Everyone agrees that we need to do well out of this, but there is nothing to suggest so far that we won't. The club has said all the right things so far, and so have Sydney, but chest beating means nothing once behind closed doors and negotiating time starts.
Did you hear the Harper interview? Everything he said suggested that we were gearing up for a disappointing result. He publicly said that we would not get a player of Kurt's quality in return. He publicly declared we wouldn't send Kurt to the PSD, which, effectively, removes the best chance we have of convincing him to accept any club other than Sydney's offer, and it also puts us in a significantly worse position when making the trade with Sydney, as they know, at the end of trade week, we will take whatever they feel like giving us. Rather than saying that we were confident we could get Kurt's market value, or claiming we'd do everything we could to meet such and end, he effectively said we "hope" we won't get too ripped off.
Hope.
Exactly why would he be saying these things publicly if they weren't true privately? I can't understand the motivation at all.
The only three scenarios that seem to make sense given that interview are:
a) we expect to be disappointed, as there is indeed something weird in Kurt's contract that is creating a very uneven playing field, but we don't want to make that public unless we have to.
b) we expect to be disappointed because we're terrible negotiators who are more interested in preserving a reputation as nice guys to deal with in trade week, rather than use the PSD as a bargaining chip.
c) Harper has spoken out of line, has given our fans the completely wrong information, and is terrible at his job.
I can't see why we'd publicly give the impression that we don't expect a good deal to be made, when we're privately confident we will be adequately compensated. What good does that do anyone? Are they hoping to pleasantly surprise us or something? Last week Trigg came out and said that we would deal with whoever we wanted, and would not be pushed around. Why has the company line changed so drastically? If what they're telling us publicly is of no consequence, why not keep running with Trigg's words, and give the supporters confidence?
I'm sorry, but I will be extremely surprised if we don't get shafted by this.