"We offered 10," I said.
"We offered 10, and they have not laughed us off the phone, which tells you everything about how bad it has got over there. The lad wants it. Premier League, Europe, a manager who is the story of the World Cup. His people know us, they trust Sarah. On paper it is the easiest deal of the summer."
"But."
"But there is a takeover circling them. Egyptian money, an American alongside it. And the second that money lands, son, they pull Jack Grealish off the market, bolt the door, and build a team around him, because he is the one asset in that whole club worth the keeping."
A beat. "So it is a straight race. We get it done inside a fortnight, before the money arrives, or we do not get it done at all."
There it was. The steal of the whole window, sat out in the open for anybody with the nerve to take it, and a clock ticking on it whose face I could not see.
