United’s Transfer Strategy — Is There More to Their Denial?

[Warning: Highly speculative article involving yours’ truly thinking out loud for most part. Kindly bear and do add your 2 pennies’ worth at the end.]

Yesterday, following Ronaldo’s interview with Guillem Balague Manchester United Football Club, issued a statement on its official site reaffirming what it’s been saying all along: that Ronaldo is not for sale.

This is the rare occasion where United are being put in a position where they don’t want to sell a player who seemingly wants away. [I personally think he does want away, but for the sake of those who think we should wait till he comes out and says it definitively, I’ve added the word ‘seemingly’]

But despite all this, and the possibility of getting big money from Madrid, United have been firm on their stance on Ronaldo.

So here’s a theory…

So often in the past we’ve seen United fall out with players and hence driven to desperation to sell their players. As a result the price of the player would eventually go down thus selling the player at a bargain. RvN’s price, for instance, was laughable. Whilst the club seem firm on Ronaldo, there is a distinct possibility that the club may be doing this consciously in order to ensure that Ronaldo’s price stays high. Thus with Madrid being desperate to buy, there can be only on way of that happening: selling the player on United’s terms.

So does anyone else think this may be a plausible strategy from the United camp?

The second part of his hypothesis is more of a suggestion than anything. Suppose, United decide to sell Ronaldo (but not decide publicly) they would ideally want to make purchase of players before selling Ronaldo. So buying a winger, perhaps, and a striker before selling would make sound business sense.

The reason? Well, selling Ronaldo would net us a lot of cash, but attempting to make purchases after that would come with pitfalls: clubs will charge exorbitant amounts for their players looking for a bite of the Ronaldo pie. So Ajax might say, “You want Huntelaar? Hmm, let’s have £40 million, thank you. You must have a lot of money now, mustn’t you?” And we couldn’t say, “No we don’t” because what we’ll sell Ronaldo for — even if the amount was undisclosed — would be huge. And that’s where the sales of our star winger would burn holes in our pocket.

So wait till the Euros are over and swoop in soon after. As the bloke from crystal maze would say, “Let the games begin.”