Rafa Benitez is baffled by the state of the current transfer market, reports the Shields Gazette.
Benitez won’t be deterred in his pursuit of targets to strengthen the club’s promotion challenge:
“Hopefully. We are working and trying to improve the squad.
“It’s not easy now. The market is quite crazy, no? Crazy prizes everywhere. We try to do our best.”
There’s no little irony in the manager complaining about the prices selling clubs want. After all, I think most of us wondered who had been at the boardroom scotch when we slapped a £35m price tag on Moussa Sissoko. That concern seems well-founded with the French international not yet sold.
Nonetheless, it’s encouraging to see that Rafa doesn’t appear too despondent. He doesn’t seem entirely confident in his words though. We saw that it’s a sellers market with the Grant Hanley deal; just as we played hardball over Wijnaldum and will do so on Moussa, others are doing the same to us.
I wonder if some of his words were chosen to dampen expectations. They seem to rise disproportionately as soon as it’s mentioned in passing that we might be interested in players.
Yes, we’re interested in signings but whether they happen or not is another matter.
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