I do worry players are never quite the same after leaving Barca. I can't think of many who thrived after.
If we could get Dest and Puig out of Barcelona along with a little bit of cash I would actually be very happy with that, they both have huge potential, 'could' end up being worth a lot more money in 2-3 years and arguably improve us immediately (assuming they perform).
I do worry players are never quite the same after leaving Barca. I can't think of many who thrived after.