Don't be fooled by big deals

The Independent’s football newsletter [View in browser]( [The Independent]( August 20, 2021 [The Independent]( Reading the Game Written by Mark Critchley Potential hurt, a slow market and missing the mark [Harry Kane]( Hi, I’m Mark Critchley, The Independent’s northern football correspondent, and I’ll be stepping in for Miguel while he’s away this week. ***** Kane stand-off could see everyone get hurt In a little less than a fortnight’s time, [Harry Kane will either be a Tottenham player or he won’t be](. That is the only safe prediction that anyone whose name isn’t Daniel Levy can make in this most complex and exhausting of transfer sagas, and I’m afraid to say it is far from over yet. This is likely to go down to the final days of the summer window, perhaps even the deadline itself. It should, at least, be resolved by 11pm on 31 August. A move to Manchester City is not quite ‘now or never’ for Kane but this is its critical juncture. He and his camp know that too. Much has been made about the weakness of Kane’s contractual position, with three years to run on a six-year deal and an unwritten gentleman’s agreement with Levy - they claim - rather than a legally-enforceable release clause. Put the contract situation to one side and, though, there is another potential weakness: they just want it more. Of all the three parties, Kane’s camp obviously need this move to go through more than Tottenham, but perhaps more than City too. If he stays at Spurs beyond the deadline, other younger options will come onto City’s radar. Erling Haaland’s well-publicised release clause will be active next summer. If Kane is to join City, now is the time. He needs this to happen and has already risked a lot to get it. Kane is not the only one with something to lose here, though. City may have won their third Premier League title in four years and reached the Champions League final without a recognised striker last season but that does not mean they do not need one. Khaldoon Al-Mubarak, City’s chairman, expressed confidence that they would replace Sergio Aguero with “the right player” this summer at the end of last season. The supporters are demanding as much but the club is yet to deliver. And even though everything so far has been coming up Daniel Levy, there is the risk that now is actually the right time to let Kane go. He is a 28-year-old with a chequered injury history, yet able to command a British record fee in a market wracked by Covid uncertainty. His relationship with the supporters and the club itself has been badly damaged, while in Son Heung-min, Tottenham’s support already has a spiritual heir. Those are all reasons to extract as large a fee as possible, reinvest the money in the squad and move on. Perhaps that has been Levy’s strategy all along. Maybe all three parties will get what they want in the end. Watching this Mexican stand-off from the sidelines, though, it’s hard not to escape the impression that everyone could easily get hurt. Do not be fooled by the big deals, this is a slow market You will have heard plenty of journalists talk about how this is a ‘slow market’ and that there is a lack of money moving around at the moment. It is one of the factors influencing the Kane saga, for example. City could have put us all out of our misery by now if they had managed to sell one of several wantaway players and meet Levy’s asking price. Those open to leaving the Etihad include Bernardo Silva, Gabriel Jesus and Aymeric Laporte, who hinted at his desire to depart in an interview with The Independent at the end of last season. All remain in place and so does Kane, for now. That assessment of a ‘slow market’ jars slightly, though, when you see some of the fees doing the rounds. Romelu Lukaku has joined Chelsea for £97.5m - the seventh-highest fee of all time - only weeks after Jack Grealish’s £100m move to City, the sixth-highest. Jadon Sancho was cheap relative to his ability but still some £73m and even Paris Saint-Germain’s remarkable window, powered by free transfers for Lionel Messi, Sergio Ramos, Gianluigi Donnarumma and Georginio Wijnaldum, has the £51m capture of Achraf Hakimi on top. Are we really in a slow market? Let’s lay it out in black and white: of the 50 most expensive transfers of all time, four have been completed this summer - Grealish, Lukaku, Sancho and Hakimi - while five were signed off last year during the middle of the pandemic. Compare that to 2019, when 14 of the 50 most expensive transfers were brokered and 2018, when 11 were completed. A quick bit of mental arithmetic will tell you that 25 - or half - of the 50 most expensive deals of all time were conducted in the two years before [Covid hit, while only nine have been done since](. Make no mistake, the market inflation we saw following Neymar’s landmark move in 2017 has ceased, or at the very least been postponed. Has the Arsenaling begun? The US-based new media sports website Deadspin was the foremost chronicler of what they would call ‘Arsenaling’ - essentially, poking fun at that point in the season where all hope and promise of any Arsenal success would fall apart in comical fashion, usually after losing 2-1 at home to Swansea City or whatever. A quick Google of ‘arsenal deadspin’ will reveal headlines such as ‘Arsenal Are Imploding’, ‘Arsenal Are Well And Truly F***ed’ and ‘Has The Arsenaling Begun’, which carries the brilliant one-line introduction of: “You’ve got to be s***ing me”. Actually, that one was after losing 2-1 at home to Swansea City. So, has the Arsenaling begun? That feels like the pertinent question to ask following last Friday’s defeat at Brentford on opening night, a most Arsenal of results and perhaps the earliest-ever Arsenaling of the Premier League era. There is a lot to question about the way the club conducts its business, not least in the transfer market this summer. Yet even though Mikel Arteta has had a season-and-a-half in the job by now, one game at the start of the new campaign is not a time for rash judgements. There were positives in the performance in the form of Emile Smith-Rowe and Kieran Tierney. Two important players, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang and Alexandre Lacazette, were missing. Brentford may be newly-promoted but are an expertly drilled side who will take points off many this season. And all the present negativity ignores the second half of last season, a much larger sample size, when Arsenal’s record was among the best in the top flight. OK, maybe by that point last season’s Arsenaling had already begun, but it is reason enough to believe that this season’s hasn’t quite started yet. Rowett missed the mark with knee reaction [Gary Rowett’s reaction to Millwall fans booing Fulham players for taking the knee missed the mark](. Rowett, perhaps wary of angering a section of his club’s support, claimed that football’s authorities should “find a better way to unify people” and that the knee is “causing such a rift and divide” in football. The purpose of the knee is not ‘to unify’, even if the gradual growth in support for the stance of England’s players over the summer was welcomed. As Jobi McAnuff said in response to Rowett’s comments, it is meant as a simple, specific statement: that racism exists within football and wider society, and that it must be fought against and eradicated. Rowett is right that taking the knee is not unifying fans, but if it is dividing them between those who believe that racial justice is a necessary demand and those who do not, then so be it. In that case, it is doing its job in highlighting how far we still have to go, and the booing of it is only making it all the more necessary. Top stories [The Premier League’s new clubs taking different approaches to surviving relegation]( [Graham Potter advises people to have Covid jabs after ‘tragic’ death of relative]( Mark's Dispatches Reporting on transfers is probably the most difficult and rewarding part of this job. If you feel confused by reading conflicting stories in the papers, imagine how confusing it can be to receive conflicting information from a variety of sources and then having to parse through and make sense of it. The Kane saga is like no other, with several moving parts and machinations to consider, and different stories on different sides. There is great excitement among fans at this time of year, and that is entirely understandable, but I think we’re coming to a point where even some supporters would like us to concentrate on the actual football again. Quote of the day “I don’t want people to be saddened if I forget places, people, or dates because you need to remember I enjoyed all those memories and I am lucky to have experienced what I have in my life…a loving and supportive family, a great career doing what I loved and getting paid to do it and lifelong friends.” Denis Law, the Manchester United great, upon revealing that he is living with mixed dementia. You can donate to his daughter Di’s fundraising campaign for the Alzheimer’s Society by [clicking here](. Reading the game quiz If Harry Kane signs for Manchester City before the deadline, Jack Grealish’s £100m move will have held the British transfer record for only a few weeks - but which transfer during the Premier League era held it for only a few hours? Name that move and the deal which set the new record. N.B. By ‘British transfer record’, we mean deals involving players signed by British clubs, not those involving players sold to foreign clubs. (Last week’s answers: Manchester United, 1992-93 (1-2 vs Sheffield United); Blackburn Rovers, 1994-95 (1-1 vs Southampton); Manchester United, 1995-96 (1-3 vs Aston Villa); Arsenal, 1997-98 (1-1 vs Leeds); Manchester United, 1998-99 (2-2 vs Leicester); Manchester United, 1999-00 (1-1 vs Everton); Manchester United, 2007-08 (0-0 vs Reading); Manchester United, 2008-09 (1-1 vs Newcastle); Manchester United, 2012-13 (0-1 vs Everton)) BREAKING NEWS ALERTS Sign up to our free breaking news emails for real time notifications Essential reading [Romelu Lukaku: ‘Let people talk, winning trophies sets you apart’]( [Manchester United legend Denis Law diagnosed with mixed dementia]( If you can spare a minute we’d love your [feedback]( on our newsletters. 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