Chaos has ensued among Man Utd fans as Mateus Fernandes has chosen Spurs after concrete links to Manchester United.
Spurs effectively blew Man Utd out of the water for Mateus Fernandes, signing him for an outright fee of £85m, with eye-watering wages on top of it.
Man Utd stuck to their financial guns and refused to overpay, and will now move on to other targets.
While this looks like a transfer battle lost to lowly Spurs, United would rather win the war, which they didn’t previously.
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Man Utd’s financial discipline in Mateus Fernandes deal
Ineos will get hammered for letting another target slip through their fingers after already losing out on Elliot Anderson.
However, the reason why the Man Utd dressing room is in such a good place right now is because of Ineos’ transfer policy.
They are committed to signing only those players whose hearts are set at Old Trafford, so the mercenaries are automatically filtered out.
The same happened with Fernandes, as Spurs offered West Ham exactly what they wanted, and the wages turned Fernandes’ head as well.
For United, they swerved a player whose motivation is clearly dicey, and could have posed a problem later down the line had they matched those figures.
Winning this Mateus Fernandes transfer battle was easy, because it’s not like United don’t have cash to spend, but Ineos are focusing on the war.
Ineos have learned from a scattergun Man Utd
United have won transfer battles like these in the past numerous times, with the Glazers, Woodward/Murtough patting themselves on the back after beating Man City to signings.
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Be it paying £80m up front for Harry Maguire when City wouldn’t, or blowing their offer out of the water by offering Alexis Sanchez a blank cheque, those off-pitch transfer battles are easy to win.
What that leads to is financial ruin in the long term, and a polluted dressing room where motivations are questionable.
The examples are numerous beyond Sanchez and Maguire. Angel di Maria, Romelu Lukaku, and more such players were signed from under the rivals’ noses, before reality hit and United struggled with under-motivated players.
Ineos have learned their lesson from that scattergun United. The United of 2021 would have paraded Fernandes as a marquee signing, “beating” other clubs to his signature, before his agent starts hawking him around again in two years for another fat commission.
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