Despite proclamations to the contrary, Tottenham Hotspur showed on Friday they are willing to negotiate and even sell a player for under-market value, in moving Moussa Sissoko.
Tottenham sold Sissoko to fellow Premier League club Watford for a reported £4.6 million ($6.38 million), according to trasnfermrkt.com. Yet, that same website says Sissoko is valued at £7.9 million ($11 million). This is significant because just today we heard a tale that Tottenham does not negotiate.
City Does not Sleep
One could blame the media, as it was the media who asked the question of Manchester City coach Pep Guardiola about the failure to sign Harry Kane. And it was the media who really made this a bigger story than it should have been, to begin with. However, we got some real insight into the story behind the Harry Kane/Manchester City transfer story from Guardiola today.
👀 | "The big master of negotiations, Mr Daniel Levy - he knows everything so we could not do it."
— Sky Sports News (@SkySportsNews) August 27, 2021
👋 | "I wish him [Kane] all the best in the last years of his career doing well in London."
Pep Guardiola has been discussing #MCFC's efforts to sign Harry Kane this summer... pic.twitter.com/VKdQsZLrJn
Essentially, Manchester City said Tottenham would not negotiate and thus never really bid on Harry Kane. So after everything that happened during the offseason on this story, the bottom line is the failure was on City to make some realistic assumptions. Surely in this day and age, if the club was going to pony up close to the £150-160 million valuation Spurs had, they would need to start with a bid somewhere in the ballpark to create the dialog.
Sort of like the lottery where you cannot win if you do not play, well you definitely cannot sign if you do not bid when it comes to a transfer negotiation. Seems strange, especially compared to the Moussa Sissoko deal.