Lewa to Barca

Maybe they were told by the club they'd push him out the door. Maybe they're hoping to change his mind, get the fee agreed first then work on him. Point is, you don't know that at all. There's more evidence to say he wants to stay

There’s a difference between wanting to stay (and wanting the wages he’s owed) and telling United he won’t come. You think we aren’t in contact with the player or agent? Manchester United are many things, but they aren’t incapable of communicating with an agent.

What about wanting to play for Barcelona in the CL? If they manage to get their signings done they'll be pretty good. It's not like you'll be giving him a huge payrise or anything..

But yes. It could be posturing for loyalty bonuses or whatever

They won’t be able to play if De Jong doesn’t go.

They owe him £17m.

I don’t understand what Barca are playing at, even if there’s ways around their current situation. They have traore, dembele, Torres, fati, aubameyang, lewandowski, raphinha, depay and probably more for three positions.

comment by Nickasaurus (U9257)
posted 2 minutes ago
I don’t understand what Barca are playing at, even if there’s ways around their current situation. They have traore, dembele, Torres, fati, aubameyang, lewandowski, raphinha, depay and probably more for three positions.
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Dembele, although he was out of contract, I think they still owed money, so they’ve resigned him in order to push more of his wages back and give themselves a chance to get a fee for him.

Depay I expect they might try to sell, or might even have to loan. Although his wages aren’t as serious a concern as De Jong’s, they could really do with them off the books.

Dembele is another perfect example of why Barca are desperate not to pay up for De Jong’s outstanding wages: if they set a precedent by doing that, every player with a restructured deal is going to expect to have the wages that under the restructuring were pushed back settled before they move, which will make it either impossible or incredibly expensive for Barca to sell players.

The moral of the story is this:

Begging players to have their wages deferred to later in their contracts is facking thick. It’s nothing short of a disastrous policy.

It's all ok those bastions of fair play & above board antics EUFA will straighten it all out

comment by Sheriff JW Pepper (U1007)
posted 53 minutes ago
It's all ok those bastions of fair play & above board antics EUFA will straighten it all out
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Yeah that's it, isn't it? They're playing chicken with the rule makers and hoping an exception will be made because they're Barca.

I fully expect they'll somehow get away with it too. But the more I hear that they're one of the two biggest clubs in the world, the more it turns me. Barca are a club that's done very well in the last 30 years but they are not historically the giant they think they are. Real tower over them, as do the biggest Italian sides, as do United and Liverpool, as do Bayern. Recency bias is great and all but Barcelona are not some giant that must be preserved. They've been Real's beatch throughout their history. And often inferior to Athletic Bilbao too for that matter

comment by And... Rosso... Though its... Yeah and... That... (U17054)
posted 8 hours, 57 minutes ago
comment by Nickasaurus (U9257)
posted 2 minutes ago
I don’t understand what Barca are playing at, even if there’s ways around their current situation. They have traore, dembele, Torres, fati, aubameyang, lewandowski, raphinha, depay and probably more for three positions.
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Dembele, although he was out of contract, I think they still owed money, so they’ve resigned him in order to push more of his wages back and give themselves a chance to get a fee for him.

Depay I expect they might try to sell, or might even have to loan. Although his wages aren’t as serious a concern as De Jong’s, they could really do with them off the books.

Dembele is another perfect example of why Barca are desperate not to pay up for De Jong’s outstanding wages: if they set a precedent by doing that, every player with a restructured deal is going to expect to have the wages that under the restructuring were pushed back settled before they move, which will make it either impossible or incredibly expensive for Barca to sell players.

The moral of the story is this:

Begging players to have their wages deferred to later in their contracts is facking thick. It’s nothing short of a disastrous policy.
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Deferring wages was more of an emergency measure to deal with the situation they inherited from the previous BoD than a policy moving forward.

I reckon that the real problem is that despite the huge debt, Barça as a club are a bit like a nuclear reactor where you can’t just hit the “stop” button without melting the core or some slightly less stupid analogy where I didn’t need to have a minimal grasp on nuclear physics in order for it to make sense.

More simply put, they can’t (or at least think they can’t) allow things just to stand still without things crashing down like a house of cards. They need to keep big names coming in order to keep eyeballs and hence sponsorship dollars on them.

It looks like FDJ is trying to play them for the biggest possible one-time payout he can, which, of course, he’s fully entitled to do.