Not liking this 'lets just stick with him and see what happens' bollox one little bit.
Agreed.
I have a feeling that we are all going to have to be happy with getting Butland as an "upgrade". He is not my idea of a proper replacement but may save us 5 or 6 points a season as opposed to the level of De Gea, Oblak, Alisson or Courtois who will save you 8 to 12 points.
As he is not England first choice now his price will not have rocketed and may even be a fair bit less than the £40m once touted by the press. Effectively nobody else is in for his services and he was between the posts for a relegated team. If we are going down that route perhaps we should only offer £20m. The CL level keepers are being valued at around the £60m mark so a keeper of his current profile cannot command even half of their fee.
He is still young enough to be sold on at a later date and we can use money from the sale of one of our two keepers, preferably Mignolet, to pay for a good chunk of any new outlay.
Got a feeling though that Stoke are going to dig their heels in on a price given that they are likely to lose Shaqiri for £12m and don't want to be turned over twice, especially by the same club, for two of their players.
We already have Roma asking £60m+ for their keeper as they feel they lost Salah to us too cheaply. Well thems the breaks I'm afraid when you start off with players, wages, values and balancing the books at your club.
