Right, it´s just taking the piss now isn´t it?
As Evertonians, we´re used to every summer being the same – the “meeja” try to sell our players for us. We´ve seen it non-stop with Baines for three years FFS, and I´ve lost count of the amount of times Fellaini was about to join Chelsea. The latest crap involved an imaginary Baines “transfer request”.
So whilst I don´t want to fall into the trap of saying “why should we sell?”, I think we have to come to a point where we put our foot down as a club and say that Marouane and Leighton stay unless a stupid bid come in for them.
To be fair to Martinez, he couldn´t have been clearer in stating that Everton do not need to sell and we don´t sell cheap. Neither player has handed in a transfer request.
So why does it still feel that the sale is inevitable?
We had a decade of being made to feel like a small club due to the self-serving interests of our previous manager. We all remember “knife to a gunfight”, for example. And it seems to be a lingering legacy to the point where we fully expected to be shafted every transfer window for whoever is our current top player.
How about we just draw a line in the sand? We´re just a few days away from the transfer window closing. “Dithering” David Moyes has done his usual in the transfer market and left it late, but why should we bail him out of the situation by letting our two stars go on the cheap?
Here´s the thing Blues – WE´RE the club in a position of power here. Moyes is facing a maiden transfer window of abject failure, whilst we´re fully prepared to go with what we got for the sake of stability during our new managers important first season.
As the club with the desired assets, we should be charging a hefty premium at this point. I´m not going all Kopite here as they did with Suarez – the reality is every player has their price. But that price is in our court. We´ll be expected to pay a premium on any late transfers we have to do if we sold the two, so why shouldn´t United be subject to the same treatment?
With that said, it´s time for United to put up or shut up. Moyes, pay the premium we expect and make it worth our while to decimate our squad in late August in a key season – in my opinion, approximately £42-45m hard cash – or simply f*** off.