Rival watch

You don't know any of that for a fact though, do you. The word at the time was that the club just decided to keep him. The player just may not have fancied coming here if a team with the resources of Utd were sniffing around. At least Levy pursued the player and tried to get him for us, if a lot of the stereotypes about Levy are true he wouldn't have even tried with Lo Celso coming. We were also trying for Dybala at the same time (iirc) and perhaps he just tried to juggle too many deals at once.

 

We get some transfer business right and some wrong. That will always be true whoever is the manager and whoever is the Chairman. Surely what actually happened is that we were trying to get Ndombele, Lo Celso and Fernandes but one depended on Eriksen leaving. We decided to prioritise Ndombele and Lo Celso. No one argued against that at the time. Now based on 10 games that Fernandes has played we seem to have got it wrong.

 

Thank **** nobody on this forum watches Serie A, or we'd be getting a post every time Paulo Dybala scores for Juve too...

 

Fernandes is clearly a very good player, but it’s ridiculous to judge him a true success or failure after 10 games.

I think in comparing him to, say, Lo Celso, who is also excellent, it’s also a false economy. Fernandes is playing further forward for United with a coherent midfield around him to do the dog work (McTominay and Fred who have both really stepped up this season). GLC is having to do everything for us and has a lot less freedom going forwards because we don’t have a midfield around him with the same capabilities United do.

As good as Fernandes appears to be, I don’t think there’s any guarantee that he’d be able to replicate it with his teammates at Spurs. Of course you could also argue whether that’s Levy’s fault or not...

 

We see Dybala too but it’s more annoying because Bruno is doing it for a direct rival

 

My annoyance is that Bruno will help Utd get a CL place while Spurs will either miss out on Europe or be in Europa League (tbh I’d rather miss out completely than be in that competition to be knocked out by Basel or some other random team in the last 16)

 

The issue there is where do people stop with the "We could've signed him but LEEEEVEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!" argument stops?

I have to ask because I saw somebody doing the exact same thing on r/coys earlier, saying that Levy being a cheapskate is what led to Eden Hazard choosing the Chavs over us...as opposed to what actually happened, namely that he wanted a team with CL football which we weren't courtesy of a combination of Ivica Olic and Bastian Schweinsteiger not burying their penalties, UEFA not bothering to fix a clear flaw in their CL criteria until after we exposed that flaw (and were compensated with...**** all, actually), and The Honest & Humble Saint Harris of Redknapp chucking our season off a cliff because he was too busy auditioning for the England job to focus on the job he had

Same goes for Dybala, as I touched on sometime last week when one of the anti-Levy Twitter feeds was on a rampage, trying to say Levy was too cheap to sign Dybala as if chucking a few million extra Juve's way is what would have sorted the image rights issue even though that's patently not the case as that's not how that even works

 

out of curiosity, how do the image rights thing work (i actually don't know)?

 

I agree with some of the Bruno frustrations by some but disagree with that.

I always want to be involved in European competition, whether it’s CL or EL. It’s an opportunity of a trophy and with the improvement of our rivals in the league, trying to win the EL may be our best bet of getting CL football. It also gives us the chance in certain games to experiment with the side and provide opportunities for the likes of Sess/ Skipp/ Parrott etc that they wouldn’t have gotten in the CL.

 

Yeah totally understandable. But the United players we’d want to fix that issue for us would be Wan-Bisakka and McTominay IMO, having Bruno wouldn’t have made our defence better this season, even if he’s a very good player.

I’d certainly take EL football though. Like DH says depending on how you treat it it could be a serious chance at a trophy or a valuable opportunity to give fringe players time. There are financial benefits to it too I’m sure, obviously not as good as being in the CL but still some cash banked, which is more important than ever right now.

 

Varandas(Sporting president) has explained why a switch fell through:

“At the end of June, we had become aware that we were going to sell Bruno,” Varandas told Portuguese

“Bruno’s sale was very conditioned by his return. If Sporting refused a bid of €35m, we would have to give his agent €5m. This clause was made public irresponsibly.

“It was one of the things that seriously penalised us. And it was only in this window that Sporting took that weight off our shoulders, to go and negotiate.”

“There are no non-negotiable players,” he added. “Bruno Fernandes is the proof. And it was an obligation. We wouldn’t be able to reach €115m without [selling] him.

“With the sale in January, for €63m practically certain, it was shown that we did well to resist and not to accept the proposal of Tottenham.”

Bruno Fernandes :

"As you all know, Tottenham made a lot of proposals for me. Everything was right with me—or practically should be. I never made any big demands, my manager was always dealing with the financials. It was and is my goal to play in England, Sporting you know that, everyone knows that, and there were conditions for things to be done. But Sporting understood that the value was not enough, and I have to respect the decision."

Varandas on the details of the Spurs proposal :

"It was 'impossible' to retain Bruno Fernandes, but we did it. We prepared for his sale by putting a fair price on him, and we had bids, but the only serious offer was from Tottenham and that was €45 million (£40 million/$50 million) plus another €20m in bonuses for winning the Premier League and the Champions League. Those are difficult objectives, so we chose not to accept.


You think it’s ok to offer ‘if Spurs win the league‘ as a bonus incentive when we haven’t won a league for over half a century...it was just Levy trying to pull the wool due to our recent skirmishes near the top of the league....plus is trying enough? Yeah he tried it’s ok...big clubs get what they want...we need to just look around us with those we try to mix with. He perhaps had too many deals to juggle at once? He had no problem juggling 7 deals when we sold Bale. He didn’t get Dybala and Lo Celso was a loan made permanent the following January. So I guess well done to Levy for getting one over the line. It’s laughable that the blokes poor transfer activities get lauded by some of our fan base as him being shrewd like that gets us anywhere...the talent we have missed out on because Levy doesn’t have any serious balls when it comes to the team, is shocking.

Hopefully one day we will realise this man/ENIC have no real interest in steering us towards glory...if we get their then fine but it’s not because he/ENIC are hell bent on getting us their...it will be due a culmination of events...like under Poch.

The guy even put the brakes on transfers at a time when this club was at it’s strongest most appealing in the last 60 years...he’s pathetic

top notch property developer though but has zero vision of the football team...He obviously doesn’t have a set up that links him well with what the team requires but he delivered a stadium and great training facilities...I don’t want to win the stadium wars.

This deal was well within our capabilities

 

Fernandes is also being aided by scoring lots of penalties, which simply wouldn't be the case if we'd have signed him.

 

As outlined here

In a football context, image rights are, simply put, the player’s likeness – that is, his image, his name, his nickname, his voice, his signature, and all other characteristics unique to the player.

Image rights deals enable the player to exploit that likeness for commercial value, i.e. through sponsorship and endorsement activities.

If the player’s image has independent commercial value, then the player will often seek to create an image rights company (IRC).

There could be tax benefits involved in setting up an IRC. While the player’s wages will be taxed at 45%, the license fee paid by the club to the IRC is taxed at corporation tax rates, which are currently set at 20% (in the near future, this rate may be reduced to as low as 15 per cent).

As an example, a player earning £5,000,000 per year in basic salary without an IRC would take home £2,650,000 after taxes (including national insurance contributions).

If that same player took a £4,000,000 basic salary and a £1,000,000 licensing fee was negotiated between his IRC and his club, there would, overall, be less tax (around £270,000 per year) to pay now. However, for a UK player with a UK IRC, there may be additional tax to pay in future.

What tanked the Dybala deal was the fact that Dybala doesn't own his image rights, he sold them several years ago to his now-former agent Pierpaolo Triulzi - and it's the "former" part of that sentence where things get a bit, well...Spursy, because even though Dybala terminated his dealings with Triulzi in 2017, which in theory would have also severed the image rights contract, instead Triulzi clung onto the image rights from his Maltese-based tax bolthole company Star Image Company screaming "breach of contract" at anyone who got close enough, with Triulzi threatening to sue Dybala almost as soon as the Premier League transfer window slammed shut last summer

 

i see, when does the image rights expire or at what point does dybala ever get to move?

 

Selling image rights should be classed as third party ownership and banned. It's stupid.

 

Presumably when he gets some suitably vicious lawyers

This is where things get that little bit more ****ed, though: in 2018 Triulzi brought a claim against Dybala to the CAS, and against all laws of logic the CAS found in Triulzi's favour and ordered Dybala to pay compensation even though it's pretty obvious this is yet another case of a South American prospect being pressured into signing whatever's put in front of them when they're 17-18 and having that hang over their heads for the rest of their career - in this case, the €40m in damages Triulzi is demanding

Especially when it's clearly a former agent trying to get a big payday

The fact that, at least according to Transfermarkt, Triulzi either has no clients or isn't divulging who they are further underlines just how shady the entire situation is

 

Wigan have gone into administration:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/53247333

I doubt that they'll be the last to do so, unfortunately.

 

Can't wait for the PFA to try and blame everyone but themselves for this...

 

Levy knew we weren’t ever getting Dybala

I mean imagine making everything public like it’s very possibly happening then to reveal that some darn Image rights have popped up and scuppered the move.

Surely at the top it would go something like

‘I want Dybala’

‘ok let’s see if it can be done’

sends out his scout, scout comes back

‘They want 80 mill plus whatever it takes to release Dybala from his image rights’

‘image rights?...wt...how much will that be?’

‘about 15 mill’

‘15....what? can’t be done...forget it...we won’t pay it...oh but before you go...get it made public that we are in for Dybala let’s give the fans some Bantz’

Spurs to replace Eriksen with £80 Million Argentine Superstar Dybala

deadline day arrives

‘Now can you announce that we can’t get the deal done because of them image rights Dybala’s agent mentioned when we initially spoke?’

‘yes Mr Levy’

‘Hey...at least I tried eh but these image rights turned up’

‘yes Mr Levy’

‘ok, have a good day’

 

I remember when Jimmy Greaves left Milan for Spurs. Chelsea offered him 120 quid a week but he preferred a 60 quid job at Spurs. Times have changed!!!!!