catcherintherye
Player Valuation: £80m
Hope for something today.
Don't want to see signing Arnautovic, which is to be honest IMO, not particularly exciting, turn into another "it's on/it's off/it's on again" saga.
For us, signing players from clubs like Stoke, Southampton, West Ham, Swansea, there is always an extra effort involved to prise the player away I feel, as in relative terms most players who don't wear blue-tinted specs probably don't see an awful lot of difference between us and them, such in particular has been the damage inflicted by Martinez over the last 2 years.
You would like to think we have got more or less a solid indication from Arnautovic that he is joining with just the practicalities to be sorted out.
I think Arnautovic, at the price quoted would fit the category of an astute piece of business. Everton of 12 months ago he'd be a big signing. Now we have lots of money we are underwhelmed but I think deals like this are the new Marcus Bent signings. Lads who can do a job without breaking the bank.
What I hope from this deal is we can offload some of the average in the squad we have, ie Cleverley, Lennon and Mcgeady and maybe recoup close to what we are paying (if not more) for Arnautovic. If we can do that I wouldn't rule out the possibility of later into the window move for Mata.
You are right about blue tinted specs. We have a belief in where we are and Moshiri has a vision, but we are not there yet. At present we would be taking the best player from a middle rung team for ourselves a middle rung team. At 12.5 million pounds you can't really knock that.