Faultless post, that. This is my take on the whole saga. I do not have details about our financial restraints or details about sums demanded in wages, agent fee, etc so I cannot really critique our stance. If they are trying to get us to pay ridiculous/stupid sums then maybe I can understand but if it's a case of disagreement due to a £270k vs £300k figure for example, then I think we have to think again.
I see a lot of posts about how we are far ahead of the competition and whilst I don't particularly agree with this view, I'd say even if we assume it was true for the sake of argument, do we really have to give them the opportunity to close the gap without having to spend over the roof sums? If they get closer to us because of Sanchez signed on the cheap, is it beyond the realms of possibility that they spend big on another game changer thereby reducing the gap even further? Question is would we prefer to break away from the competition or be skin-tight to it? Honest questions.
This is a unique situation because it's not often you see a world class player available for £30m ish who is dying to come play for us. And then we just walk away and allow Jose get a bargain?
Yes I know we could sign a Dybala in summer for example but do you honestly think he'd go for less than £150m? We also know that transfers of this magnitude aren't that easy to pull off because usually the players want to come but are tied down by their contracts with their current clubs. Even if we signed a Dybala, there's the issue of getting him to settle down much the same way Bernado is adapting. You wouldn't need to worry about that with Sanchez.
I'll say it again, I don't know the details about the financials and I won't pretend to know but I hope we don't look back and compare the value a player that was dying to come to us adds to a rival team and compare to the sums we saved in the process.
People thought we got rinsed when we signed KDB and Walker. Look now...