Garnacho ‘Pr*ck Protection’ grants perfect transfer compromise for Man Utd and Chelsea
Manchester United see £50m for Alejandro Garnacho as a ‘fair and accurate’ price, while Chelsea don’t want to pay more than £30m. Neither club is wrong – both valuations are entirely reasonable. Which is why rather than meeting in the middle to leave both United and Chelsea £10m unhappy, we propose a significant level of Pr*ck Protection to ensure the perfect transfer.
Chelsea are in an excellent negotiating position. Garnacho is a desire rather than a need; if they don’t get him, they’ll either sign someone else or no-one at all and be just fine. He’s desperate to join them, with his ‘Chelsea or nothing’ vow tested and affirmed this week as he said no to Bayern Munich. And United are obviously very open to offers for a man who’s played his last game for them.
The smart money would be on United lowering their price tag to bring in some of that sweet ‘pure profit’ cash to aid in the PSR stakes and perhaps put towards a new midfielder or goalkeeper.
But there must be more than a temptation – after Garnacho told them “Chelsea or I stay here and don’t play football for 6-12 months” – for the United bosses to test that resolve given his off-field antics this summer.
He’s only on £50,000 per week; they might see £2.6m as an annual price they’re willing to pay for the cathartic suffering of their academy graduate. If we’re making knee-jerk assessments on the opening day of the season – and of course we are – United will be just fine without further additions while Garnacho rots at home.
And just imagine the malicious joy Ruben Amorim would take in Garnacho coming to his office in October with his tale between his legs asking him to play football in a World Cup year. “Still got the Marcus Rashford shirt, mate? Yeah, shut the door on your way out.”
Between his donning of that Aston Villa top, labelling United’s season “sh*t” after being dropped for the Europa League final and spending most of their post-season trip of Asia ‘flipping the finger to fans’, supposedly in jest, Garnacho didn’t leave much space for reintegration after Amorim informed him he wasn’t in his plans.
It does make you wonder just how much of a childish little arse a talented footballer has to be for other clubs not to be interested in signing them at all, though our guess is there will always be a manager with an ego big enough to believe they can be the ‘fix’ for a lost soul no matter what they’ve done, within the boundaries of the law.
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Enzo Maresca isn’t alone in thinking Garnacho’s quality and potential outstrips his infantile behaviour, with Aston Villa’s Unai Emery and Bayern’s Vincent Kompany seemingly of a similar mind.
And Chelsea’s belief that the 21-year-old can become a ‘key player in the right environment’ isn’t without reason. Although their own experience with Jadon Sancho suggests Stamford Bridge perhaps isn’t the best landing spot for Red Devil outcasts, fellow bomb squad members Rashford and Antony both thrived having escaped United last season.
Chelsea only sign footballers they believe will be worth more than what they paid for them in the future. It’s a model we scoffed at but is now reaping rewards. And there’s no doubt that Garnacho represents a big market opportunity.
It was barely a year ago that United deemed him untouchable as a £100m player in the making, before setting a £70m asking price that’s now dropped to £50m. That dip in valuation is thanks to what we’ve been told is a need for the club to make money through player sales, a lack of progression on Garnacho’s part in that time, his unsuitability to Amorim’s system and United’s bizarre bid to secure the lowest possible transfer fee for their footballers by telling the world they’re desperate to be rid of them.
We would suggest – and this may well be Chelsea’s position – there has been no allowance made by United for just what a knob he’s been in the last three months. And thus we present to you: Pr*ck Protection.
The issue we foresee in Chelsea drawing up a contract which includes this £20m-worth of Pr*ck Protection, or add-ons as they’re more colloquially known, is the subjectivity of pr*ckery. We’ve all met several pr*cks in our lives and often what makes them a pr*ck is intangible – it’s something you feel in your bones. “Why don’t I like them? Don’t know, just a bit of a pr*ck.”
And even the things that could possibly be measured – number of social media posts involving you wearing the shirt of a rival club, a sulk to goals ratio, volume of bullsh*t spouted on your behalf by your loud-mouthed sibling – aren’t typically the things written into a contract, with add-ons tending to be based on players achievements rather than stuff they’ve managed to avoid.
Chelsea may have to rely on the usual appearances, goals, assists bonuses to serve a similar purpose – Maresca won’t pick a pr*ck – but in whatever guise, they will feel they should be afforded some insurance from United: financial recognition of the risk they’re taking on a player who probably is worth £50m, but only if he stops being a pr*ck.
