Foreverinbluedreams wrote:PrezIke wrote:Foreverinbluedreams wrote:PrezIke wrote:I hate to say this but seems doubtful there were three separate negotiations after we not only set the price but paid Porto as this contract indicates.
Once we paid Porto for their share we had to pay the other parties since 3rd party ownership was not allowed even at the time. Otherwise they all could hold us hostage and inflate the price of their shares even more than they clearly did.
Remember how long the transfer took to go through even after the word was it was close to finished? Sure, we won't really know because it's clearly not in City's interests to comment on this, but seems reasonable that this length of time was due to negotiations with all parties to agree on the price of it was just Porto the price would have surely been lower.
If you recall at the time the deal was held up because of the third party ownership, this is what press reports at the time indicated. That suggests we'd struck a deal with Porto but not with the third parties which in turn would suggest that there were separate negotiations.
If it was a given that we'd pay the third parties based on what we paid Porto then what was the hold up?
Either way mate there is still nothing definitive on his price.
Of course nothing is definitive since City will never let us know, but I don't think we should be so dismissive of its plausibility, especially since I am struggling to see the logic of signing the Porto contract without already agreeing to a price for each share's rights with all parties. If we did that then we'd have zero negotiating power.
Reports that it was third party ownership holding up the deal, which I recall, does not mean we signed this contract with Porto without at least verbal agreements with all parties on a price for each share. Why would the other parties sell their shares for a rate less than the price Porto paid for their percentage? That would be quite dumb for such high level, savvy, (like them or not) and sophisticated businesses as third party owners of football players. These are not idiots like an uneducated teenager who signs a bad record contract.
If anything we may have mad to pay more than the rate we paid Porto. But we are not dumb either and probably got all to agree to one price.
I'm not being dismissive, we could well have paid that but I'm not going to blindly accept that because the media told me so, it suits them for the fee to be as high as possible because that makes the story more sensational.
The thing I find most baffling is why would the club indicate to journalists that the price was £32million if it wasn't? What have we got to gain by doing that?
I hear you, and do not mean to be disrespectful. However, I am not just accepting the media's conclusions, nor I doubt are all who believe there is a fairly reasonable amount of evidence to conclude there is a good chance the fee was at least £41.4m. I am using the contract released via Football Leaks that the media reported on (which allowed the public to gain new information which was being disputed without the contract -- previously it was a "source inside City" -- and then as I just posted today, come to conclusions based on general knowledge about negotiating contracts, 3rd party ownership rules, etc.
I actually haven't read one article, blog or post anywhere just yet that has influenced my reasons for suggesting it would seem plausible we spent the 41.4m. I did that on my own, and I am not the media.
I was under the impression that those posters on here and BlueMoon are contending the media's claim that City "may have" paid the 3rd parties at the same rate we paid Porto. However, I just laid out reasons to counter that contention. Of the media articles I have read, btw, none of them seem to suggest the fee is 100% sure, but point to the document's details to break down the percentages, and what it would be if paid out at the same rate.
If you are contending their claim, I just wrote earlier with evidence showing how the claim "City could have negotiated lower fees with other parties," seems b bit implausible. If the other argument is "I don't believe the media," then it seems logical to me that one is contending that the contract we are reading is a fake (please correct me if I am wrong). It could be, yet my sense is that if this is true it might be in City's interests to comment publicly, deny the document's validity, and take Football Leaks to to court for libel (I'm gathering you can do that in the UK). The problem here is the transfer documents Football Leaks have revealed are getting real attention from more than just the media and fans, leading one to suspect they are real. Notice how Bale's agent is furious and Real Madrid allegedly in panic over Football Leaks revelation that Madrid paid more for him than Ronaldo (which was allegedly hidden to not upset Ronaldo). Surely, he would be quiet if it was fake.
I accept that a significant portion of the media in England in particular has a slant against City, but Football Leaks has also revealed the Martial transfer documents, hurting Utd, and now Bale's, which hurts Real Madrid, clubs we feel are treated better than ours. Simply because the media report this story, and did some basic maths to make conclusions doesn't mean their argument is invalid. Other than questioning the validity of the contract we see (which seems unlikely) or argue that we somehow paid the 3rd parties a lower rate than we paid Porto for their shares (which would be poor business on the parts of sophisticated businesses with no pressure to sell their shares, likely run by people with backgrounds in global finance/investment banking, when we had no choice but to buy all of Mangala's economic rights)