The art of negotiation

So, the word on the street is that we just threw a large brown paper bag stuffed with approximately £10 million quid at Everton, only to have it promptly thrown back at us. Apparently they rate the defender, Phil ‘Jags’ Jagielka, as being worth twice that.

The offer has been called derisory by some people and silly by others. Personally, I think it’s a good starting offer.

The gap between the two valuations gives both teams room to manoeuvre. Hopefully a deal can be struck at somewhere between our opening bid of £10 million and Everton’s valuation of £20 million.

I’ve always rated Jagielka as a player. I remember him as a young professional playing for Sheffield United, back during that time when we drew them in one of the cups, in what felt like, every season. He always played against us with determination, power and precision. For me, he was the chief reason why many of those games were much closer than they should have been. I wish we’d signed him back then.

This proposed transfer got me thinking about another set of protracted negotiations currently going on between us and – the masters of the collective tap-up – Barcelona.

Many of us are (rightly) outraged at the Catalan clubs collective conduct over the inevitable sale of our club captain Cesc Fabregas. They did exactly the same as us (when we bid for Jagielka) and offered an amount considerably lower than the current market valuation of the player. I don’t have a problem with this; I consider this their opening offer. If media reports are to be believed they have returned with at least one further offer, which was also rebuffed.

Whilst I don’t have a problem with a club making a low starting offer and in doing so entering into a negotiation for a player, I do have a problem with the very public tapping-up of the player outside of the official channels. By all means make us an offer, but don’t expect us to take it just because you want us to. It’s got to benefit all parties, and at the moment, Barcelona’s offer benefits only their interests, leaving us in a somewhat compromised position – short on funds and short of an inspirational player.

I don’t doubt that we’re just as ruthless as the next team when it comes to making signings, but I believe we do our business within the boundaries of the rules and with respect to the other clubs involved. We haven’t heard Arsene Wenger, Samir Nasri or Theo Walcott shouting about how Jagielka would be a perfect signing for us. Nobody has made any kind of scientific observation about the composition of his D.N.A. Nobody has accused David Moyes of keeping a ‘suffering’ Jagielka tied up in his basement.

We have submitted our opening offer and thus begun the negotiation process and the rest is mere speculation.

But why are people calling our £10 million bid ‘silly’ and ‘derisory’?

It seems to me that the art of negotiation is going out of fashion, with people calling on managers to just stump up the cash without questioning the asking price. I think we need to be wary of this, because if you don’t negotiate, you end up paying £35 million for Andy Carroll or £16 million for Jordan Henderson (or similarly inflated prices for similarly average players).

If we sign just one defender this summer, I hope it is Phil Jagielka. He might be a bit older than some (28), shorter than others and more expensive than all of the rest, but I think he’s the best of the players we’ve been linked with.

The price might be high, but if we don’t dig deep into our pockets now, whilst our need is greatest, in the long run, the cost might be much, much higher.

We need one more quality centre-back to shore up our defence and I’m not sure Wenger can buy from the bargain bin this summer.

Visit and Join our Facebook page, click HERE to do so.

Gunnersphere is currently looking for new writers to join the squad. Contact via twitter or at Gunnersphere@snack-media.com for further details.