No. Read my later posts. We are so close to our budget limit that the club are worried about being able to even offer free transfers of the calibre of Brownhill contracts, if we stump up the money for Dibling.
Which, would make you think the club should walk away. However, bu the sounds of what else was said, the ONLY options left to us if we do at this late stage are Trincão and Fellows. We've basically left it almost too late by the sounds of it.
If it was me, I would just sign Dibling and then scramble round to fill what we can as thebwindow draws to a close, but it sounds like the three stooges on our current committee would rather dither.
"Free" transfers are such a con, more often than not the agent asks for a hefty fee akin to a transfer fee and there's no structuring that fee across several years/with performance bonuses like with a club. Also this seems to be the season of free agents wanting £100k+, just look at what DCL expected clubs to pay for his goalscoring prowess.
If it were me, I'd take the L, say we tried several targets, bids failed, we didn't meet the valuation that clubs had and moved on. If we have £45m to spend on one player, I'd rather we have a more well balanced squad than one marquee player at this stage on the game. Fellows on the right, Maitland-Niles to cover multiple positions, et al.
Either way, we cannot dither any more. Put a bid in for
Dibling, or sack it off. The longer we wait the higher the chance Southampton will want to keep him for the season