By OkayGoal
On the surface, an eighty five million pound fee for a winger with two Premier League goals in two seasons looks like exactly the kind of overpayment that gets a fanbase mocked from every corner of social media. But as soon as you start looking a little deeper into that Savinho transfer, the picture starts looking rather different, with Manchester City coming out of this looking far cleverer than Tottenham do foolish.
How Man City structured transfer fee to avoid paying Marmoush sell on clause
The suggestion doing the rounds is that much of Savinho’s inflated price tag is tied directly to the ongoing Omar Marmoush negotiations. Man City are believed to owe Frankfurt a sell on percentage for the Egyptian meaning any fee they command for Marmoush now gets partially clawed back by the German club.
By pushing the Savinho fee upward while quietly discounting Marmoush in return, City appear to have found a way to keep more money in their own pocket without technically breaking any rules.
It is not Tottenham being mugged off here so much as Frankfurt watching their sell on clause get engineered around.
Savinho could be a smart transfer for Tottenham
Take away the whole money side of things, there is a footballer worth getting excited about too.
Savinho’s loan spell at Girona produced eleven goal contributions in the Champions League era and marked him out as a genuine one on one threat who can progress the ball over real distance (something Tottenham desperately lacked last season).
His underlying numbers for carrying the ball forward sit in elite percentiles and his first season in England before confidence issues crept in after that City’s mid-season wobble was far from the disaster his reputation might suggest.
De Zerbi clearly sees a player who fits his demands for wide players who can hold the width, someone who can receive on either foot and beat a full back in isolation.
If he were to play alongside the likes of Maddison, Kudus and Marmoush, this could yet form a front line with real teeth (especially if the pressure of the price tag does not weigh too heavily especially given how he has been struggling with confidence already).
There is risk here, certainly, and comparisons to costly Premier League flops are inevitable. But if De Zerbi extracts anything close to the Girona version of Savinho, nobody will be talking about the fee for very long.