"Damien Duff was not worth 17 million..."

[LenSharkey]

lets clear up one detail often cited wrongly - there would have been no bidding war betwixt utd and chelski for duff - a bid of no less than 17.7 mil would have triggered the buy out clause and then if two or more clubs have made that offer then its down to the player to discuss terms and decide for himself which club he goes to.
i dont think there would have been even a bidding war over his personal terms as i believe the boy is red mad- he'd have come to us as long as the terms were half decent (i.e. on par with first teamers).
it did seem a lot of money but the boys class and red as they come and gill is a bit silly mentioning it in these terms.
duff though is nothing if not level headed and it certainly wont upset him what gill said, he'll see it as the truth as he admitted it himself.
if chelski hadnt been so unconcerned with fees duff would still be at blackburn and fergie would be seriously looking at him for next season.

 

[devilish]

Huge mistake not signing him, He is the best left winger in the world at the moment and he is only going to get better.If he reminds me of anyone it is the great Diego Maradonna,have a look at his last two goals and you will see what I mean.The scary thing is he is only going to get better.I was gutted at the time when we didnt sign him because it was self evident that he was going to become that good,the reason being that he would be playing with much better players.The way he played with Blackburn,with inferior players indicated that he could turn it on under any circumstances.Sorry Fergie but you got it wrong on this one ,big time.

And I thought that Ryan Giggs is the best left winger in the world

Ohh comeon, ok Duff is good, but 17m!!!. He is no were near to a Giggs or VDV, and regarding Ronaldo, well he is not as good as Duff at the moment, but he has more Potentiality and is more versatile. Ok its premature to say that Ronaldo will be on the long run better than Duff (remember that you are comparing Ronaldo with a player 5 years older) but personally I see Ronaldo as a better player to an 18 year old Duff

 

[nickm]

C'mon, Duff is no Maradona.

He is a damn good player though, he would have fitted us perfectly. But 17m, remember, is about what we got for Beckham before all the extras came into it. We've overpaid in the market way too often recently so there had to be a point at which we said 'enough'. Duff happened to be the player that happened to.