It's laughable, I have no idea what they're actually doing, their squad is piss poor and thin on the ground. It has holes all over the place and yet they want to go out and send £180m on 3 big money signings, whilst making a load of sales which will make their squad even weaker again.
Really does seem they're wasting their time with keita, but they're still pursuing it and planting this "he only wants to play for Liverpool" rubbish, for both players. Their strategy doesn't follow the way fsg want to work at all.
They are not willing to spend the money required to get either player mate, it's one reason why they leaked all the crap about VVD - to ensure they where the only bidder and Saints would accept a fee around 45m at most, which they then could recoup by selling Sakho to Palace etc for 30m - at least in theory.
Sadly for them - it blew up in there faces, and now they have a situation where if they don't pay 60-70m they won't have a chance, combined with them struggling to find any buyer for Sakho near that price (Palace have already moved on, Stoke another link are doing similar and bringing in other cb's)
I fully expect them NOT to get VVD - and they will wrap it up as 'doing the honourable thing' after their statement - class and dignity etc etc etc
Keita - they are 'bidding' on a player with a ridiculously low ball initial offer of 50'odd million, for a player RB Leipzig have said is not for sale and who they leaked a willingness to pay 70m for - so why go in with a low ball offer if they want him that badly, all it's gonna do is annoy the selling club further.
ONLY chance they have if they genuinely do want both players is to force transfer requests from them, for the player to do that when the clubs have not allowed a approach would 100% mean that the rs have agreed to pay the player the loyalty bonus they will have to give up by submitting a request, given they have already been done for tapping up kids and openly admitted tapping up VVD this summer - that would be fuel on the fire and would clearly indicate they have done it again.
I'm still not 100% sure that the club didn't purposefully leak the stuff about VVD in order to scupper the deal as they can't afford him -yet their fans demanded him, now with events they have an excuse if they don't buy him.
Salah, Robertson, and say Chamberlain and De Vrij will be their business this summer i reckon.
