Newcastle had been prepared to sell Sissoko for £15m-£21m before the 2016 Euros.
£15m-£21m.
Levy, after managing to save some pennies by:
opting for Janssen over Batshuayi;
pulling our interest in Wijnaldum (too darned expensive at £25m);
deciding Mane's wage demands of £100k a week might eat into his annual bonus;
leaving poor GKN holed up in an Travelodge for a month;
pissing everyone off with a £12m offer for Zaha in the middle of August;
ended up splurging £30m on a massive £15m-£21m Hobson's-Choice donkey.
That's the same Hobson's-Choice donkey to whom he dished out a 4-year contract extension three years later; a contract extension that had nothing to do with Poch (Poch's own words). Doesn't that speak volumes?...
In the middle of this 2016 summer of ecstasy, he annoyed his Head of Recruitment so much by his (deliberate or otherwise) failure to get our preferred (perfectly obtainable) targets-or simply complete deals in a, you know, timely fashion-that he tendered his resignation in the middle of a transfer window. Have you ever-in your life-heard of a Head of Recruitment resigning during a transfer window?
You will recall that the summer of 2015 was also a real hoot. And for those of you looking for a refresher, here are some quotes from WBA's chairman in relation to our shambolic pursuit of Saido Berahino.
Striker wanted by Spurs posts on Twitter his anger at Albion chairman Jeremy Peace for blocking move to White Hart Lane
www.telegraph.co.uk
Peace later released a statement accusing Spurs of unsettling Berahino in what he described as “an unfortunate episode."
He said: “We have a key player who has been very unsettled by antics which were designed to get him out of our club cheaply. Those tactics have continued despite my making our position clear in my first conversation with Daniel Levy on this subject in mid-August. I said selling Saido so late in the window was not on our agenda.
“Tottenham’s offers failed substantially to reflect Saido’s true value while the timing made no allowance for our own recruitment of a suitable replacement for a proven Premier League goalscorer. Saido has been unsettled to the point where our head coach has not felt able to select him for our last three games. We are now left with the task of repairing the damage created by this unfortunate episode.”
The same tired tropes. Same as it ever was.
www.dailymail.co.uk
www.transfermarkt.co.uk
