brieverton
Player Valuation: £50m
We do seem to drag things out but fans only ever see things through the prism of events at their own clubs so in reality it may not be much better elsewhere.
It could be explained if you think we are trying to punch above our weight with transfers and compete with "bigger" clubs but that isn't the case at all. How many of our recent signings would be good enough now to interest the top six?
I'm not saying we shouldn't be ambitious with targets but it seems to me that Brands and Co. would have a fairly accurate idea, % wise, of our chances of signing each player from the start bearing in mind the fee, personal terms, and other interested clubs.
We should be able to fish out interest early, but the pivotal thing is having viable and alternative targets lined up simultanously, and early enough in the window to be able to react for a fair fee.
The be all and end all has be be that we require an exceptional scouting system, to identify players off the radar but who will prove good enough, sooner or later into their contracts. It doesn't seem like that is the case.
We spent all of last summer persuing Zouma who is really only an average PL centre back when we already had Holgate whose future here then was entirely up in the air. By all means go for Gabriel if he is considered the best we can do but its groslly negligent not to have viable alternatives that we can target, and stop waiting on players and their agents to use our interest to smoke out better offers.
