Paulo Bernardo

Asked this before, but is there any indication of anyone else being interested?

Feeling a bit of a one horse race at present.

 

If they sell him for £3.5m and have, say, 20% of the profit from his next sale, then we'd need to sell him for £16m for Benefica to make back the £2.5m they would miss out on dropping from £6m to £3.5m. There's absolutely no chance they'll agree to £3.5 down from £6m prior to the clause expiring. It makes zero financial sense when we might go '* it' and take the deal at the last minute.

 

Gary Mackay-Steven?

 

I don't think that's right. If we think there's a chance to renegotiate the fee and get it reduced, we're always going to take that. I don't think there's any evidence that Rodgers doesn't think he's worth £6 million. To me it seems more likely that the board (or possibly just Lawwell) think they can negotiate a better fee (and they're the experts on that not Rodgers).

 

But the window hasn't even opened yet. Once a fee is agreed then we speak to the player about salary and the player is on holiday.

 

I'm probably too attached to this. I think he's worth the £6 million if is that; but what do I know? It's just my decidedly non-expert opinion.

I do like him, though, and I hope we get the deal done: for 3.5m if possible and 6m if necessary.

 

They hold a 30% stake on his next sale, not just 30% on the profit. When we sold Jota for £25m, they earned more from his transfer to Saudi than they did from our initial fee of £6.5m.

So if we buy him for £3.5m, we would only need to sell him for £7.5m for them to make up the £2.5m. They will also look at it, the same way they did with Jota and realise they could make huge profit further down the line. I don't think he's ever going to be worth a huge fee but let's say someone from the Premier League comes in with an offer of £12m, they'll end up with £4m of that, which is more than the fee they received from us, again.

 

The same board didn't do that for Jota and CCV, though? There was a buy out option and we paid it.

I think it's quite simple. The board have asked Rodgers what they think, he's likely told them he wants him back but there should be some discussions on the fee. Rodgers won't be a part of negotiations but he will certainly be telling the recruitment team/board what he values a player at.

 

I don't think these things are ever simple. I agree that Rodgers will have told the board what Bernardo is worth to us; that doesn't mean we just go and pay that without negotiating. Negotiating positions are more complicated than that. At a minimum, it's not just a matter of what Benfica and Celtic think he's worth but also of what each believes the other thinks he's worth. It's quite interesting to compare the strength of our positions with Bernardo and Idah.

Idah was a clear success here. Rodgers has openly stated that he wants him, Norwich can plausibly claim that the new manager wants to see what he can do before selling and Idah himself has been coy. Norwich have all the cards.

Bernardo was an ambiguous success here (the fact that so many people are arguing about it in this thread clearly shows that), Benfica have already said he's not part of their plans, Bernardo himself has said he wants to come back. We have a strong hand here.

If you think about the loan seasons that Jota and CCV had, I'm really not surprised to hear from you that we didn't try to renegotiate those: any attempt to let the deals lapse and renogotiate would surely have led to us paying more not less IMO. So to repeat what I said earlier, the fact that we are negotiating over Bernardo doesn't tell us anything either way about whether we think he's worth £6m or not, it only tells us that the board think we can get him for less than that.

 

With Jota, if we didn't trigger the deal I think someone goes in within days and puts a bid of £10m in. What Jota did in his season wasn't worth 6 or so million, it was worth far far far more. If the deal had been £9m, I think we probably still would have paid it. It would have been a huge loss not to have him come back. I think CCV would have had a buyer for £6m too to be honest.

The difference is that Bernardo isn't going to have numerous bidders. I think someone will take him on loan again with the option to buy but I don't see anybody swooping in for him. I think the club buy in the end but we are negotiating because they want to see if they can get him lower and we should.

 

So, it all kinda comes back to my original point that he's not worth the £6m outlay, currently.

 

100% see it the same way.

 

That's not really what he said.

 

It's not but the reality is, it's what both clubs and Rodgers think, given it looks like they're both happy for the deal to go through at £3.5m

 

Maybe, we don't actually know that for sure. All we know is that they are both willing to do a deal at that price (if it goes through), which is not really the same thing.

I think part of the reason that we're arguing in circles is that we are confounding two separate notions of value. One is use value (i.e. how much he is worth to the club) and the other is exchange value, which is what someone is willing to pay. They're not quite the same thing (e.g. due to the fact that we know some things Benfica don't and vice versa), although the use value (which is what Rodgers will have communicated to the board) will undoubtedly be the absolute maximum we would be willing to pay even if Benfica held all the cards (which they don't).

I think he's worth £6 million in terms of use value. I think he'd be a good signing even at that price (for example if Benfica had the kind of strong position with respect to Bernardo that Norwich have with respect to Idah). Whether that's what he goes for depends on the negotiations. Based on what both parties (Benfica and Celtic) know, I'd say we have a strong position and I'm glad to see we are using that to renegotiate a lower fee.

 

Benfica will be well aware of how he has performed this season. They have one of the best youth set ups in the world which is intrinsically linked with their recruitment set up with consistent information on all loan players, B team players and potential signings from all over the world. It's why so many of their B team players break through to the first team. Even Bernardo, who isn't wanted, has played 17 games or something for the first team.

If Celtic have told Benfica, we aren't willing to meet the release clause because of A, B and C, Benfica would be well within their rights to say no. They would be confident he is worth the agreed price of £6m and if we don't pay it, they know someone else will, be it through channels to other clubs or their contacts elsewhere.

Benfica do hold all the cards. They have a valuation that was put in place by the club, which Celtic agreed to. They also hold a contract with the player and as has been noted, they have some of the best contacts in the world. Of course, the player will hold some power where he can go to Benfica and say he wants to come here but they're not obliged to grant that. Benfica have their own financial issues, like most clubs in Portugal. If they're confident he's worth £6m, they'll get £6m for him. The reality is, they're happy to let him go for nearly half that price.

 

First of all, a lot of this I have never disagreed with and isn't relevant to what we're discussing. It makes it much harder to clarify where we disagree when you keep bringing up 2 or 3 irrelevant points (many of which I agree with) every time you answer me. For example, I agree with your entire first paragraph and the first sentence of your second paragraph (everything I've put in bold); but it has nothing to do with the points we disagree on. Can you please stick to the point we're discussing.

I've explained above why Benfica don't hold all the cards.

My very point is that Benfica can't be confident that he's worth £6 million to us.

 

It is relevant because you're saying Benfica won't be aware of certain things. What won't they be aware of? They'll be aware of everything from his performances, to his place in the squad. I can't think of anything else that would be remotely relevant to Bernardo and the value Celtic place on him.

You explained why YOU don't think they hold all the cards. The simple reality is, they do. They have an agreed price with Celtic for £6m. They hold a contract with the player which runs until 2027. They hold all the cards, in reality. A player can go to the club and say "I want to move here"... it means absolutely * all, really.

Away from all that, the very fact that Celtic are negotiating the fee, means we don't think he's worth the full price. We paid the full agreed price for Jota, because he was worth it. We paid the agreed price for CCV, because he was worth it. We aren't paying the agreed price for Bernardo because?? We don't think he's worth it, right now. That is as simple as it gets.

You can try and make it as complicated as you want to try and suit your argument, the simple reality is we would pay the money if we thought he was worth it and more, like some on here do. We have history of doing that and not doing it, in the case of someone like Jenz. The club take a totally different stance. And Benfica are willing to agree to a change in that stance, given what they know about the player this season.

 

They agreed a 30 per cent stake in Jota's sale as part of the exclusivity deal, if we're renegotiating the fee down, presumably we would renegotiate that down as well. Ultimately, it doesn't matter, because Benefica have absolutely no reason to accept a renegotiation until the exclusivity clause is up, because they'd be literally throwing away money.

If we come in now and say 'we only think he's worth £3.5m', it makes sense for Benefica to wait until the exclusivity clause is up in a month's time. Because a) we might want to avoid losing the player and just pay £6m before it runs out, b) they might get an offer from another club higher than £3.5m prior if they wait, c) assuming we want the player, we might make an increased bid later in the window.

The talk of an agreed £3.5m makes no sense and it's coming from a Mail Sport report, it's 100% nonsense.

 

It came from Stephen McGowan from the Mail who is about as accurate as you can get when it comes to Celtic.