Inter are rumoured to be stalling over an £8million fee for the Chilean, and the Swans need a defensive midfielder...
Four and a half years ago Huw Jenkins made a seemingly tongue-in-cheek enquiry about Jay Bothroyd (then Cardiff's top scorer - he's now playing in Thailand! Mad!). The response? Bothroyd himself had a pop at Huw in the press, and chairman Peter Ridsdale said he "wouldn't expect any of his players to go 'down the road' ", adding that he thought Huw had done it simply for the publicity. For his part, our dear chairman wasn't to be drawn on the matter - only commenting that "Bothroyd isn't a player who'd be in our price range".
How times have changed. The Swans are about to embark on a fourth straight season in the Premier League and Cardiff, predictably, came up, spent loads of money, and promptly got relegated. Buying success is a lottery, and sadly for Cardiff fans spending big wasn't enough to keep them up. The danger of signing big is that if you get relegated it's going to be almost impossible to hold onto your star players - Steven Caulker, for example, has already departed for QPR in order to return to the Premier League but it's another of their signings, Gary Medel, who would suit the Swans down to the ground.
We're obviously in the market for a central midfielder, and as yesterday's blog showed (link) we've probably spent about £2.5million net in the transfer market this summer. If my Premier League revenue maths is correct we should have at least ten million pound left in the transfer kitty - and that's without even worrying about how much we're spending. The amount of money you now receive for TV rights means that pretty much all Premier League clubs are able to spend upwards of ten million every transfer window, and considering the Swans' general financial prudence it's hard to imagine we aren't considerably better off than most.
This is an opportunity to make a statement. It doesn't matter if Medel fancies Inter and doesn't fancy moving down the M4 - it's a statement of intent. Cardiff's chairman has said Medel won't be leaving for any less than £10million - surely we could afford that? It's not even like it's a risk in my opinion - Medel is quality. Real quality. He bossed the first derby against us last season, was excellent in general for Cardiff, and would really suit our style of play. He's shown for Chile the short-passing game comes naturally to him, and on top of that we are in the market for a defensive midfielder - as our bid for Muhammed Besic showed. Medel is surely currently a better player than Besic, and £10million isn't really that much for a defensive midfielder of Medel's calibre. Hell, if Inter Milan are interested...
On top of this, it's an opportunity to step up a notch in the eyes of the football world. Last week we saw French winger Dmitri Payet turn down the Swans - essentially saying we're not a big enough club. Even if we didn't end up getting Medel, the fact that we tried to gazump a major, major club would still make a point that we're a force to be reckoned with - we signed Bony for twelve last summer so why should this be any different?
The obvious sticking point would be whether Cardiff would be prepared to sell to Swansea. I've racked my brain to try and think of the last time a player turned down a move to a club based on his allegiance to their rival, or a club turned down a bid from a rival for nothing other than historic reasons. I'm struggling to come up with any! A sign of the times, perhaps. Either way, it'd be interesting to see what Cardiff's reaction to a bid from their nearest and dearest was this time around.
One thing is for sure - we won't have to worry about Cardiff pricing us out of a move. We could probably even afford to give them a tip...