- Feb 12, 2013
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Best post I’ve seen in a very long time!It's hard to be rationale when as fans we want immediate gratification - especially when the media continually pumps "dave to Liverpool, Bob to Man City"
However we have been repeatedly been told it's contracts first. I hope (ITK says) most have been sorted but we are crossing I's and dotting T's. I expect these to be announced over the next few weeks which means no signings announced.
That's not to say we are not working on them, and again per ITK it's not a simple window due to who we want, the Trix complexities, and the world cup. I would suspect we are lining up and pushing as much of these deals as we can but will have to wait.
Additionally the strategy of this makes sense, from when I used to work in FX sales for football clubs. We did so much goal-post shifting due to the attack v defence nature of the window. I.E. just when you though you could put your time and resources into buying a player, man utd would come out of nowhere and start trying to buy our players. Therefore your resources (bonus', contracts) and time kept switching between keeping an existing player and trying to buy a new one. Therefore you continually operated in the grey as to what you could spend.
This is why I like the "key players are not for sale" position of sorting contracts first. It means all attention is shifted onto "attack" trying to shift players we don't want, and buying ones we do. It gives a level of certainty topped up by whatever we offload.
Before you suggest this should be an obvious tactic each window - that's not how the world works sadly.