It certainly seems like the wages issue with Nico is a huge stumbling block for basically any club that wants him. He's on high wages already as it is at Bilbao (seems like its around 180k pounds a week) and is asking for at least 250k pounds a week at his new club given that his RC is relatively low. Basically, he's asking to be paid for the player he projects to be instead of the player he is right now. It's a bold ask but clearly teams aren't crazy about taking on that risk. I also think that it sounds like he isn't exactly unhappy at Bilbao and push comes to shove, would stay there with his high wages (or even a little increase) instead of compromising on his wage asks. If that is true, we should move on. I imagine there is some negotiating and teasing from his side on potentially compromising that is keeping interested teams on the hook but we do need to be decisive soon and either seal the deal or walk away.
My biggest concern this summer is not with the CF market - since it seems like we have narrowed down our options to Gyokeres and Sesko and will pick between them soon. It's with the LW market since it feels like we aren't willing to go for the backup options right off the bat (Cunha and Mbeumo), which in theory is fine since we have our aim at bringing in a game changer like Rodrygo. However, I'm worried that we might get strung along throughout the next month or two hoping that we can get Rodrygo and the backup options we have might all get scooped up.
I'm fine with us having our sights on truly world class options in the roles we need but we need to be able to be decisive when the player/representatives are not being decisive and either give an ultimatum or be prepared to walk away and settle on a backup option. Otherwise, we will be in the same spot we were last summer with Sterling. I have optimism that bringing in Berta will help with that process but we haven't seen the evidence as of yet so the jury is out.
On a side note, I saw a report this am that opined that we were weighing out the financials for Sesko v Gyokeres with the pursuit of a world class winger in mind. They mentioned Gyokeres would be the cheaper option and the hypothesis was that if Rodrygo was available, we would go for Gyokeres plus Rodrygo. That just doesn't make much sense to me though since even if the financials are a bit different with VG and BS, I have my doubts that the difference is much more than 10-20m at the most.
