Kyle Walker for £50M!!!!!

The headline number is an eye popping £50M. I suspect, though, that some of that will be add ons but, still, that's one helluva fee.

I think the reason we've made this agreement so quickly isn't down to Levy's hardnose negotiating but more down to losing out on Alves. Txiki cannot afford to lose out on Mendy and Walker and it looks like we'll push for Bertrand too. 

I just hope that Walker doesn't make an important big goal costing rick early on in his city career.

Medical tomorrow...he's travelling to Manchester tonight.

Mendy left out of Monaco squad for their pre-season trip to Switzerland.

Graham Hunter claims City are actively trying to sign Mbappe.

Dont want to jinx it by saying its in the bag, but assuming it is. Who are the other two full backs going to be?

I think the back ups were meant to be Bertrand and alves

I think we should be bedding in Maffeo as our back up RB. Mendy as first choice LB, so better get Bertrand first, as I cant see him coming to sit on he bench. 
We're also rumoured to be speaking to Soton about what it will take to get Bertrand and VVD.

I think itchy could have been a bargaining chip somewhere along the line. Either as part of the walker deal or with Southampton

It would make sense to just pay the £50m, and use Kelechi in a swap for Bertrand (or a swap plus cash for Bertrand and VVD (as long as we can knock them down from £70m) as it'll mean two English players).

Great to hear Spurs fans on TS....."we've got Trippier anyway, and Walker was only going to be a bench player".....

In last seasons PL POTY Team.

God love em.....hope Kane keeps scoring to keep them in the top 4 this season, if not - they'll lose 4 or 5 players next season!

Anyway....get me out of Dublin!!!! It's like the Walking 'Rag' & 'Dipper' Dead!!!

blueboy wrote:Anyway....get me out of Dublin!!!! It's like the Walking 'Rag' & 'Dipper' Dead!!!

Oh I don't know Blue, I was there watching the Derby once and yes there were 1/2 dozen in United shirts but when we scored the rest of the pub went mental.  Was funniest thing ever.  Half of the rags left 

Just heard we got Walker Am away in Italy/Switzerland
Great signing!!! Think he's one of the best RBs in the PL &  deffo England's best

Agree Tony. Makes me laugh that all these journo's are somehow tearing City apart for spending £45m on him....amazing. English (increases the price), England RB (increases the price), bought from a rival (increases the price)....yet United can spend £75m on Lukaku which in real terms means £150m.....and that's a great buy.

Even Oliver Holt, who is normally pro-City (we're his 2nd team), wrote yesterday, that the Walker fee is mad.

Jordan Pickford went for £31m. He's not even an established England International ffs!

Martin Samuel today:

Kyle Walker is, by popular consent, nobody’s idea of the world’s best defender. When Danny Rose was fit, Walker probably wasn’t even the best full back at Tottenham. Nor is he the finest footballer this country has produced. Walker wouldn’t make the top 500 on most lists and, in previous eras, wouldn’t have been England’s regular right back. He wouldn’t have got in ahead of Gary Neville or Phil Neal in recent years, that’s for certain.

His transfer fee, however, suggests greatness. Unsurprisingly, then, his £54million transfer to Manchester City is being interpreted as a sign of the madness at the heart of the English game.

There is another way of looking at it.
That, as ludicrous as Walker’s fee may be, at least City paid it. At least the owners pulled out a chequebook and made Walker their player, permanently. They didn’t balk at the transfer outlay, the wages, the signing-on fee or an agent’s dues.
They didn’t attempt to get Walker on the cheap or on hire. They stumped up, and smiled politely as the rest of football mocked them. And some will say it is easy to look big when the owner is one of the richest men on the planet. Sheik Mansour’s patronage means City can always afford to go the extra million or 10.
Yet that is true of the rest of the Premier League’s elite, too. Nobody can plead poverty anymore, not with the new television deal.
Even so, when West Ham went to Manchester City to negotiate a deal for Joe Hart, they did not want permanence. They wanted a loan. A year or so, and then see. And Hart is not a young player whose career path could go either way.
He’s a 30-year-old with 71 England caps. There is nothing about Hart that a buyer cannot know. So, as West Ham want a goalkeeper and City want to sell, why a temporary move? Doing it this way takes Hart out of West Ham’s team for two matches, minimum, this season.
Why would any ambitious club suffer that? Because it’s cheap. West Ham want City to pick up some of Hart’s salary, and they don’t want to pay a loan fee. But loans were not supposed to be about bargain basement trading.
Loans were introduced to provide emergency cover in unique situations. Injuries to every striker at the club, for instance.
Loans were a way of showing mercy and avoiding the financial waste of buying a permanent player to cover a temporary situation. Loans were a compromise solution.
Over time, loans have evolved to be a way of giving young players experience — although this has stunted development as much as encouraged it, and led to clubs such as Chelsea using their academy as little more than an additional revenue stream.

Crystal Palace, Huddersfield and Swansea are among those who will benefit from Chelsea’s largesse in leasing them players this season, while Watford and Bournemouth have now gone on to buy players that were previously on loan from Stamford Bridge.
It is a trading arm of the business, helping to finance a first team that is wholly imported. Without the loan system, Chelsea would have to give their young players experience themselves.
So it is flawed, but at least there is some benefit from the policy.
Young players might no longer get a break at Chelsea, but at least they do somewhere. Romelu Lukaku has ended up at Manchester United, having first made a significant impression as a Chelsea player on loan at West Bromwich and later Everton.
Yet, as the Hart transfer demonstrates, the loan system has morphed into something more. Emergency cover or youth development are no longer the motivations. We have been hoodwinked into thinking this is how small clubs catch a break, but look at the size and wealth of some of the clubs in the loan market.
Any Premier League club is among the top 50 brands in football. They shouldn’t need loans to survive.
Not that it is greatly better in Europe. Moussa Sissoko, previously Walker’s team-mate at Tottenham, is in limbo because Daniel Levy wants him off the books — having paid Newcastle £30m last season — but Marseille want a loan deal.
This is a big club, or certainly a club that considers itself big. And they can’t afford a Tottenham reserve?

Without doubt, loans add to the feeling of intransigence in the modern game. The idea that players, managers, even some owners and executives, are little more than passing through. And what chance do young players have when a club can simply hire internationals?
Last week Bayern Munich, one of the richest clubs in the world, took James Rodriguez from Real Madrid on a two-season loan.
They immediately put shirts with his name and number 11 on sale, and they sold out within two days. Munich confirmed they reserve the right to buy him when his loan ends.
Yet, why not now? One look at Munich’s commercial partners is a clue to their size. T-Mobile, adidas, Audi, Lufthansa, Allianz, Siemens, DHL. This is the powerhouse football club in the powerhouse European economy and they will only get bigger now Munich have helped ensure the traditional elite get an even bigger slice of Champions League earnings.

Yet, despite this, they can’t buy a player who was the star of the 2014 World Cup, and whose transfer to Madrid was the fourth biggest in history. They can’t afford that pedigree, or perhaps they prefer to cleverly work around what remains of financial fair play — a carve-up they helped create.
Munich are quite possibly the biggest snobs in Europe, much given to lecturing their rivals — particularly the newly rich — on business ethics.
Yet when it comes to James, they are quite happy to run their shop with another club’s stock. They’re working the system, or maybe they’re just not as big as they think; or as big as Manchester City.

When you are talking of Sigurdsson going for £40-£50M, then Walker's fee doesn't look so bad after all.

Wonder if the media will go crazy over United signing Perisic for close to £50m, he'll be 29 in February...and he's not even English?

45 goals as a winger in nearly 200 appearances for Wofsburg, Milan and Dortmund.

http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/football/transfers/manchester-united-transfer-news-ivan-perisic-jose-mourinho-shortlist-a7844746.html