Manchester City are expected to sign Elliot Anderson and other clubs have already been busy giving their opinions on the transfer
Manchester City have not yet been able to agree a price for Elliot Anderson with Nottingham Forest. Forest are holding out for a British record fee for the midfielder, and while the Blues recognise that they will be looking for the most favourable terms they can get in terms of how a deal can be structured.
There is still an expectation that Anderson will get the move that he wants and that City want, but there is also a World Cup going on so no great rush to get a picture of the player with Hugo Viana’s arm round him. If he is to be the first signing of the Enzo Maresca era, you probably want the new manager unveiled before then as well.
As City work on haggling for the best price, other clubs have already decided that whatever the final number is will be too expensive. It has been reported on the red side of the Manchester Evening News that a total package of over £120m ‘is considered too high by those in charge of recruitment at Old Trafford and they have no interest in entering a bidding war’.
There will be people at United paid very well to come to that opinion, and it is of course one they are entitled to. The same goes for unnamed Premier League clubs who are reported in the Telegraph as fearing that City buying Anderson will inflate the transfer market.
The answer to both of those, to quote an infamous Premier League transfer saga, might be to ask what is being smoked at Old Trafford and other boardrooms in the country if Anderson’s fee is suddenly seen as so outrageous. It is naive in the extreme if United to have held an interest in Anderson for months without acknowledging what ballpark you would need to be in to buy one of the best midfielders in the league last season.
It is one thing to decide that Anderson at £120m is too expensive, but with United looking at West Ham’s Mateus Fernandes with a price tag of £80m, the pricier signing could end up being much better value. The opposite could also happen, but the point is that cost is determined by how much the player improves their team rather than simply what they cost.
Just as transfers don’t happen in a vacuum, it is remarkable to think how Anderson’s price could inflate a market. It is three years since Arsenal signed Declan Rice for £105m in a similar move that has paid off handsomely for them, and just the one since Liverpool spent £116m on a Leverkusen midfielder who did very little to justify his price while getting a fraction of the scrutiny that Jack Grealish (a £100m player in 2022) got for his move.
Perhaps those clubs worried about inflation are open to certain players being in the top price bracket but just not Anderson. When you see how well the Forest midfielder did last season and all the areas where he excelled, there certainly wasn’t a bracket of player above him in the Premier League.
Surely everybody has now moved on from the old feeling that you don’t pay that sort of money for a midfielder who doesn’t score often, given Rodri won the Ballon d’Or two years ago, Rice has become such a leader with England and nobody leaves left-backs in the changing room any more.
The reasons for other clubs not going for Anderson should have given City pause for thought. If everybody else in your field is coming up with a different answer, it is worth going through your working out again.
In this case though, it is hard to see any serious analysis of the player or the transfer market in the criticism of Anderson’s price. City will pay roughly the going rate having won the battle to convince the player to sign, and next season and beyond will judge how cheap or expensive that turns out to be.
However much unknown there is written into the transfer, there is enough evidence to mean that the dissenting voices coming out before City had even agreed the deal will delight the recruitment team at the Etihad. If other clubs are already trying to take the high ground in not signing Anderson, City can be reassured they are onto something if and when they do get a deal over the line.
You must be logged in to post a comment Login