Recent content by Mr. Wood

Yes!

Which goes to show that transfer fees are pretty artificial. In addition to age, ability, and remaining contract time, they vary with the player's nationality, the league they come from, the selling club's wealth, the buying club's wealth, the player's desire to leave, the club's willingness to...

Do you really thing that's how things work? He's young and he can provide something that we've lacked since Ronaldo left. Assuming he's any good, he'll be well worth bringing in.

This is a good point and one I hadn't really thought about until now. I can only think of one example of a player who struggled due to lack of strength and that was Evra in his first (half) season at the club. He said he spent a lot of time in the gym that summer so he'd be able to handle the...

Transfer fees aren't the only way that players cost us money. Considering how much we pay our players would also be worthwhile, especially seeing as Arsenal are losing players because they refuse to pay them as much as other clubs.

Is this it? I like it!

Whoops

Stop being a drama queen. Fergie bid for Berbatov, then told the media about it. It happens all the time. I can't see how they're damaging to United. And I highly doubt a few whiny Spurs fans on the internet won't have any effect on our ability to sign him / the price.

And what are the consequences of these deals? Have previous 'bad deals' limited his future spending power? If anything, the fact that Fergie has another 20m+ to spend this summer indicates that there hasn't been any negative effect from these past transfer deals. Transfers are normally judged...

Good post. I think most fans fail to consider many factors, including some that you've mentioned, when looking at prices. Another one to think about is the player's wage, which can be a huge cost but isn't included in the transfer fee.

Because we have 80m headed our way? Because Berbatov is less of a risk (proven in England)? Also, do we know whether Torres wanted to sign for us? I thought he was still pretty attached to Athletico at that point

Perhaps, but this sort of reasoning gets us nowhere. Is there another Torres available? If not, does that mean we should sign no one? Or should we just sign a worse (or less suitable) player because he would cost less than Torres?

Yes, that's how I feel about it. Edit: As long as Fergie has the money he needs to sign replacements, I don't care about the number. When it comes to transfers, I only care about who is or is not in the squad, not the odd little number that we assign to each player and (quite illogically, IMO)...

You're right, it doesn't explain Fergie's entire transfer policy. But I think his imminent departure might make the odd short-term splurge especially enticing.

Another thing to consider here is that Fergie has said he'll be managing for another three years at most. Berbatov will probably be in or around his prime in three years. Fergie probably doesn't care much about Berbatov's resale value. He probably sees Berbatov as the kind of player who can win...