Indeed, Haller isn't good enough and the 35 million is already waaaaaaaay too much, so easy sell.
It's not way too much. I actually do think Dortmund got the better end of the deal. I think Ajax should have gotten around €40m in total and at least €35m to start with. Nevertheless I have argued here also that there was a lot of risk for Ajax that his value would decrease heavily the next year. Hence for Ajax it was much more important to get the deal done, rather than to get the absolute maximum out of it and risk Dortmund to pull out of it. Dortmund obviously also had to settle for a disappointing price for Haaland because of the release clause, so it was not like they had tons of money to splash.
I don’t get it. If we really wanted Antony and he was on the priority list then why didn’t we negotiate with Ajax regarding the price in the beginning of the window or even before that when the season ended and had some sort of gentleman’s agreement or something with them to get him after de Jong. Why did we leave it to chance like that ? Van der sar is the CEO, surely something could have been done so that we wouldn’t have to overpay ?
I think most of this whole Antony story is made up my the media/tabloids. They need something to write about and since you are not signing anyone officially they just start creating stories. The links between Manchester United and Antony are easily made. Especially Timber and Antony Ten Hag specifically mentioned that he likes them a lot. So it's easy for the media to make a story about him. But if you think logically, you could never be really in for Antony. From the start of the transferwindow it was said you had £120M to spend + money received from player departures. So far you have not sold any players right, so you should still be on the 120M budget.
It is very clear that Frenkie de Jong is the #1 priority and you are going to need £60/70M for him. That means that you barely have money left to buy Antony, unless you have some sales first and even then your priority after FdJ should be much more a CB and RB before you're thinking about a winger. Then you can only conclude you can't afford Antony, unless you make some major sales or the FdJ deal is definitely not happening and Antony then suddenly becomes your #1 target. That last scenario does not seem likely at all, because it's becoming more and more clear that Ten Hag really wants FdJ and Barca still needs the money in order to bring in new players.
I do think the Timber story was real and you were trying to get him as he fills in two positions that you clearly need to strenghten. His price tag is also more in line with the budget that you have to spend. The Antony rumours I think are fabricated for the most part. With the budget you reportedly have available it just doesn't make much sense. Antony would make sense if United had £250M to spend. But at £120M (which was reported at the beginning of the window) or even £150M and the wholes in your team mainly being CM/CB and RB, it just doesn't seem logical that you would pursue an expensive winger. If you're shipping out Martial and Rashford then in becomes a different story but that should also raise the cash to spend bigger on a winger.