Do you actually believe a manager has any say in who we'll buy and who will play? Messi and his amigos run the club not whoever our manager is, lol.
Until Suarez is here he'll be a starter (the same as Pique, Busi, Alba) so spending 100m on his "replacement" just to play him out of his best position is a waste of money. Signing Lautaro only makes sense if Suarez is leaving at the end of this season which won't happen.
About trading players for Lautaro. Swap deals are rarely happening for many reasons. Also, total value of the transfer would still be more than 100m if we'd include a player like Vidal so it's not like we would actually save some money. He's probably the most likely since Conte likes him and we also want to sell but again, what is his fair market price? What if Inter thinks Vidal is worth 10m while Barca thinks he's worth twice as much and we would get offer(s) from other club(s) in that range but instead decide to include him to lower Lautaro's asking price for only 12-13m (negotiation power is on Inter's side here because we want their player more than they want our). We're losing money here like it usually happens in swap deals. It already happened to us once in that famous Ibra-Eto'o transfer when we were desperate to get rid of Eto'o so much we included him in a swap when we could probably get more for him on the open market. Heck, that deal alone (alongside with them pulling off from Rafinha's deal) should be enough to never negotiate with them again.
But we never learn our lessons.
If we want to sell Vidal for good money and plan to bring a good replacement (I doubt it though since our entire focus seems to be on attacking players again and we'll probably just bring a cheap midfielder and/or defender if anyone at all) for him then fine. But if we'll just use Arturo as a money exchange and get almost nothing in return then I prefer to keep him. He's one of the rare players who still actually gives a f**** on the pitch in every game.
People assume that Inter must accept any offer that's around 111m which is not true. If Lautaro has a clause then they must accept it only IF we pay that sum at once (not in installments like we want) - like we did with AG last year - without including any players. If we won't do that then they can just set his price at 130m or even more if they want. But they certainly won't sell for "just" 80-90m (even that's too much imo) or so because they know we're desperate for another forward to save us
and we've overpaid on most big money transfers so we'll do that again. Inter will only sell under their terms. They don't need to sell to us. They can sell to City who will probably look for Kun's longterm replacement and they are also totally ok with keeping Lautaro for another season by offering him a new contract with better wages and higher or no release clause (so even more power for them next summer). So it's basically a win-win situation for them. For us, not so much.
Another problem is that this clause is apparently only valid from July 1-15. Current season surely won't be finished by then so what will we do? Pay Lautaro's clause at that time when both clubs are probably still competing for titles? Or will his clause be valid for 14 days whenever next transfer window opens? Or maybe it won't be valid at all. We live in uncertain times not knowing what will happen but football market will surely be affected as well. I was against another 100m signing from the start and am even more so now with the club losing potentially more than 100m of revenues.
