My theory:
The failure to sell Felipe Melo has caused a little bit of panic. The club said several times both before and during the mercato that a large chunk of the money for the mercato would have to be generated through player sales. The price for Melo was set to 13, but I think Juve expected at least 8. Instead, we got 1,5 million for the loan.
There are a bunch of members here who think that we've already set aside the 20 to 20+ million required to land a top striker, but there's really nothing to suggest that is the case. Quite the opposite: our pursuit of a striker is dragging on, and has been dragging on, due to a lack of funds.
Yeah, that's very possible.
I mean, how much have we spent/commited to spend (installments) already? I'm including Boakye because Immobile's half rights were sold in january, a different sports season.
Giocinco - 11M
Isla - 9.4M
Asamoah - 9M
Caceres - 8M
Giaccherini - 4.25M
Boakye - 4M
Leali - 3.8M
Gabbiadini - 1.5M
Masi - 1M
Leo Bonatini - 1M
Total: 54M.
Considering we will get Peluso (6M) + a 19M striker = 79M projected expenditure.
Players sold:
Melo - 1.75M (loan)
Krasic - 7M
Elia - 7.5M (with bonus)
Pasquato - 1.5M (co-own) Udinese
Ekdal - 1.2M - Cagliari
Total income on sold players: 19M
So, as of right now, it’s already been a loss of 35M. The projected total cost with transfers would be a loss of more or less 60M. That's a shit load of cash.
Barcelona spent less than 40M. Madrid is spending like 30/35M.
According to transfermarket, United had a total loss this season of 53M euros. Arsenal had a total plus of 11.8M Euros. Liverpool had a loss of 33M euro. Tottenham had a loss of only 6.1M.
I mean, the only 3 clubs in the whole fucking world who would have spent more than us (counting on supposedly more 25M for Peluso and a striker) are PSG, Chelsea (loss of 79M) and maybe Bayern. Even freakin City have yet to spend more 53M to reach us.
Are we that rich? I mean.... it makes a lot of sense that we need to sell Litch to get another good striker. We've spent much more money than it looks like. If we don’t sell, we don’t get more money to spend. It seems like it’s as simple as that.
Summing it up: we've already had a loss of 35M in this mercato. With a striker and Peluso it would be added an additional 25M to this loss. Only 3 or 4 teams in the whole world will have even or bigger losses than that. It makes a lot of sense to sell Litch if there's the opportunity.
And when I come to think of it, I highly doubt that without selling him we'll get some of these high profile CFs.