I don’t recall a crazy purported United bid for him but I may be misremembering.
Indeed. There wasn't (IIRC anyway), but we were talking about CE and the notion of selling our best players at their peak.
They would have paid us heaven and earth for Dele.
Who knows... I don't recall much beyond general rumoured interest anyway, so we're left hypothesising again (much like above re CE).
Mbappe from Monaco to PSG is really the only nine figure transfer in history the selling club didn’t unambiguously win. The market has reached a place where it’s just objectively more than any single footballer is worth.
It is now, but the Neymar/Mbappe window (that fucked the entire market thereafter) was Summer 17 so the trickle-down effects wouldn't have been felt elsewhere the same summer.
(Personally, I think Mbappe has still to prove he was 'worth' the 200m+ and thus Monaco got a cracking deal..... I definitely don't think Neymar was 'worth' similar and it looks like PSG don't stand to recover a penny on either in fees and have no CL trophy to show for it.)