And of course we did exactly the right thing using the weakness of the loan period as leverage to reduce the price, the loan-plus-option structure was always favorable to us in allowing us to do that.The option to buy after the loan was reportedly £45m, the club paid £30m.
Could be that the club renegotiated with Bayern because his loan period was shit. Bayern didn't want to keep him moping about because he wasn't getting game play there. I can't think of another reason why they would knock a third off the price. We must have initially politely told them to fuck off, so they dropped the price.
But you're right, that structure also allowed us to walk away as well, and when we're at a point of pushing down the price of a player Bayern doesn't want back, what the heck are we doing?
Said it at the time, saying it now, suspect I will be saying it in the future: what we saw during the loan period indicated to me we'd be better off using those resources to find a different player
