I cannot either...but suffice to say if they won't talk at all then were not going to bid because they will take the offer and toss it in the bin when they see who it came from.
Conversely if we are talking nobody is going to here about a deal until its already done.
Quite a few clubs this year shooting themselves in the foot it's not like Soton or RBL are going to build into anything more than they are and I would have to believe younger players and agents are looking at them under a different way then they used to.
This is surely nothing more than sour grapes.
Players are attracted by the allure to make money in a short period of time when their career is viable, and it is the same in every sport. Take a look at something like Basketball, a poor team will draft a really good player if their pick is high, get them on a rookie contract. Three or four years down, they will offer the player a maximum deal that he would be dumb to turn down, because it is guaranteed money. It gives the team another 5 years, three or four of which they can try and build a contending team around this player with the addition of several more stars.
In football, it is the same thing that happens. Young players come from unknown teams or continents all looking to make money and this is not something that will change because a club has refused to sell players to bigger teams.
Players are going to Spurs, and will continue to do so because they offer good wages; they are not in the same class as a Liverpool, Arsenal, City, Chelsea or United, but they are a class above most other teams in the world. Arsenal this window have refused to sell any of their stars, with the risk that they may lose them for nothing the next summer, and this is not something that will stop players from moving there.
A player earning €15,000 will move to a team where he can earn €30,000 to €40,000 and try and get to a top team where he can earn four or five times that in time. That is the conveyor belt. At the same time, teams that sign these players also have to keep them for some time so that they can maximize their earning potential off a sale; that is the way the finances in football work.
The way some fans have been behaving, one would almost think that it is a right for this outfit to get some of these players, and if that is not something that happens, then a great injustice has occurred. The reality is this, Leipzig always had the upper hand because the player was contracted to them, and they only bought him last season, Southampton were always in the driving seat because they gave Van Dijk a huge contract extension that has 5 years left to run. In the same regard, Liverpool can choose to not sell Coutinho this season, or the next three because there is no pressure after the long term contract extension he signed.
This at the end of the day is the bitter truth.
