Definitely a safer option but Chelsea wont sell to us unless its silly money which we wont pay and heās not worth for the role he will play.
Heāll end up at a mid table club where heāll be the focal point and tbf he deserves to start somewhere he basically got shunted for newer shinier toys after a pretty decent season at Chelsea. Iām not his biggest fan either by any means but he shouldnāt be rotting in the Chelsea reserves either.
So James Pearce is saying no RB will be bought to provide cover if Neco Williams is soldā¦ thatās almost a guarantee of one being bought to me. Its the exact kind of club message heās been fed multiple times to help with the clubs negotiations.
Still, I think itās a fairly safe assumption at this point that journalists like Pearce put out whatever they are told to by the club. Often thatās that we are going to go with Danny Ward instead of buying Alisson, that we have absolutely no interest in Thiago, and we will be relying on Origi to cover the front three.
How does it actually help negotiations? Surely, irrespective of what we say publicly, when we pick up the phone to whoever it is weāre trying to buy a player from theyāre going to be acutely aware that we are indeed in the market for a replacement.
I get that we donāt want to publicise what weāre up to but no selling club is going to be pointing to an article in The Athletic and saying ābut you said you werenāt going to be buying anyone.ā
To me itās like buying a house and being somewhat aloof. Ok Iām kinda interested but I already have a house and thereās plenty of others. Iāll take your house but not overly assed.
As @Redbj said, hardly a master negotiating strategy but itās a tried and tested one.
Well to use a real example it seemed to help on the left back pursuit.
From whatās been revealed since we seemed to have 5 or more targets, its unclear how many we had approached but Tsimikas seemed to be one of the first if not the first. His club asked for Ā£14/15m or something along those lines.
We next, very publicly, approached Norwich for Jamal Lewis, now the important thing is we could well have signed Lewis, it wasnāt a bluff. We offered MORE than weād offered for Tsimikas but less than was asked for him. Norwich seemed to think they were the only party so seemed confident enough to reject it and leak publicly that they wanted Ā£20m, but with hints they could be negotiated downwards (they eventually sold for around the Ā£15m so the hints were probably correct). Olympiakos then restarted the negotiations effectively asking for what weād offered Norwich more or less and we ended up with our prime target (at least it seems that way).
When there are multiple players across the world who can do the job you want and at least some of their clubs are at least hopeful of a sale it doesnāt harm to be public about one of the āOK, not going to complain if we get him but would prefer the other guy a bit moreā options. It shows that you really do have options within the relevant kind of price range.
Letās make up another example, say we were going to go for another CB. We approach Lille (who are in financial dire straits) for Botman, Marseille for Caleta-Car (a pursuit already reasonably public anyway) and Inter for Bastoni.
We keep the negotiations with the two clubs in financial messes quiet as we contact them hoping to buy a CB for Ā£25-30m so open the bid at Ā£20-25m. They come back with valuations of Ā£35-40m. We quietly walk away.
We then start very publicly pursuing Caleta-Car a player we already nearly signed and offer Ā£25-30m.
One of three things now happens.
They accept and we get Caleta-Car, no problem.
They reject the initial approach leaving Inter and Lille (both of which really need the money) wondering whether they should restart negotiations with us in hopes of getting the Ā£25-30m we offered Marseille.
None of the clubs budge so we then decide if we really need a CB, if so does it have to be one of those 3 and if it does which one presents the best deal at the prices theyāll accept.
Even if the 3rd scenario happens weāve lost nothing but a bit of time on the phone or in meetings. But it could end up saving us Ā£5-10m.
Itās only a theory but we seem to have done that and similar things in recent years. Not quite so open and honest in negotiations. Like haggling down the price on Thiago because we were broke, look we couldnāt even afford Wernerā¦ then days after Thiago was purchased a deal for Jota for around the same final cost as Werner was completed. Or negotiations with Schalke over taking Kabak on loan but not needing him THAT much as we still had Matip who would be back from injury soon so if they insisted in the obligation instead of option to buy the deal was offā¦ only for Matip to be declared out for the season as soon as Kabak was in the door.
We definitely use what goes into the press and when to our advantage in negotiations. Whether the other party believes it fully I donāt know but it causes no harm trying to gain an advantage.