Is it so wrong to question what the delay is? These players have been linked for ages and still haven't signed. Pre season has started so it's not exactly ideal is it? There's been a lot of hype about this new era without much evidence of anything being done yet. Koeman has gone from about 15% on the GOT poll to the new Messiah. Meanwhile Utd are about to make their fourth major signing for £100m.
Obviously I hope it all works out brilliant but I think we need to see how this summer actually pans out before we start going around telling everyone how massive we are.
It depends on whether there has been a delay at all. Realistically, Koeman has been in the job for all of 8 days. He's been on holiday, players have been/still are on Holiday. Agents will likely have more than 1 player on their books, and most do. If for arguments sake, they have 10 players on their books, each one will demand a certain amount of their time for the fee they charge, so Mata's agent, whoever it may be may have spent maybe 14-21 hours max on his client? I'm surmising, but the point stands, the timescales we are talking about in football and business terms are absolutely tiny, negligible really.
The difference with other clubs is that they have been chasing the signings they are making now as they had a fair idea of the position they would be in for long long before the 1st July. Everton has undergone massive change in the past few months, meaning that our ambitions have changed, for the better, and with that, our realistic targets have also changed. Players that we had put the groundwork in on may no longer match the level we are targeting. The assumption of most seems to be that a team is contacted about a player, permission is given to speak to them and the contact is made with the player leading to a signature, and its all done and dusted within a matter of days.
The reality is, that even with last minute signings on deadline day, there is likely to have been nearly 6 months of work gone in prior to the actual signing. Butter the player up, find out if the contact with the club is worthy of their time, will the player be at all interested, what kind of wage will he be likely looking for? How will he fit in the team? What does his purchase mean for the wages structure? Hundreds of questions to be answered and poured over, and some think that 8 days, 2 of which being a weekend for the administrative staff, is a delay.
I'm just glad that some of you's are not my project lead.
