Isn't Sporting so desperate for money? Just like people thought Villa would sell Grealish for cheap?
Sporting was not desperate in the summer of 2019. They thought the Spurs offer was cheap (unsurprising) and far below their £68m valuation.
Agreed, mate. In that sense, we're really lucky no big guns with big money were in for him. And also we desperately needed a midfielder in January, with those injuries.
Dare to say, we were also on the course of missing CL or even Europe all together, and this smells like a "panic" buy.
United have kept track of Bruno Fernandes since 2017. Football scouting isn't a science with a team of geeks looking at multiple screens analysing data and sorting it into pie charts.
Often an ex-player will recommend someone and a scout will have a look. Bruno was spotted because he was a tactically advanced player. That came from his time in Italy. Then he played under a great manager, Jorge Jesus. Mourinho knows Bruno and is a big big fan and watched him improve under Jesus. Mourinho is supposed to think Bruno is as close a thing to a sure thing as he is basically an Italian style 10 but with the attributes for England. It's fair to assume he had mentioned him once or twice at United.
Sporting have a lot of debt problems. They had to raise €65 million by the end of January to pay debtors and avoid serious penalties that would come into effect if the debt was not cleared by that date. They also needed to buy players (as a club does) but had no money. They assumed (incorrectly) in the summer that someone would stump up. But the people controlling the pursestrings are not the ones who identify talent. I would guess that Levy and Woodward said "How old? And he's still in Portugal? How much?...Pass"
Levy is a tight bastard. Mourinho knows this " the player is of a level and value that is not for us" and he also knows that Woodward is so incompetent that he cannot make a deal even when we have a clear shot. Mourinho said "So Bruno Fernandes coming or no? They went to Lisbon for what? Coming or no?"
So from that perspective it's a panic buy for us and a bloody fortuitous one.
As for Grealish, he won't come cheap if Villa stay up. Nor should he. He's top quality, so you pay top dollar.