Simon Jordan and Eni Aluko had a fiery debate about Manchester City’s perceived interest in Declan Rice live on talkSPORT.
Aluko went viral on Tuesday after arguing that Pep Guardiola’s side did not actually want to sign the West Ham star despite submitting a £90million bid.
9
9
9
Rice is now set to have a medical at Arsenal ahead of British record deal worth £105million.
Aluko spoke of her own experience as a sporting director after her work at Aston Villa Women and Angel City FC.
She said: “I think what’s going on is [Mikel] Arteta has picked up the phone to Pep and said ‘listen, Arsenal are going to do the incremental bid approach, if you put a higher bid in, that will push my owner.’”
Aluko returned to talkSPORT on Thursday following the widespread reaction to her claims, with City recently pulling out of the race for Rice.
She said that despite the differences in transfer fees in the women’s and men’s games, the same tactical strategies in negotiations are still used.
Former Crystal Palace owner Jordan then addressed the claims himself, and you can read the full transcript of the discussion on talkSPORT below…
Jordan: I can’t relate to it, to be honest, as I don’t know what budgets she was given and how influential [former Villa CEO Christian] Purslow was in allocating budgets for her and how much autonomy she got.
What I would say if if I had a technical director like Eni on my side, I’d be pretty fed up with it because if she’s manipulating me rather than working for me, I don’t think I’d be amused by that. I do think there is plausibility about some of the observations that she’s made.
9
Look, scale does affect outcomes, transfer deals are transfer deals. But scales of £250,000 for a women’s footballer or £90million for a male footballer are vastly different, garner different attention, different agendas, different outlooks and different perspectives.
I think it’s slightly fanciful, I think it’s unlikely, but it’s not completely implausible that it would have manifested itself that way. I think Pep, attaching his name to a transaction that he has not material interest in brings integrity into play, and I’m not sure that people at the top end of the game really want their integrity questioned.
I’m sure City didn’t want to get into a bidding war because no club likes getting into a bidding war. No club likes to be able to be put into a cliff position where the ultimate beneficiaries are the selling club and they can see the competitive tension being built and being built and being built.
The main beneficiary of that are the selling club, and the two people that are being disadvantaged are the two clubs that are bidding against one another. So there might be a case where City had an interest if they could do a deal at a price that suited them, which is a kind of way that City operates.
9
They don’t tend to get involved in too many bidding wars or try to get themselves in a situation where they will pay more than they are prepared to pay.
I think with City, they are in a position where they say, “We are now economically at a position and logistically on the pitch to say ‘this is the value, this is what we’ll do, do a deal or don’t to a deal.'”
I think that’s more likely to be the case, I think there’s an element of coincidence and timing but I can’t rule out, and I also can’t discredit. I don’t agree with Eni, but I didn’t like the vitriol and contempt and distain, because she’s relating it to her experiences, and they’re relative.
Aluko: It’s all suggestive. From my perspective Simon, I get what you’re saying in terms of the manipulation and that’s my fault in terms of not articulating it in the right way.
It’s not necessarily manipulation because ultimately, my owner would have known I’m in for that player and I would have had a budget that would have been lower than what the market has currently dictated for that player.
You then go back and have a conversation and say, ‘Look, the competitor is going to bid and we’re going to have to go higher here’. There’s no manipulation, it’s all open communication but ultimately it benefits me because I get the player I want.
9
Jordan: Eni what you’re saying, with respect, what you’re saying is you’ve placed the phone call into your rival, or you’ve manufactured a situation with a rival to create an outcome.
Aluko: No no no. It’s not manufacturing, it’s communication Simon. So I’m saying to my rival…
Jordan: Well it is. You’re getting somebody to bid for something that doesn’t really want to buy it to engineer a commercial outcome for you. That’s precisely what it is Eni, call it what it is.
I don’t dispute the fact that it might happen in vary rare instances, I never saw it many, many transfer deals that I did, and I was very close to transfer deals. When you’re throwing somebody £250,000, with due respect, there’s less focus on that transaction than when you’re spending £90million.
So people will be very focused on it, owner, chief executive, they will want to understand, as I’ve said in previous parts of this discussion when you haven’t been on the line, the two biggest commodities in football are gossip and finances.
With them comes a lot of invested interest, so I don’t think you guys as technical directors at that quantum just get a free-for-all and your own hand to go and negotiate and engineer situations.
9
Because what you have said is that it would be likely that a situation has manifested itself, where a situation has been engineered for City to bid, to produce an outcome for Arsenal to get the player they want. That’s manipulation by its very definition.
Aluko: Well I think what I’m referring to and again, if I’ve not articulated it in that way and that’s the way it’s been perceived, that’s my fault.
But ultimately what I’m talking about is communication. I had communication with clubs about they level they were going to bid anyway on these players.
That helped me then go back and say, ‘Right, we’re going to have to decide what we’re going to do’. So those clubs were going to bid anyway, they’re all legitimate, genuine bids.
Jordan: But that makes no sense Eni, it makes no sense from the commercial reality of the hard world. If I’m your competitor, the last thing I’m going to do is give you any indication of what I’m prepared to do to get a deal done. I’m going to tell you precisely the polar opposite of what I’m prepared to do.
Aluko: Well that’s not my experience.
Jordan: Yeah but with respect, your experience is at a far lower level of economics.
Aluko: And I’ve accepted that, I’ve accepted it’s a lower level. But at the end of the day, the tactics and the communication if what I’m referring to.
9
I’m referring to clubs communicating about a player that they ultimately want at different levels and the fact that obviously City pulled out after one bid and Arsenal made a bid after that bid and ultimately got their player which ultimately helped Arsenal.
So what I’m effectively talking about, and again I don’t know, is communication between clubs and in my experience, I communicated with my rivals. Now again, in men’s football that might be very different.
But I’m assuming that, you know, hundreds of millions of pounds are being exchanged here. At hundreds of millions of pounds, the fact that the idea clubs don’t communicate I think is naive, I think they do communicate. That’s all I’m suggesting.
Aluko: I do a little bit [feel vindicated]. Because I think the day after I was on talkSPORT, City pull out of the race for Rice a day after their bid, the same day that [Mateo] Kovacic gets announced, who happens to play in the same position as Rice.
Exactly what I said was what happened, which was I don’t think City are as interested in Rice as it probably seems, and they weren’t because they pulled out and now we’re talking about a record transfer fee.
Jordan: I think they weren’t as interested in getting into a bidding war. I think the commercial reality of buying a footballer is if you see as a matter of course, the position of your competition and you’ll buy this player but you’re going to buy them at your valuation.
9
You’re not going to buy them at the selling club’s valuation, market forces detail. There’s not market price for Rice, there’s the market forces that prevail and that will be whoever bids for it.
Ultimately, if City’s valuation was £90million and not a single penny more, it’s not surprising that if there’s an indication from West Ham that they’re not going to accept £90million, City walk away from the table.
I think you’re a little bit fortuitous with your timing and when you make the observations about punditry, people making observations about punditry and people talking about it, credible observations, credible opinions.
Anyone can throw out stuff people react to Eni, it’s about having substance behind what you say, and your experience relative to you may well be substantive.
I do not think they relate to the men’s game, not because it’s a man/woman thing, it’s a scale thing, it’s a quantum thing, it’s a nature of a relationship thing.
Big clubs do not like doing business with one another, they might find a common ground to make sure that the agent is marginalised in it. But other than that, there is not a mutual empathy or a mutual sympathy towards finding a transaction to help someone else in a deal that they want to be in. It makes no sense.
