All of those things get weighted into the decision. Its no different to any other contract situation that we go into every year.
There is the terms you are willing to agree up to and anything over that you are not prepared to meet. That is obviously determined by quality of the player in question, list profile, importance of the player to the team both in the short and the long term, what the player is worth in terms of trade currency, can you get similar production from player X for significantly less money than what you would need to pay etc.
These decisions are never made in isolation for that player in particular. Its a much broader spectrum of considerations to reach that decision. Teams re-signing the player can never pay the player the same money that the team recruiting them will. That is just a fact of life.
We gad a set figure with Lever. He wanted more, we deemed it not worth it given the make up of the team, availability of capable replacement and also the impact his signing would have on our ability to keep other, more important players around. This will be no different. Keath will have bigger offers from other clubs, that is inevitable. We will have a price in mind that we can go up to. If he is happy with that, he stays. If he is not, he goes. Its pretty much that simple.
