Just to put my previous post into context, I believe (after we have bought in 2 or 3 first team players) we will have a limited budget and therefore we wont have the funds to go out and spend 100's of millions on our fantasy bench football team (like City!), therefore we will absolutely need to be looking at teams that don't make it in order to provide better legs in certain positions from our bench. There are players from Leicester, Southampton et all that will give us that when you consider how many we are losing/letting go/managed game time, We will need a certain amount of depth in the squad who can run, cover injuries and who can play in the cup games..so yes, Leicester may have been great a few years ago but to discount what they have now based on this season, and how we could utilise some of the players who are all looking at pay cuts/relegation/release clauses is a bit short sighted. There is bench value here!
Don't get me wrong, I would much rather be spunking 250-500m over the space of a transfer window on shiny new players to sit on the bench but it's just not realistic and it doesn't always work! I'm not saying we are beggars but I would say we are certainly pretty bloody good at spotting value.
Agree to a certain extent on my £35m valuation of Kelleher maybe being a bit high but from a negotiation stand point, you should always over price so that you get closer to the actual figure you feel is appropriate for the player. Starting low or on the actual valuation you place on the player will 9 times out of 10 mean you not getting a true and fair value. Liverpool are very good at spotting this flaw in other teams. That extra 10m bargaining power, if we are only saying he is worth 25m, could be the difference between picking up a potential player coming the other way for £50m instead of £60m.
It depends how much an initial 'no' is worth.
