Reports that West Ham cannot afford the asking price Manchester United want for Jesse Lingard are so wide of the mark they can almost be described as nonsense.
The come from The Athletic who claim that the Old Trafford club want £30 million for the attacking midfielder despite the fact that at this point he is not even on the market!
The reality is they can ask for whatever they like but they are certainly not going to get that sort of dough for bloke with a year left on his deal.
As we reported yesterday United have given the 28 year old two weeks to make his mind up on whether he wants to stay at the club or take his chance elsewhere when the Hammers would be favourites for his signature.
According to The Athletic. however, we cannot afford the fee United will ask for a player who has just one year left on his deal before being able to move on a free.
Any thoughts that United will get anywhere near £30 million for a guy who will have little sell on value at the end of a three year deal is fanciful to put it mildly. £15m – £20m is the realistic figure.
We will keep you up to date with all developments on this one.
We simply need to pay what he’s worth to us – there’s nothing else to it. Man Utd can ask for whatever they way and they’re entitled to do that. Us saying ‘he’s not worth £30m’ are probably the same people who get annoyed when Chelsea/Utd fans say Declan Rice isn’t worth £100m.
We know what he brings to the team and we know he doesn’t need to settle in. It’s de-risking him in terms of him being a flop. However, the £30m is SOLELY based on a purple patch run of form. Don’t get me wrong, I think he’s a good player, but he’s not as good as his early form suggests (in my opinion). If he’d been ‘ok’, Utd would have asked for probably £15/18m.
Maybe the reason we’re not prepared to pay so much is Moyes knows the guy is good, but isn’t THAT good. I have no doubt he’ll do a cracking job for us, but I wouldn’t expect the return we initially got for goals and assists.
20 absolute tops. More like 15 to 18 absolute tops.
I agree £18M is the max. If Man U want except we should sign Pereira from West Brom, then sign Lingard on a free in a years time. We can’t keep paying through the nose for players that in 3 years time will be worthless.
I think we’ll end up getting him for about £20m but it will drag on till the end of the window. If he doesn’t sign a new deal for them there’s no incentive for them to keep him beyond this window. Will be plenty of posturing in the mean time though as is always the case in negotiations.
22.5 MIL IS ABOUT THE MOST HE IS WORTH
Moyes gets the best out of a lot of players. Call their bluff and don’t go for him, his form dropped by the end of the season anyway.
I’m getting sick and tired of the guff that’s being spouted by football zone and the athletic. Problem is your right in theory, but probably going to be wrong – £30m is the equivalent to the 100m we want for Rice. It’s like of I didn’t want to move home but someone offers me 500k for my 400k property, I’d be mad not to sell. Fact is villa and everton will waste cash like that to stop other teams buying players at their level, even if it’s over market value. Telling Jesse he’s got 2 weeks to make his mind up is dangerous as we already have 2 massive reasons to join, the bonds hes,l made and European footy, yet he also has those bonds at man u and CL footy.
The athletic are merely trying to attract those kind of teams into a bidding war. To bump the price up. But I can actually see Jesse signing a pre agreement to join us (if we qualify for Europe next season again) and staying at man u for 1 more year if man u don’t get an offer over 20m.
All part of the media narrative that our club is skint (allegedly) and we need to sell before we buy, ie, this then encourages low ball offers for our top talents.