A couple of things being mostly lost here in the price discussion. Firstly, the PL market is insanely inflated, and is reflected in prices across the board. The midfield rebuild we need is very likely to cost us very, very large sums of money. You can argue that a certain amount is too much for Anderson, but you can make that same argument for almost every transfer fee nowadays, unless there’s a buy out clause or it’s for a hidden gem (which are incredibly hard and risky to find).
Secondly, we’ll have a shortlist of CM targets and we’ll end up buying the ones who want to come to us and who we feel we can do the most reasonable deals on. If Brighton are holding out for £110 million for Beleba and Anderson can be done for £85, then we’ll go for the latter. But it could be the other way around, or there could be a better deal to be done for Wharton or someone else. But at this stage it’s anyone’s guess the real amounts Wharton, Anderson, Baleba and whoever else we target will be valued at by their clubs come next summer, and what the competition for each player will be.
Secondly, we’ll have a shortlist of CM targets and we’ll end up buying the ones who want to come to us and who we feel we can do the most reasonable deals on. If Brighton are holding out for £110 million for Beleba and Anderson can be done for £85, then we’ll go for the latter. But it could be the other way around, or there could be a better deal to be done for Wharton or someone else. But at this stage it’s anyone’s guess the real amounts Wharton, Anderson, Baleba and whoever else we target will be valued at by their clubs come next summer, and what the competition for each player will be.
