Gill on City and Ronaldo

There’s been a lot of nonsense circulating in the media lately regarding David Gill’s comments on the reported £135m offer from Man City for Ronaldo.

Leave all those reports alone. I suggest you listen to what David Gill had to say exactly and make up your own minds about it. Here’s the link to the interview on BBC 5 Live.

Listen to the interview right now and come back to read the rest of this.

I am waiting…

Right. Now that you’re done listening let’s talk about what he had to say. When asked about the comments al Fahim made about signing Ronaldo, he said this:

“I have never met the gentleman. That is a fantastic amount of money and would turn the industry upside down so I can’t believe he is serious at those sorts of levels.”

But the following words were what got most papers all chatty:

“Ultimately we would discuss any offer with Alex and the owners, as that sort of money is very large for one person. But we are not in the market to sell our best players.”

But the important thing to note here is the way the reporter pressed him with his questions. What he asked was something to the effect of, “any club would consider an offer as high as 135m for a player” for which he answered in the most sensible manner that he could befitting his standing in the club.

So really, sending out headlines that United will consider an offer that high from Man City is being sensationalist. Nothing more.

Al-Fahim is supposedly the PR face of ADUG, and according to this article, there are more conservative factions within the consortium which could tell Fahim to shut his PR trap temporarily. Really, nothing can be said about the seriousness of the group until the January window. They are loaded and could spend big money, but the question is: are they loaded and stupid too? Conventional wisdom would say no. But when their wealth exceeds the GDP of several African nations put together, the lines between stupidity and prudence get blurred.

That does however bring us to a more interesting question. How much would you really sell Ronaldo for? Would a figure of say, £200m, be too much to resist? After all that is about a third of the debt, if I’m not mistaken. And with that sum of money, entire clubs can be bought — leave alone individual players. Of course, even if we decide to ship Ronaldo to City, I seriously doubt Ronaldo himself would be keen to swap colours within Manchester. I just can’t see that happening.

What do you think about City, Ronaldo and a transfer fee big enough to appear acceptable to us to sell Ronaldo?