BrainOfLevy
Michael Carrick
This is something that really intrigues me, especially being a fan of a club with Daniel Levy as chairman, where he seems to view himself as a connoisseur of the art. I want to ask, does anyone have any idea of how football negotiations work exactly?
The reason I ask, is because I wonder what happens that takes so much time. It's obviously not like Football Manager, where you simply increase your bid and that's that. There seems to be a lot more calculation involved. I was just wondering what it is that forces clubs to suddenly pay the fee demanded. Or what it is that forces clubs to accept a fee that they previously were not going to.
Like Levy with Vertonghen. What exactly was it that made them finally accept? I just feel like it's a really interesting subject, but I can't quite get my head around it. I can see that both clubs will set an initial valuation of a player. They may then come up with an individual strategy for each deal where they know how they are going to increase their bid, or how they are going to let a certain amount of time pass before making another move etc.
It would just be really interesting to know how clubs set a valuation, how they judge the balance of power. Like us with Ade. Obviously we have an idea of what is acceptable to us. We know the fee we want to pay and the wages we want to offer. But City also have an idea of a fee. We want a striker and they know that. But we know that they have to get rid of him in order to free up wages. So what is the occurrence that makes one of those clubs decide to blink first? And do they not know they were always going to blink? It just seems like they must both know how it is going to go. Both clubs must have weighed each other up perfectly and know exactly what they need and are capable of doing. It's like they are just letting time pass in order for everything to fall into place.
And that seems to be the only thing that changes anything. It's time. And it seems like as a club, there is a spectrum of what you can choose. You can either choose to be a club that pays the fee to get the players you want in as quickly as possible, or you decide to be a club that waits it out for the highest possible fee, regardless of on field performance. And your standing as a club would dictate what you can be - a club with less financial resources may be more on the side of waiting it out, while one more flush with cash would see the benefit of sorting their business early.
But there was a good post in the transfer ITK thread. If we wait it out too long we potentially lose out on points that may be vital come the end of the season because we didn't sort our business. Like when we waited to sell Berbatov, we had to play 2 or 3 games without a player who's head wasn't in it, and we didn't get a replacement, so we dropped points. But the plus point was that we got a really good fee. So we forced United into it eventually, but we probably surprised them, because they would expect us to rather get our business done sooner and not jeopardise the team's performance in the meantime. It seems like time is the only thing that hurries anything along. The time passed enough that we forced United into paying because they wanted their striker, and we also strengthened our negotiating position because we could say we wouldn't have time to find a replacement, so the fee needs to be high to compensate.
So from this I would deduce that even though I am a massive Levy fan, I wouldn't actually class him as any more of a special negotiator than his contemporaries. He simply falls - extremely - on the side of the spectrum that values the higher fee over getting the business sorted early. And that has its plus points, but also it's negatives. In the Berbatov scenario, it set us back a year. Sure, we got £30 mil for him, but we basically had to spend that anyway just to get us out of trouble in January. Maybe if we sold Berbatov for less of a fee 2 weeks before, we could have gotten a quality replacement in, maybe still had a bit left over to strengthen another area, and maybe wouldn't have had a season without European football, and less gate receipts and money that came from that anyway. Plus the inflated fees we paid for Palacios and Defoe because we were in a desperate situation cancelled out the inflated fee we got for Berbatov.
That example doesn't include Levy getting good prices for squad players that we don't need any more. £7mil for Mido was great business. He gets good fees for the likes of Krancjar and Corluka because he demands high fees. He obviously judged that the buying clubs in these scenarios valued having the clubs on board sooner and training with them rather than saving a bit on the fee. But he's also demanded high fees for the likes of Gomes and Bentley and hasn't been able to move them on. Maybe they will eventually turn out to be good options to have in the squad, but maybe if we accepted lesser fees we could have replaced them with other players who could have added real value to our team over the course that certain players have been frozen out.
Anyway, I don't know what the point of me writing all this was. Maybe to analyse Levy and say he isn't necessarily a supreme negotiator, he just places more value in getting the higher fee rather than getting the business sorted. But I am also interested in seeing if anyone knows how negotiations actually work in football? Or have any insight at all to it? As far as I can see, the thing that moves a deal along isn't that a superb negotiator turns his opposition inside out and leaves them bamboozled before getting the best deal for himself, it's that time moves on so the parameters change slightly. I would guess that clubs have certain values the are willing to pay at certain times, which increase as they get towards the deadline. I used to think that Levy has set certain values on players he wants to buy because if he has to pay any more, the club just wouldn't be able to function. But that clearly isn't the case. He just takes the view that every pound saved counts. I agree, in the sense that we are competing with clubs with far more financial muscle and therefore money saved on one deal could see us be able to buy another player in another deal that we may not have been able to had we just decided to spend the cash or accept a lower bid.
But I think as a club we need to temper our negotiating stance slightly and I hope we have done. Just reel ourselves a little bit more towards the middle of the spectrum. We can't wait until midnight on deadline day in order to accept a high bid, high five ourselves that we finally got what we wanted, only to then realise we haven't got a replacement and that we've dropped points in the first 2 games of the season because we hadn't concluded our business. We need to maybe take a hit on getting the absolute maximum fee in order to have the best players available in the competitive matches, because the money that can be gained from higher finishing positions from higher points, will potentially far outweigh what we saved on a tight deal anyway. Levy said he learnt his lesson from the Berbatov deal. I just hope he has done.
The reason I ask, is because I wonder what happens that takes so much time. It's obviously not like Football Manager, where you simply increase your bid and that's that. There seems to be a lot more calculation involved. I was just wondering what it is that forces clubs to suddenly pay the fee demanded. Or what it is that forces clubs to accept a fee that they previously were not going to.
Like Levy with Vertonghen. What exactly was it that made them finally accept? I just feel like it's a really interesting subject, but I can't quite get my head around it. I can see that both clubs will set an initial valuation of a player. They may then come up with an individual strategy for each deal where they know how they are going to increase their bid, or how they are going to let a certain amount of time pass before making another move etc.
It would just be really interesting to know how clubs set a valuation, how they judge the balance of power. Like us with Ade. Obviously we have an idea of what is acceptable to us. We know the fee we want to pay and the wages we want to offer. But City also have an idea of a fee. We want a striker and they know that. But we know that they have to get rid of him in order to free up wages. So what is the occurrence that makes one of those clubs decide to blink first? And do they not know they were always going to blink? It just seems like they must both know how it is going to go. Both clubs must have weighed each other up perfectly and know exactly what they need and are capable of doing. It's like they are just letting time pass in order for everything to fall into place.
And that seems to be the only thing that changes anything. It's time. And it seems like as a club, there is a spectrum of what you can choose. You can either choose to be a club that pays the fee to get the players you want in as quickly as possible, or you decide to be a club that waits it out for the highest possible fee, regardless of on field performance. And your standing as a club would dictate what you can be - a club with less financial resources may be more on the side of waiting it out, while one more flush with cash would see the benefit of sorting their business early.
But there was a good post in the transfer ITK thread. If we wait it out too long we potentially lose out on points that may be vital come the end of the season because we didn't sort our business. Like when we waited to sell Berbatov, we had to play 2 or 3 games without a player who's head wasn't in it, and we didn't get a replacement, so we dropped points. But the plus point was that we got a really good fee. So we forced United into it eventually, but we probably surprised them, because they would expect us to rather get our business done sooner and not jeopardise the team's performance in the meantime. It seems like time is the only thing that hurries anything along. The time passed enough that we forced United into paying because they wanted their striker, and we also strengthened our negotiating position because we could say we wouldn't have time to find a replacement, so the fee needs to be high to compensate.
So from this I would deduce that even though I am a massive Levy fan, I wouldn't actually class him as any more of a special negotiator than his contemporaries. He simply falls - extremely - on the side of the spectrum that values the higher fee over getting the business sorted early. And that has its plus points, but also it's negatives. In the Berbatov scenario, it set us back a year. Sure, we got £30 mil for him, but we basically had to spend that anyway just to get us out of trouble in January. Maybe if we sold Berbatov for less of a fee 2 weeks before, we could have gotten a quality replacement in, maybe still had a bit left over to strengthen another area, and maybe wouldn't have had a season without European football, and less gate receipts and money that came from that anyway. Plus the inflated fees we paid for Palacios and Defoe because we were in a desperate situation cancelled out the inflated fee we got for Berbatov.
That example doesn't include Levy getting good prices for squad players that we don't need any more. £7mil for Mido was great business. He gets good fees for the likes of Krancjar and Corluka because he demands high fees. He obviously judged that the buying clubs in these scenarios valued having the clubs on board sooner and training with them rather than saving a bit on the fee. But he's also demanded high fees for the likes of Gomes and Bentley and hasn't been able to move them on. Maybe they will eventually turn out to be good options to have in the squad, but maybe if we accepted lesser fees we could have replaced them with other players who could have added real value to our team over the course that certain players have been frozen out.
Anyway, I don't know what the point of me writing all this was. Maybe to analyse Levy and say he isn't necessarily a supreme negotiator, he just places more value in getting the higher fee rather than getting the business sorted. But I am also interested in seeing if anyone knows how negotiations actually work in football? Or have any insight at all to it? As far as I can see, the thing that moves a deal along isn't that a superb negotiator turns his opposition inside out and leaves them bamboozled before getting the best deal for himself, it's that time moves on so the parameters change slightly. I would guess that clubs have certain values the are willing to pay at certain times, which increase as they get towards the deadline. I used to think that Levy has set certain values on players he wants to buy because if he has to pay any more, the club just wouldn't be able to function. But that clearly isn't the case. He just takes the view that every pound saved counts. I agree, in the sense that we are competing with clubs with far more financial muscle and therefore money saved on one deal could see us be able to buy another player in another deal that we may not have been able to had we just decided to spend the cash or accept a lower bid.
But I think as a club we need to temper our negotiating stance slightly and I hope we have done. Just reel ourselves a little bit more towards the middle of the spectrum. We can't wait until midnight on deadline day in order to accept a high bid, high five ourselves that we finally got what we wanted, only to then realise we haven't got a replacement and that we've dropped points in the first 2 games of the season because we hadn't concluded our business. We need to maybe take a hit on getting the absolute maximum fee in order to have the best players available in the competitive matches, because the money that can be gained from higher finishing positions from higher points, will potentially far outweigh what we saved on a tight deal anyway. Levy said he learnt his lesson from the Berbatov deal. I just hope he has done.
